With the emergence of generative AI, news outlets have been experimenting with different ways to incorporate them into journalism practices, from newsgathering to producing automated content, and optimizing distribution. How can we ensure news outlets are adopting AI technologies in an ethical way? This study examines guidelines on the use of AI published by 14 news outlets in the United States. Common ethical values such as transparency, fairness, and accountability are found in both AI and journalism ethics and frame our comparative analysis. We argue that most of these AI standards are vague and abstract, lacking a practical approach with examples illustrating problematic uses of GenAI in journalism. Reflecting upon the lack of regulation, this study proposes a risk management framework with concrete examples and recommendations to mitigate potential harms associated with the use of generative AI in journalism.
This paper examines the moral foundations of the ongoing conflict over cross-border access to audiovisual works within the EU, focusing on the ethical justification of geoblocking practices. While the European Commission's Digital Single Market strategy seeks to remove territorial barriers to ensure equal access to online cultural goods, the audiovisual industry has defended the territorial licensing system as essential to maintaining production diversity and economic sustainability. Departing from predominantly legal and economic analyses, this study approaches the issue as a moral conflict between the right of consumers and authors to open access to culture and the right of producers and distributors to equitable remuneration for creative labor and entrepreneurial risk. Employing the method of wide reflective equilibrium, the paper argues that territorial restrictions are ethically justified only when they serve to protect fair compensation and sustain investment incentives, but lose their moral legitimacy when they merely preserve artificial market segmentation.
This article empirically examines a common moral framework in media ethics: an ethic of care. While normative scholarship has lauded an ethics of care approach for its groundedness and flexibility - especially in contrast to deontological (rules-based) approaches - less is known about how media producers navigate situational nuance when applying an ethic of care to the participants in their stories. How do they determine their obligations to care for participants, and what are the limits of those obligations? Informed by 46 interviews with U.S.-based documentary filmmakers, I find that variations along two dimensions - media producer capital contexts (money) and media producer-participant power dynamics (power) - strongly affect how producers apply an ethic of care to participants in specific contexts. Drawing from literature on precarity within media production fields and field theory, this study illustrates how money and power can both limit and motivate the ways media producers care for participants in practice.
This study examines filmmaker-subject relationships in Ghanaian documentary practice, focusing on the building of trust, empathy, authenticity, and accountability within sociocultural and political contexts. The study sampled 13 seasoned filmmakers and used semi-structured interviews to collect data. The resulting data was thematically analyzed using Western frameworks and African communitarian ethics. The findings indicate that filmmakers understand trust as an ethical necessity and a professional approach, reconciling authenticity with the requirements of production and institutional oversight. Ethical responsibility thus arises as an ongoing negotiation in which transparency, safeguarding, and editorial integrity coexist alongside power imbalances. The findings further reveal that Ghanaian filmmakers promote a relational standard of documentary ethics grounded in care, humility, and togetherness. By extension, the findings align with global discourse on authenticity in the context of framing truth-telling as a collaborative ethical and moral endeavor that upholds dignity, empathy, and social cohesion within filmmaking practice.
Due to the social experiment characteristics of reality television (RTV) series, our paper proposes a code of ethics for RTV grounded in research and media industry ethics to ensure the ethical treatment of participants. This code should extend from pre-production through one-year post-production and include transparent contractual provisions that attend to: (1) participants' mental and physical well-being; (2) informed consent and right to withdraw; (3) limitations on production manipulation; and (4) accountability for anyone with power over participants. Given its centrality in current RTV controversies and its framing as an "experiment," Love is Blind serves as an exemplar through which we argue that applying industry-specific ethical research standards can improve the treatment of participants and still allow for meaningful and entertaining insights into human behavior.
The established mass media have often been seen as mainstreaming the radical right by focusing their news agenda on the vocal activists and ideas of this political family. However, there is limited research on how this process occurs when media interest in the radical right is approached from another perspective: obituaries dedicated to its historical figureheads. The current research explores this phenomenon by examining news articles dedicated to Jean-Marie Le Pen in the established French and Italian print press the day after his death in January 2025. It reveals how diachronic sequences constitutive of obituaries can form key components that participate in the mainstreaming of the radical right by and through mass media. The article concludes with a discussion of the media ethics issues associated with this type of mainstreaming.
Estimates suggest that 70% of people will experience trauma in their lifetimes. We have a moral imperative to share these stories as research shows that such narratives can facilitate healing. At the same time, why and how we tell these stories is connected to their ability to assist or harm the recovery process. This philosophical essay applies a mixed methodological approach - autoethnography that draws from research, interviews, and literary analysis - to propose ethical considerations and craft techniques when writing nonfiction stories about trauma and recovery. Conceptually, the ethical principles of "veracity" and "beneficence" form the argument's framework. The essay broadly considers nonfiction media in the form of the written word with emphasis on literary journalism and literary memoir. The research and analysis focus on three key points of ethical consequence that are relevant to nonfiction stories about trauma and recovery: disingenuous narratives; self-indulgence in exploiting, glamourizing, or sensationalizing trauma; and portraying an unrealistic, unattainable, or unsustainable recovery image.
This study uses intermedia agenda-setting theory as a critical lens to examine how a satirical news article from World News Daily Report (WNDR) infiltrated Nigerian media and political discourse as genuine news. Through a critical textual analysis of the coverage, the study found that the originating satirical article fooled news outlets and politicians by its employment of fabricated details - such as names, locations, and quotes - combined with a journalistic tone, structure, and the inclusion of a local source. The failure of Nigerian media outlets to engage in basic verification and additional reporting contributed significantly to the satire's widespread acceptance, perceived credibility, and reproduction as factual news. These findings raise important questions about the ethical and professional lapses within Nigerian journalism that enabled the story's traction, satire's agenda-setting potential, and the place of satire as protected speech.
The paper takes media affordances as its starting point. Based on a detailed analysis of relevant research on media affordances, it examines the reverse affordances of human to smart media from the perspective of data and algorithms, and analyses the reflexivity of smart media accordingly. In the face of the uncertainty created by the reflexivity of smart media, the paper explores the ethical consideration of smart media. The research in this paper provides a new perspective for understanding smart media and a new idea for the "good" application of smart media.
This study analyzes the followers' reactions to Control Portugal, which removed a humorous post from its Instagram page within hours after it was perceived by the public as transphobic. Semantic network analysis was used to identify key themes and discourse patterns in 9384 comments. The findings show that the brand's distinctive authenticity split public opinion. Some users found the post offensive, whereas others viewed its removal as an act of censorship. After the official apology, the brand's calculated return to humor and authenticity helped stabilize the conversation in parts of the network, easing the initial polarization. The case study thus highlights the importance of brands designing communication strategies that combine creativity with social responsibility and that ensure digital brand management not only mobilizes but also respects ethical principles.
