There are many interesting and surprising facts that I have found in the Radio Television Digital News Association’s Code of Ethics. The first things that I noticed is that many of points overlap between the main codes of conduct: public trust, truth, fairness, integrity, independence, and accountability. There is an overarching theme among the rules, which is that journalists are expected to be “trustees of the public”. It is interesting that there is a lot of emphasis on journalists being held up by the public to such a high standard of trust. It is more interesting to see the emphasis on journalists having an obligation to holding up that standard. As I understand it, that is due to the fact that the public’s source of information regarding what goes on in the world are journalists.
The code of conduct that was most interesting to me is the one on integrity. The code make that point to refrain from “extended coverage of events or individuals that fails to significantly advance a story, place the event in context, or add to the public knowledge.” This rule is complemented in an earlier code by the rule to guard against over simplification of issues and events. These two complementary codes are interesting because they warn against something that I see done a lot in radio and television journalism.
It was also very interesting for me to read that using confidential sources is mainly frowned upon in journalism, especially since I think of great and important news stories