Glossary
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1. Conflict of interest – a situation in which a journalist has competing professional or personal interests. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. A conflict of interest exists even if no unethical or improper act results from it. A conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the person, profession, or court system. A conflict can be mitigated by third party verification or third party evaluation noted below—but it still exists.
2. Contextual accuracy – refers to providing news consumers the background information they need to understand and event. the background provided can range in complexity from a few sentences providing information what has gone before to a separate sidebar based on documentary or human sources.
3. Detachment – SEE Objectivity.
4. Deception Presenting in a story as fact made-up characters, quotations, or any other details. May also refer to the use of such tactics as pretending to be someone else to get information for a story.
5. Factual accuracy – refers to getting the basic information-the names, dates, places, and the exact event-right by consulting multiple sources when necessary.
6. Fairness – requires that the side of someone accused of wrongdoing be presented together with the accusation itself, usually following the information to that effect. It also demands that “the other side” be presented immediately after the accusation is reported, instead of at the end of several paragraphs containing a litany of charges. No report can be fair which relegates only at the end the side of one of the parties involved.
7. Journalism ethics -comprise principles of ethics and good practice as applicable to the specific challenges faced by professional journalists. Historically and currently, this subset of media ethics is widely known to journalists as their professional “code of ethics” or the “canons of journalism.” The basic codes and canons commonly appear in statements drafted by both professional journalism associations and individual print, broadcast, and online news organizations.
8. Misrepresentation -SEE Deception
9. Objectivity – a significant principle of journalistic professionalism, especially in the United Kingdom and United States. Jounalistic objectivity can refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities.
10. Sensationalism- occurs when a news story is designed to titillate or entertain rather than to inform
11. Sexism-the discrimination and/or hatred towards people based on their sex rather than their individual merits. This is manifested in the media through the use of negative stereotypes in presenting a particular gender group.
