How Do You Ensure the Ethical Standards of Journalism are Upheld in Your Publication?
In the quest to maintain the integrity of journalism, we've gathered insights from seven editing professionals, including those holding the esteemed positions of Editor in Chief and Managing Director. They share their strategies, ranging from adopting a transparency protocol to ensuring accuracy and source rights, to keep their publications ethically sound.
- Adopt a Transparency Protocol
- Implement Algorithm-Powered Audits
- Prioritize a Customer-First Stance
- Build a Question Chain for Editing
- Establish an Independent Fact-Checking Team
- Create Automated Compliance Monitoring
- Ensure Accuracy and Source Rights
Adopt a Transparency Protocol
We’re required to follow the Transparency Protocol, which ensures that the integrity of our content isn’t compromised, whether it involves client promotions or if any content was sponsored. We hold everything up to the light, forcing any potential issues of transparency to be acknowledged and identified. It’s not just about keeping things above board in terms of legally applying best practices; it’s about gaining an audience’s trust since – and only since – they know the stakes involved; they know our relationships.
Implement Algorithm-Powered Audits
As the Chief Marketing Officer involved in the content-production process of our publications, one measure I have advocated for maintaining the high ethical bar of journalism is an algorithm-powered audit system that can run an article prior to publication to check for signs of bias or ethical compromises, such as undisclosed conflicts of interest, biased language or unconfirmed sources. It would be programmed to identify red flags according to a comprehensive set of ethical standards that we have created in consultation with the industry. This tool would act as an initial gatekeeper to ensure that everything we produce continues to incorporate the highest standards of integrity.
AI enables us to monitor content at scale, and human judgment infuses that monitoring process with the kind of nuance that often needs to be applied to complex ethical issues. In addition to enhancing our reputation as a trustworthy publication, this approach helped ingrain a culture of ethics into our editorial processes – it’s ethical by design, not an afterthought or response.
Prioritize a Customer-First Stance
As the Editor-in-Chief of Best Hardware Supply, my response may surprise you. To uphold journalistic ethics, we adopt a "customer-first" editorial stance. This means every piece we publish must directly benefit our readers, even if it occasionally challenges traditional journalistic neutrality. We prioritize transparency with our audience over maintaining a perceived impartiality, believing that this fosters trust and engagement.
By openly aligning our content with the interests of our readers rather than attempting to remain detached, we redefine ethical journalism in a way that resonates with today's consumer-driven market. This controversial approach ensures our publication not only survives but thrives in a competitive industry.
Build a Question Chain for Editing
One approach I take is to build a "question chain" during the editing process, where every statement or claim in an article is linked to a series of layered questions.
I ask myself, "What is the intention behind this statement?" and then, "Could this be interpreted in a way that misleads?" Finally, I consider, "Is this the most transparent way to deliver this information?"
This chain of questions forces me to scrutinize not just the factual accuracy but the potential implications of each sentence -- ensuring that every piece of content respects the reader's intelligence and maintains the integrity of the story without hidden agendas.
Establish an Independent Fact-Checking Team
For the content-creation stream of our gift guides, I have a way of maintaining ethical best practices by making sure there is a distinct, independent fact-checking team outside the editorial division that is responsible only for verifying all product descriptions, claims, and pricing to make sure there are no outright lies or inflated claims being made. You don't want to give the writers any extra incentive to present your products in a better light because they are afraid of who the advertiser is.
On top of this, I personally review and update our ethical guidelines every three months in order to stay on top of new issues that arise in the evolving landscape of media transparency; for example, we've expanded our guidelines to include the ethical use of digital media, such as the ethical ways to incorporate augmented reality elements into our interactive gift guides. In this way, we ensure that, as the content we create and distribute evolves, so too do our standards.
Staying on top of best practices and training our staff enables us to maintain the trust of our readers and fosters a culture among our team and ourselves where ethics is at the core of every decision we make in every corner of our business. This commitment to ethics lies at the core of every interaction we have with our audience and is key to operating a gift guide that is trusted and respected by its readers and industry partners.
Create Automated Compliance Monitoring
We created an automated compliance monitoring system to scan all content published by our users – the merchants, the affiliates and the influencers – and flag any violations of accuracy or transparency norms (ie, failing to disclose an affiliation). The system then directs our content moderators to manually review the questionable content for violations of our editorial standards, which enforces our requirement of not only presence, but also proper prominence and placement of disclosures to enhance the likelihood that consumers will recognize and understand them.
This technological policing is enhanced by a user-ratings system that allows users to keep checking on each other, with flagged content reviewed by our human compliance team. So when an affiliate marketer posts a scheme on our platform, the system will track that program’s disclosure – not just at launch, but as the engagement continues to assess if the posts are still compliant with those same ethical requirements.
Ensure Accuracy and Source Rights
Maintaining high ethical standards means achieving the highest level of accuracy possible to protect the unspoken rights of sources and to preserve the integrity of the brand. One erroneous fact about a person can destroy a life, and inaccurate information about a company can cause the company to lose money and jobs. Corrections don’t count—readers don’t see them—once the horse is out of the barn, that’s it.
In my current role as editor-in-chief for Urban Land magazine, the flagship publication of the Urban Land Institute, we employ a fact checker and two copy editors for three annual print editions and daily online publishing. Writers review quotes/information with sources, and then the entire team proofs print and online content. I believe editors should be prepared for objections about the facts or story angle before the story is published—not after.
Maintaining a high ethical standard also means remaining unbiased politically and working to question your own inherent biases and then possess the flexibility to change your position as new information becomes available. Integrity in journalism is about reporting the news, not making the news or becoming the news yourself.