page_title: Journalism
section_title: Professional and ethical standards
hierarchical_section_title: Journalism / Professional and ethical standards
caption_attribution_description: English: News photographers and reporters wait outside Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' apartment on 5th Avenue in New York City May 19, 1994. Photograph by Nancy Wong
context_page_description: Journalism is unbiased production and distribution of reports on current or past events based on facts and supported with proofs or evidences. The word journalism applies to the occupation, as well as citizen journalists who gather and publish unbiased information based on facts and supported with proofs or evidences. Journalistic media include print, television, radio, Internet, and, in the past, newsreels.
  Concepts of the appropriate role for journalism vary between countries. In some nations, the news media are controlled by government intervention and are not fully independent. In others, the news media are independent of the government but instead operate as private industry motivated by profit. In addition to the varying nature of how media organizations are run and funded, countries may have differing implementations of laws handling the freedom of speech and libel cases.
  The proliferation of the Internet and smartphones has brought significant changes to the media landscape since the turn of the 21st century.
context_section_description: While various existing codes have some differences, most share common elements including the principles of – truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability – as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.
  Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel propose several guidelines for journalists in their book The Elements of Journalism.
  Their view is that journalism's first loyalty is to the citizenry and that journalists are thus obliged to tell the truth and must serve as an independent monitor of powerful individuals and institutions within society. In this view, the essence of journalism is to provide citizens with reliable information through the discipline of verification.
  Some journalistic Codes of Ethics, notably the European ones, also include a concern with discriminatory references in news based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and physical or mental disabilities.  The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved in 1993 Resolution 1003 on the Ethics of Journalism which recommends journalists to respect the presumption of innocence, in particular in cases that are still sub judice.
  In the UK, all newspapers are bound by the Code of Practice of the Independent Press Standards Organisation. This includes points like respecting people's privacy and ensuring accuracy. However, the Media Standards Trust has criticized the PCC, claiming it needs to be radically changed to secure the public trust of newspapers.
  This is in stark contrast to the media climate prior to the 20th century, where the media market was dominated by smaller newspapers and pamphleteers who usually had an overt and often radical agenda, with no presumption of balance or objectivity.
  Because of the pressure on journalists to report news promptly and before their competitors, factual errors occur more frequently than in writing produced and edited under less time pressure. Thus a typical issue of a major daily newspaper may contain several corrections of articles published the previous day.  Perhaps the most famous journalistic mistake caused by time pressure was the Dewey Defeats Truman edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune,  based on early election returns that failed to anticipate the actual result of the 1948 US presidential election.
caption: News photographers and reporters waiting behind a police line in New York City, in May 1994
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