JOURNALISTIC ETHICS

The ethical foundations of journalistic work deserve a detailed, in-depth study. There are quite a few books available for students on this issue. We see our task in delineating the contours of journalistic ethics as a subject of study and regulator of practical activities in the media.

The relationship of legal and ethical standards in the media. The fact that we face different phenomena becomes obvious already from the etymology of the names. The word "legal" in Latin means "judicial", and the Latin root of the word "ethical" is associated with the concepts of "custom", "habit", "character". In philosophy, ethics is also considered as a scientific discipline, the subject of which is public morality. However, now we are most interested in the so-called regulatory ethics of the media, that is, the rules of behavior adopted in the journalistic environment and understood as moral norms.

Right and ethics have quite a few points of contact. First of all, they have the same (or similar) objects of influence - the relations that develop between the participants of mass information production and exchange. At the same time, both law and ethics are normative in nature , which, by the way, sometimes prevents students from seeing the difference between them. Indeed, in both cases, mandatory rules are introduced to regulate the activities of journalists. However, the source of legal norms is state institutions, first of all legislative bodies. Ethical standards are formulated by professional communities themselves. Accordingly, legal regulators are brought in from the outside - by a powerful decision, whereas ethical ones are usually the result of agreements within the corporation.

The similarity of law and ethics is also manifested in the fact that a violation of the norms in both cases involves the punishment of the perpetrator. The state relies on an extensive law enforcement apparatus. He has at his disposal a set of force sanctions, which are aimed at a number of rights and freedoms of citizens, their property status (search, fines, closing a publication or revoking a broadcasting license, forced labor, etc.). Compliance with ethics is monitored by bodies created at the initiative of the professional and corporate public. These include, for example, ethics councils and commissions, which are formed by the Russian and regional Unions of Journalists. The main mechanism of influence for them is the moral condemnation of the offense of a colleague or editorial board. However, one should not think that they act only by the method of persuasion, persuasion, wishes, etc. Regulation can not be carried out without coercion, although the commission on ethics does not have power - in its administrative and authoritative sense. They can oblige a shop mate to apologize to the hero of a publication who has offended him or, say, stop disseminating information that undermines the moral health of young readers. The extreme form of coercion will be to isolate the offender from a collective of colleagues - for example, in the form of refusing to cooperate with him or exclusion from the professional association. Finally, in legal practice, it is inconceivable to impose a sentence on oneself - and the violator of moral and ethical prescriptions can impose a punishment on himself and execute it by making a penitential letter in a newspaper or, on the contrary, leaving an advantageous place in the editorial office whose reputation he has caused damage. This is exactly what the correspondent of one of the American newspapers did, who publicly admitted that he had fabricated the statements of the state governor in a responsible interview. For eight weeks, he resigned without a payday [15].

Laws and other regulations come into force after their official publication in the form of texts. Moral and ethical institutions exist not only in written documentary form, but also as oral agreements, traditions, generally accepted principles of behavior.

Further, the right is mandatory, universal: for example, the Law “On Mass Media” is valid throughout Russia and must be strictly enforced by every citizen and organization. Ethics, by contrast, is characterized by selectivity. The scope of the ethical issues is clearly divided into several vertical levels: supranational, national, regional, editorial. Media representatives from all parts of the world who adopted the International Principles of Professional Ethics for Journalists (consultative meeting under the auspices of UNESCO, 1983) agreed that national and regional codes should be created on the basis of these principles, and each professional organization would adopt them suitable for its members [16]. Since 1994, the Code of Professional Ethics of the Russian Journalist has been validated nationwide, the Press Code (Principles of Journalism) plays a similar role in Germany, and Recommendations for the journalist, etc. in Finland. Unions of journalists in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation are developing their own codes of ethics (Code of Honor of the Kuban journalist, etc.). Usually, the lower the vertical is the document, the more specific it is. It is not by chance that many international agreements receive the status of declarations, whereas editorial codes contain detailed, sometimes strict prescriptions (prohibition of cooperation with other publications, inadmissibility of disclosing editorial secrets, obligatory response to a reader's letter, etc.).

The variety of ethical codes can be clearly seen in the horizontal section. Various associations of professionals develop their own standards of activity - not repeating documents of universal significance, but specifying them in relation to a particular journalistic specialization or group interests (although, by the way, discrepancies with generally accepted norms are not excluded). So, for members of the Union of Journalists of Russia, the main regulatory source is the Code of Professional Ethics of a Russian Journalist - it was for this purpose that the Union developed it. But regardless of him, and even earlier, the Moscow Charter of Journalists appeared, sealed with 27 signatures. Above, we have already referred to the Declaration of Court Reporters on the principles of fair work in the genres of judicial essay and reportage, as well as journalistic investigation - behind it is a small group of specialists who emphasize their difference from low-grade criminal reporting manufacturers. Forced to respond to the growing wave of reproaches of the immorality of the domestic air, in the spring of 1999, the heads of the largest broadcasters signed their Charter of TV and Radio Broadcasters. A great many ethical versions of the profession are found at the editorial level.

Even the fundamental moral values ​​of journalism are differently determined by those who undertake to systematize them. For example, English publicist and historian Paul Johnson built the original concept of the seven deadly sins of the media (distortion, revered false images, invasion of privacy, murder of reputation, exploitation of sex to raise the rating and circulation, pollution of children's minds, abuse of the enormous power of the media) and the ten commandments (the desire to discover and communicate the truth, thinking through the consequences of what is being said, encouraging the public to acquire knowledge, willingness to admit mistakes, etc.).

There should be a lot of ethical conventions, codes, charters - any unification would be only detrimental. It is important that they do not go against the moral principles on which human society rests and which are understandable, well-known, close to the audience.

In the ideal case, moral principles are enshrined in legislation, and then there is no disagreement between ethics and law. There is no need to duplicate the provisions of state regulations in ethical documents (the Code of the Union of Journalists suffers from this shortcoming) - it is enough to declare law-abiding as the basic principle of behavior. However, in practice, there are usually difficult collisions. Firstly, the system of legislation is always incomplete and imperfect, it is not capable of covering absolutely all relationships and providing for all special cases. Ethics do not leave such gaps. For example, in Russian law, the issues of cooperation and rivalry between colleagues within the editorial board are actually not presented (except for borrowing copyrighted works), but written and unwritten professional codes of honor rather strictly guard the noble ideas of the partnership in their workshop. Secondly, law and ethics sometimes collide with each other. A television reporter from an American company preferred a six-month sentence for insulting a court to announcing the name of a person who allowed him to interview a suspect in a murder. “I don’t have the slightest desire to spend half a year in prison, but I have to keep my word,” said the journalist. According to Agence France-Presse, the management of the television company expressed its full support to the colleague and escorted him to the prison gate.

Comparison of law and ethics implies the conclusion that they not only coexist in the mass information sphere, but actively interact with each other. The result is a flexible and reliable system of principles and norms. Its main functions are the regulation of the behavior of participants in the mass information process, their protection and self-defense, the preservation of the ideological and organizational integrity of a journalistic corporation, the harmonization of media aspirations and practices with the interests of society and its citizens.

The content of media ethics. Classification of ethical principles and norms can be carried out for several reasons. First of all, the rules of behavior developed by the journalists themselves , and those introduced from the outside, are separated. Ethical control, in addition to corporate self-control, is also carried out by instances external to the press - let us recall the institution of ombudsman or the Court of Justice for Information Disputes. In the same row, there are press observatory committees, which, on their own initiative, are formed by public organizations, or the Supreme Council for the Protection of the Morality of Television and Radio Broadcasting, which the State Duma of Russia decided to create, etc. Such entities express expectations and requests for journalism from the public or specific social institutions.

In terms of content, internal and external ethical postulates are not necessarily exact copies of each other. Participants in one of the international seminars on journalistic ethics, held in St. Petersburg, produced a Declaration of confidence in a journalist - a sort of set of requirements for media workers on behalf of consumers of their products. According to the formula “I am ready to trust a journalist if ...” the following judgments were expressed: “I don’t see the interest groups that he advocates in his material”, “for him the interests of the corporation are not higher than the interests of society, and he respects the personality no less than society ”,“ I see that he does not abuse my trust, ”“ he is guided by the principle of “do no harm”, ”“ he does not use the services of those who restrict his professional freedom ”,“ his human passions are not hidden, but do not serve as absolute truth ", etc.

Both in form and in content, the given judgments could hardly have come from the editors themselves or the correspondents. However, the press is useful to accept the social order - otherwise it will develop as an antisocial phenomenon and ultimately will be isolated from its audience.

The harmonization of internal and external ethical systems is achievable, provided that they have a common ideological basis. It becomes the main criterion for distinguishing between "good" and "bad" behavior. Without plunging into the depths of academic debates about the essence of the ethical, let us listen to the opinion of Paul Ricoeur, an outstanding thinker of the 20th century, who, as it were, summarizes the philosophical discussions going on since Aristotle. According to him, the ethical goal is to strive for the good life of the “I” with the “other” and for the “other” in the conditions of just social institutions (“the third” or “any”) [17]. In other words, in the desire of a person or a social group to harmonize their interests with the interests and will of any other representative of society in the name of the common good. In the theory of journalism, this understanding of ethics is most consistent with the concept of social responsibility of the press, which in fact received worldwide recognition in the second half of the 20th century [18].

The code of ethical provisions in the ideological content is divided into several groups. For a rather long history of the existence of the profession, and its understanding, this division has become stable and, as a rule, is reflected in the structure of codes, charters, declarations, whatever journalistic communities are accepted.

First of all, the creators of such documents face the task of formulating the principal goals, which the press staff subordinate their activities to. In the aggregate, they constitute a kind of deontological worldview of journalists (deontology - the study of moral duty, from the Greek. Deon - due). It is logical that codes usually begin with these provisions. For example, refer to the code of the Society of Professional Journalists - the world's oldest association of publishers, editors, reporters, and student journalists with thousands of members (The Society of Professional Journalists, better known as SigmaDelta Chi). Here is called the main deontological reference point - public education in the name of democracy, and, accordingly, the concept of journalistic duty includes the search for truth and comprehensive coverage of events and problems, conscientious and honest service to society, adherence to ethical principles of professional behavior. An alternative to such goal setting would be the elevation of personal or group interests to the detriment of the public good. Tracing the path to the success of one of the first persons of the Russian television screen, the commentator shares sad observations: “Journalism is a cynical profession ... Newspapers were the fourth power for quite a long time, and then the authorities in full began to serve. The same happened with television - only mores here are tougher ... To feed yourself and your programs, which cost a lot of money, you have to go, God knows what ... "Such examples demonstrate the freedom of individual choice of ethical principles, but In no way do they refute the corporate understanding of journalism as a high public service.

The basic attitudes are detailed in the interpretation of the relations that media workers have in the course of their activities. Such, in particular, are the relations between the journalist and the citizens (population, audience). Without listing all possible versions of behavior, we will reproduce some fragments from the code adopted by the Union of Journalists of Russia. It states that the journalist distributes only the information that he is convinced of the veracity and the source of which he knows. He avoids causing damage to anyone, caused by incompleteness or inaccuracy of information, concealment of socially significant or dissemination of deliberately false information. His reports distinguish between facts and opinions, versions, assumptions, although the media employee does not have to be neutral. It counteracts extremism and restriction of civil rights on any grounds, including signs of gender, race, language, religion, political and other views, etc. As you can see, the thesis on the social value and usefulness of journalistic work is developed, primarily in the sense of respecting the security of the population. In a number of documents, this idea receives a more detailed interpretation, and safety is discussed in connection with its specific manifestations. Thus, the Germanic principles of journalism emphasize the inadmissibility of sensational presentation of materials on medical topics in order not to excite unreasonable hopes or fears in readers.

The other side of the relationship is a journalist - citizens are represented by the desire of media employees to maintain their independence from outside influences. The Russian Code categorically excludes the receipt by the correspondent of a fee for the dissemination of false information or the concealment of true information, as well as the receipt of any remuneration from third parties for publishing materials. The status of a journalist is incompatible with the occupation of positions in government and management bodies and political organizations, with the use of weapons and advertising. Unfortunately, it is these norms that turned out to be the least viable in today's practice of domestic editions.

Relationship journalist - the source of information covers two kinds of rules: those relating to the confidentiality of persons who provided information, and those that affect the interests of the heroes of publications.The ban on disclosing a source of confidential information almost does not know the exceptions, the Russian code even says respect for the request of interviewees not to disclose officially the content of their statements (which, however, is not tantamount to complying with such a request). In some countries (for example, in Finland) it is recommended to agree to the interviewee’s request to show him the text before publication in order to verify the data. However, the final decision on the content of the text is made by the editors themselves. In life, there are numerous variations of relationships of this kind. The writer Ilya Ehrenburg, once in New York, was caught in the flash at the moment when he was trying on pants in the sewing workshop. The reporter assured him that this is just a joking snapshot. But the next day the photo appeared in the press, and even with the signature,said that the Soviet writer refused to fasten the zipper, preferring traditional buttons. Ehrenburg demanded an explanation from the editor why newspeople’s interest in a person is limited to his lower half. He replied in the style of his reporter: “You have American humor. Tomorrow it will go to the room. ”

The topic of confidentiality in general terms, we considered above. But she has shades associated with special forms of human behavior during contacts with reporters. They are taken into account by the Rules-recommendations for the press, developed in Denmark. In them, for example, says that you can not abuse the trust of people, their emotions, ignorance or inability to control themselves. Particular attention should be paid to persons who are not able to foresee the consequences of their statements. In fact, the correspondents are often presented with a person who has endured misfortune or an unexpected great joy, and at this moment he is unable to control his behavior, facial expressions and words. Empathy and compassion cost him more than a scandalous interview by surprise.Compared to the traditional case of confidentiality, the issue of the expediency of disclosing facts here lies entirely with the reporter.

In the same way, the honor, dignity and reputation of the heroes of publications are protected. Hints of race, skin color, and physical defects of a person are considered an ethical anomaly if it is not directly related to the content of the message. This requirement, which should not raise doubts in any enlightened person, is contradicted by photo information posted by a large Russian newspaper. The headline informs readers that representatives of one of the North Caucasian peoples (the nationality is precisely indicated in the text) robbed visitors of the exhibition center. Neither the crime itself nor its motives are due to the nationality of the robbers. The editors were victims of their ethical ignorance and stereotypical thinking. The International Commission on Radio and Television Policy (known as the J. Carter and E. Sagalaev Commission),who studied the coverage of ethnic issues in journalism in the CIS countries, especially recommended in her conclusions “to avoid stereotyping groups and persons representing minorities ... One should never tie specific ethnic groups to specific topics” [19], which in our example was criminal crime.

Ethical rules strictly protect against unwarranted intrusion into a person’s private life. In addition to this general situation in foreign codes, attention is focused on a tactful attitude to the victims of crime, witnesses and relatives of the victims (as well as the criminals themselves), on extremely delicate coverage of the facts of suicide, on the humane approach to young offenders, even if they are officially found guilty. It is not recommended without an acute public need to disclose the names and publish photos of these people, as well as the defendants. As we see, by all possible means, respect for the personality of a person, who by the will of circumstances has become an object of media interest, is consolidated.

In a journalist-journalist relationship, the rules of fair competition and cooperation come to the fore. In addition to the strict observance of copyrights protected by law, there are rules that are not reflected in the regulations. In general, a reference to someone else’s contribution to the work is considered a good form, even if the matter does not concern copyrights in their legal understanding. For example: it is worth mentioning in your material that you received the address for it from an interview with a workshop partner or from a publication of a large-circulation newspaper. The Russian Code prescribes to avoid situations where a journalist may damage the personal or professional interests of a colleague, while agreeing to perform his duties under less favorable conditions. The reason for such a strike may be, for example,labor conflict between the editor and the correspondent due to the breach of the contract by the administration or the colleague's refusal to perform the task contrary to his convictions or professional principles of honor (the latter, by the way, is provided for by ethical codes).

Наоборот, взаимовыручка, несмотря на жесткие законы конкуренции, соответствует духу корпоративной солидарности. Это хорошо понимали, например, репортеры фронтовой печати в годы Великой Отечественной войны. Военкор «Правды» Борис Полевой попал в такие обстоятельства, что не смог передать в редакцию материал о взятии нашими войсками важнейшего населенного пункта. Он уже мысленно представлял себе и собственный позор, и недоумение читателей. Однако в свежем номере газеты он с удивлением обнаружил корреспонденцию за своей подписью – ее «под Полевого» написал и переслал корреспондент Союзрадио Александр Костин[20]. Экстремальные ситуации подстерегают и современных журналистов, причем не только в «горячих точках». Нередко единственной опорой при этом становится бескорыстная товарищеская поддержка и помощь.

В комплекс этических предписаний входит открытость редакций и отдельного журналиста для оценки их деятельности. Сказанное, прежде всего, относится к восприятию критики со стороны аудитории. Снобистское пренебрежение реакцией потребителей продукции СМИ не только невежливо, но и нерационально. В кодексSigma Delta Chi включен раздел, прочно обоснованный опытом прессы, – «Будьте подотчетны» (жаль, что его нет в российском кодексе). В нем говорится:

Журналисты подотчетны своим читателям, слушателям, зрителям и друг другу. Журналисты должны:

Ø разъяснять и комментировать информацию, быть готовы к диалогу с общественностью по вопросам журналистской этики;

Ø поощрять общественность к высказываниям критических замечаний в адрес средств массовой информации;

Ø признавать свои ошибки и с готовностью исправлять их;

Ø publicly expose professional ethics by journalists and journalists ...

The bodies of self-control journalistic corporation recognizes the Council on professional ethics of the Union of Journalists of Russia and the relevant councils (commissions) of regional unions. No other bodies or organizations have the authority to do so. On the other hand, violation of the norms of ethical codes cannot serve as a basis for bringing a journalist to disciplinary, administrative or other responsibility. So it is written in a special document of the Union of Journalists - Provision on the principles and system of public control over the compliance of journalists with the provisions of the Code of Professional Ethics of a Russian Journalist. The Union also approved the Statute on the Grand Jury, a kind of supreme ethical court that deals with conflicts arising from the performance of professional duties by corporation members. The structure of this self-regulation body includes - of course, on a voluntary basis - authoritative members of the Union, with an impeccable reputation. But do not think that the opportunity to evaluate the behavior of colleagues is assigned only to special instances. Both editorial teams and individual journalists also have it. True, they do not have the right to officially impose any sanctions against violators of ethical norms.

In conclusion, we present the contents of the Declaration of Principles of Journalist Conduct (International Federation of Journalists). It was adopted in 1954 (partial changes were made in 1986) and since then has been considered by the world professional community as a recognized standard for media employees:

1. Respect for the truth and the society’s right to know the truth is the primary duty of a journalist.

2. When carrying out professional activities, a journalist is obliged to uphold the principle of freedom in fair collection and publication of information and the right to honest comment and criticism.

3. A journalist is obliged to operate only with information which source is known to him. A journalist should not neglect information or falsify documents.

4. When receiving information, photographs and documents, a journalist should use only honest methods.

5. The journalist must do everything possible to correct or refute information that may cause serious damage.

6. The journalist is obliged to observe professional secrets and not to disclose the source of information.

7. A journalist should be aware of the danger posed by the call to discrimination spread through the media, and should do everything possible to avoid even unwittingly promoting discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other views, national and social origin.

8. A journalist must consider serious professional violations:

Ø plagiarism;

Ø intentional distortion of the facts;

Ø defamation, insult, unfounded accusation;

Ø accepting a bribe in any form for the publication (non-publication) of a material.

9. A journalist who is worthy of this high rank, considers it his duty to conscientiously implement the above principles. Acting within the framework of the legislation of his country, when solving professional issues, the journalist recognizes only the jurisdiction of his colleagues, including in the case of intervention in such matters by the government or other responsible persons [21].