I carry a copy of the Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance Code of Ethics in my wallet at all times. It’s been with me since I started my journalism degree, and I have it with me partly out of habit, partly because it reminds me that — as inexperienced as I may be — I am a journalist and there are rules I need to follow, and also because having a fat wallet makes me feel wealthier than I actually am.
It serves as a constant reminder that no matter what I write about, my work – and I’m referring to things I do in a journalistic capacity as opposed to my rants on this blog — will be read and it will be judged, so I owe it to my audience to write as well and as fairly as I can.
One of the first things I was taught when I started my journalism degree was what not to do. My peers and I would spend hours upon hours talking to our lecturers – all of whom were practicing journalists – about what constituted good journalism and how we needed to conduct ourselves when we finally became reporters in The Real World. We were each given a copy of the Code of Ethics on our first day of university and, so seriously did my lecturers take ethical reporting that some classes were made to recite the code aloud.
I like to think that it was an effective method because my friends and I have turned out alright, even though we still have a bit to go before we get the piece of paper that certifies us as being pretentious, self-righteous know-it-alls who are supposedly more employable than those without the piece of paper.
That said, there may be another method of teaching students about what not to do that doesn’t require reciting codes or years of study. If it were left to me, I’d write a course document that reads:
