Ethics of Citizen Journalism

The Canadian Association of Journalists has a code of ethics that helps to guarantee that the news is accurate, fair, independent, and respectful to the people who are affected by it. Read the excerpts (selections) from the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Ethics Guidelines below. (If you’d like to see the full guidelines, click to see CAJ Ethics Guidelines.) Next, develop a code of ethics for citizen journalists to address ethical issues that might occur in citizen journalism. Your code should cover the same topics as the CAJ’s ethics guidelines:

• Accuracy
• Fairness
• Independence
• Conflict of Interest
• Transparency
• Diversity
• Accountability

Each article of your code of ethics should include an explanation of why this rule or principle is important for citizen journalism to be accurate, fair, independent and respectful.

Excerpts from the Canadian Association of Journalists Ethics Guidelines