Overview

This course is aimed at journalists and content creators who are committed to developing their ethical practice within their role. By the end of this course, you will have completed nine modules of content centring on improving ethical practice, completed your own ethical framework for future ethical dilemmas, and have been part of a community of journalists who have similar values and motivations to improve the news ecosystem, not only in the U.K., but internationally.

Syllabus

Welcome to Creating Ethical Media And Journalism

A welcome message from Impress Chief Executive Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana and more on what you can expect from the course.

What are ethics?

This module will help you understand how to define ethics, and support you to create your own ethical framework for use throughout the course. It explains why, as media creators, we need rights, why they are important, and how they inform our practice. Alongside this, it explains the responsibilities we have when publishing stories, especially with regard to public interest cases.

How can we gain trust?

Having thought about what ethics mean to us, and how we might become ethical thinkers, we now move to think about how we can gain trust with our audiences and the public. Acting ethically as a journalist or content creator is one of the main ways we can gain trust from our audiences, so understanding what we can do to achieve this is crucial to this course. Here, we will learn what the public need from the media to gain trust, and think about how we can navigate subjectivity, objectivity, and bias to be trusted information providers.

Practices for arriving at truthful reporting

Having thought about how we gain trust among our audiences, we will now examine the principles and behaviours media creators should embody to produce truthful content. This module considers ethical principles of truth, such as the importance of accuracy, examines the behaviours that media creators need to enact to be accurate, such as attribution, copyright, and providing a right to reply, and the consequences of what happens when we deviate from truth, namely, when we make untrue allegations about a person (vis a vis defamation).

Ethics in the digital world

This module introduces some of the latest technologies and ethical issues, influencing what we write, produce, share or publish.

Protecting people's privacy

Breaching privacy has been one of the hottest topics in journalism since the start of the 21st century. In this module, we will take a closer look at issues surrounding privacy, instances where journalists have acted unethically and the practicalities of carrying out investigative journalism while navigating privacy rights.

Representing your community

To many, one of the most important functions for a content creator is to not only inform your community but to represent them. In this module, we hear from experts on discrimination in the news, how you can engage with your communities and the importance of accessible content.

Working with vulnerable people

Throughout your career as a journalist, there may come a time when you have to report on sensitive issues. While it is important to give coverage to a story no matter the topic, there are good ways and bad ways to go about your newsgathering or content creation. Here, you will find out more about reporting on trauma, grief, suicide, mental health, sexual assault, disabilities and more.

Building ethics into your business

So, you and your fellow journalists have learned more about carrying out your roles in an ethical way! But publishers are more than just those writing the stories. In this module we look at other important ethical practices to bear in mind, including environmental issues, advertising and alternative business models.

Taking your ethical practice forward

We hope you have found all the topics informative and thought-provoking. It is important that you are now able to take forward what you have learned into the real world. In this module, we will help guide you on ways in which you can do just that.