This is only slightly higher than the average of four full-time jobs reported by a study published in 1997. A majority of the online managers in the current study report they make at least some changes to material from their print editions when it is published online, and 67 percent report they are publishing at least some breaking news online first, before it goes through the traditional print-edition editing regimen. High standards of journalistic responsibility and ethics are difficult if not impossible to uphold in this sort of environment. This is despite the fact that they average 17 years in the news business, three of those years with online operations. E ven if online ethics courses were required at all of the nation's communications schools, a great number of online professionals would slip through untutored.
New issues are part and parcel of the new media.
Concerned people in newsrooms everywhere should be addressing the idea of establishing an ethics protocol at their operation. Mistakes are made and negative public perceptions are formed when there is no structure in place for heading off ethical problems or efficiently correcting such problems. A rant and Anderson also suggest that publishers should agree to some uniform method for alerting online audiences to mistakes in stories. Currently, readers navigating news sites are required to hunt around for varied correctives and clarifications. Some sites run no corrections at all.