This glossary accompanies "The Ethical Journalist," a textbook by Gene Foreman. It is for students in JNL-2015, Journalism Ethics, in Professor Linda Austin's class at the National Management College, Yangon, Myanmar.

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Glossary for The Ethical Journalist
Accountability: The obligation of journalists to treat their audience with
respect and to respond constructively to criticism. Essential to accountability is a
willingness to correct errors and to explain news decisions.
Advertorial: Print advertising that is designed – using headlines, news stories,
photographs and captions – to resemble news (“editorial”) content.
Apparent conflict of interest: Something that a journalist does – or says
publicly – that causes the audience to perceive a conflict of interest or a bias,
even though the journalist’s reporting is appropriate. For example, if a journalist
contributes to a political candidate or cause, the audience can be expected to
perceive bias in that journalist’s reporting – and to attribute the same bias to the
journalist’s entire news organization. See conflict of interest for a discussion of an
actual, rather than an apparent, conflict.
Applied ethics: The branch of moral philosophy that deals with making
decisions about concrete cases in a business or profession. Its purpose is to put
ethical theory into action.
Aristotle’s Golden Mean: A moderate but ethically defensible solution in a
situation in which the extreme choices are unacceptable. This concept is based on
the ancient Greek philosopher’s belief in moderation as a virtue – for example,
courage as the mean between recklessness and cowardice. Aristotle’s Golden
Mean is at work in the US government’s policy on the sales of tobacco. At the
extremes, the government might have banned tobacco because its health dangers
have been clinically proved, or it might have permitted unregulated sales because
citizens should have the civil liberty of deciding for themselves whether to buy it.
Instead, the government chose a Golden Mean: to tax tobacco heavily, regulate
advertising, require warning labels, and bar sales to children.
Audience; The readers, viewers, listeners and online users who consume the
news that journalists produce. It is to the audience that journalists owe their first
allegiance.
Checkbook journalism: Paying news sources for their information.
Citizen journalism: See user-generated content.
Confidential source: Someone who provides information to a journalist on the
condition that he or she not be identified.
Conflict of interest: A journalist’s self-interest or loyalty to another person or
organization that the journalist permits to alter, influence or take precedence
over his or her duty to the audience. For example, a news company is in a conflict

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of interest if it produces puff pieces about an advertiser or suppresses legitimate
news that is unfavorable to an advertiser. These are actual conflicts of interest, in
which the journalism is subverted; for comparison, see apparent conflict of
interest. See also disclosure.
Consequentialism: See ends-based thinking.
Critical thinking: The systematic process of analyzing ethical problems – a
process that involves applying logic to the available information. It is crucial to
sound decision-making. Critical thinking is the opposite of an emotional response.
Deception: Communicating “messages meant to mislead others, meant to make
them believe what we ourselves do not believe. We can do that through gesture,
through disguise, by means of action or inaction, even through silence.” (Sisela
Bok’s classic definition.)
Deontology: See rule-based thinking.
Disclosure: Informing the audience of something that might be perceived as a
conflict of interest. A disclosure may be warranted if the conflict is unavoidable or
insignificant. Disclosing the possible appearance of conflict allows the audience
to decide whether the content is biased. A disclosure is not an antidote to a
significant conflict that is avoidable. A disclosure that a travel writer has received
free travel, lodging and meals does not allay the audience’s skepticism about the
writer’s review of the trip; instead, the writer’s employer should pay the expenses
of the trip.
Duty-based thinking: See rule-based thinking.
Ends-based thinking: An ethical theory that allows the decision-maker to
weigh competing values according to the consequences that may occur. It directs
a choice in favor of the course of action that brings the most good to the most
people. This theory is also called teleology, consequentialism or utilitarianism.
Ethics: A set of moral principles, a code – often unwritten – that guides a
person’s moral conduct. Ethics is more than just discerning the difference
between right and wrong; it requires acting on what is right.
Ethical dilemma: A situation in which a person’s ethical values are in conflict,
forcing the person to choose one ethical value over another. For example, in
Lawrence Kohlberg’s hypothetical Heinz Dilemma, Heinz must choose between
honesty and compassion – stealing the drug to save his wife’s life, or allowing her
to die. However, not every difficult decision is an ethical dilemma. See false
ethical dilemma.

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Ethical values: Values that directly relate to beliefs about what is right and
proper: honesty, promise-keeping, fairness, compassion, respect for the privacy
of others. See nonethical values.
Fabrication: Making things up and passing them off as genuine.
False ethical dilemma: A situation requiring a person to choose between an
ethical value and a nonethical value. The false ethical value can be expressed as a
clash between what you should do and what you would like to do – for example,
the choice between respecting a news subject’s privacy (ethical value) and getting
a news story before the competition does (nonethical value). The ethical person
rejects the nonethical value and acts on the ethical value, choosing ethics over
expediency. Thus, doing the right thing may exact a cost in the short term.
Framing: The context or narrative theme through which a news story is told.
Framing represents the journalist’s effort to interpret and give meaning to the
news. Conflict is a common – and commonly abused – story frame. Journalists
should recognize that choosing a frame is a subjective decision in which they
must guard against injecting their biases.
Gatekeeping; Once, editors decided what information was worthy of passing
along to the public, and what was not. The Internet changed this so-called
gatekeeping function. Today, society depends on journalists to be its surrogates
in sifting the huge volume of information available, testing it for accuracy and
helping citizens understand it.
Golden Rule: Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. The
Golden Rule appears in various forms in all the world’s major religions. Also
known as the rule of reversibility, it is a powerful decision-making tool because it
allows you to imagine yourself in the place of the person affected by your decision
and, from that perspective, to assess the fairness of the decision.
Independence: Journalists’ freedom of “obligation to any interest other than
the public’s right to know” (Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics code).
Journalists are detached observers of the people and events they cover. See
conflict of interest.
Infomercial: Broadcast advertising content that is designed to resemble news
or informational content.
Infotainment: The blending of news and entertainment as a marketing strategy
aimed at attracting an audience with sensationalism. This phenomenon is
illustrated by cable television’s fixation on a single story, such as the death in
2007 of Anna Nicole Smith, the Playboy centerfold model who had become a rich
widow and then a star on reality TV.

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Intervention: A decision by a journalist to become involved in a news situation
that the journalist is covering. The journalist’s traditional role is as an observer
rather than a participant, for two reasons: intervention changes the nature of the
event, and the intervention could persuade the audience of bias on the
journalist’s part. However, in certain rare situations, a journalist might intervene
for humanitarian reasons. In general, a journalist should act to save a life or
prevent injury if he or she is the best person or only person in a position to
intervene.
Journalism: The (1) independent act of gathering and disseminating
information, in which the practitioner is dedicated to (2) seeking the truth and (3)
owes first loyalty to the consumers of the information. For any communication
to be a work of journalism, all three of these conditions must be met.
Lifted quotes: Using quotations from sources that the reporter did not hear. An
ethical journalist credits the reporter and news organization that originally
reported such quotations.
Manipulation of photography: Distorting what purports to be documentary
news photography either by stage-managing the scene or by altering the content
of otherwise authentic images.
Media convergence: Producing journalism simultaneously on the platforms of
print, broadcast and online. The platforms could be owned by the same company,
or they could be owned by partnering companies that exchange reporting. In
either form, this cross-platform journalism requires its practitioners to possess
multimedia skills.
Moral agent: The person who makes the decision in a given situation. A moral
agent’s goal is to make a decision that can be defended as having been rationally
chosen by a caring individual.
Nonethical values: Values that relate not to moral duty but to desire: wealth,
status, happiness. Note that these are not unethical values; instead, they are
morally neutral. For a journalist, nonethical values could be getting an important
news story before the competition does, or increasing website traffic, newspaper
circulation or broadcast ratings. Seeking these goals is not morally wrong unless
an ethical value is violated in the process. See ethical values.
Plagiarism: Taking credit for phrases, sentences, paragraphs or even an entire
story that someone else created.
Rationalization: A temptation in the decision process. In choosing a course of
action that is self-serving, the decision-maker deludes himself or herself into
thinking that the choice is an ethical one. For example, an employee who cheats
on an expense account may conclude that the stealing is justified because he or
she was denied a raise.

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Rule-based thinking: An ethical theory holding that a person always has an
absolute duty to follow a universal rule of conduct, such as telling the truth. Rule-
based thinking permits no exceptions, no excuses and no concern for the
consequences. This theory also is called deontology or duty-based thinking.
Social responsibility: A business concern’s moral duty to strive to make its
community better. This obligation to the public requires more than merely
complying with the law. For companies that report the news, a critical social
responsibility is to provide the fair, accurate, reliable information that a
community needs to be self-governing.
Socialization: The process by which a new generation absorbs the values of the
community. These values are most commonly transmitted by family, peer groups,
role models and societal institutions.
Source: Someone who gives a journalist information about a news matter.
Teleology: See ends-based thinking.
Transparency: Being open about any reasonable question that members of the
audience could raise: why a certain story was done; how the story was produced;
who the sources were; any conflict of interest that might be perceived about the
news organization or the reporter; gaps in the story’s content that the reporter
has not been able to fill.
Truth: To report what actually happened in a given news situation. This process
begins with getting the facts right through a process of verification. Truth-seeking
also involves an ability to find sources with firsthand knowledge, to filter out the
biases of those sources, and to use subjective judgment to provide context to the
facts.
User-generated content: Information and images provided to news
organizations by members of the audience and then presented to the audience as
a whole. Although this kind of content is called citizen journalism by some, it
does not meet the definition of journalism unless the provider acts independently,
is dedicated to seeking truth, and renders first loyalty to the audience. Members
of the audience can be helpful in generating news-coverage ideas and providing
information that is subsequently verified by professional journalists. See
journalism and citizen journalism.
Utilitarianism: See ends-based thinking.
Values: Deeply held convictions and beliefs about what is effective, desirable or
morally right. These values may or may not be ethical values. Our character is
defined by the values – ethical or not – that we consistently rank higher than the
others. See ethical values and nonethical values.