Let me say a word about each of these components. That requires that journalists show what we think we are about, why we exist as a profession, where we fit in the larger social order and what we can contribute to the public good. These provide some relatively concrete norms by which any professional decision can be judged. Standards address matters of actual journalistic practice, accepting some and condemning some. It is not possible in any code to cover every conceivable professional problem or case.
Specific problems change dramatically and rapidly.
For example, twenty years ago the problem of digital manipulation of photos did not exist, but the principle of truth-telling did. So we cannot hope for comprehensiveness in covering all problems, and we obviously cannot establish standards to cover every case. We can speak, and have, to many of the problems that exist today, but we cannot anticipate which of them will soon disappear and what new ones will arise. For that reason, practical journalistic decisions about problem cases cannot be made responsibly without a clear understanding of the principles that make them problems. Everybody seems to agree that questions of substance or content of the code and questions of implementation are closely related.