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INFLUENCE OF MEDIA ETHICS IN NEWS GATHERING AND DISSEMINATION

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

 Every profession has its own ethics that guides the practitioners. Journalism profession is not excepted as it has certain cannot that the professionals are expected to abide with. Journalism entails a high degree of public trust. To earn and maintain this trust, it is morally imperative for every journalist and every news medium to observe the highest professional and ethical standards. Truth is considered to be the cornerstone of journalism and every journalist should strive diligently to ascertain the truth of every event. In order to achieve this, Journalists are expected to be objective in their report. Objectivity therefore is the state of being objective. According to Ewuola (2002) objectivity in news dissemination is reporting the facts of a news event without distortion that comes from the personal feelings or prejudices of the reporter.

            This proves that objectivity revolves around dealing with actuality and reality in a news story rather than personal felling and beliefs. It is ability of a reporter to be fair in his news reporting.

            Okoye (2007, p.152) asserts that;

In the original objectivity required that the journalist kept himself out of his report by not injecting his emotion, personal opinion and bias into the news report. Presenting all sides of an issue fairly, honestly and impartially, and allowing the audience to judge           

The above reveals that reporters (broadcasters) job is to tell personal opinion. Tell the truth and let the facts fall anywhere. Commenting on objectivity Highton (2003, p. 104) posits that, good broadcasters for good media seek the facts for a story while bad broadcasters for bad media seek facts to support a preconceived idea of what the story should be”.

This is an indication that journalists (broadcasters) should not allow a preconceived idea to tailor the way story is written. Personal sentiment or idiousyracies should be avoided while reporting.

In fact, non-objective reporting is not a good journalism in the sense that it centre on subjective ideas. Schudson (2001, p. 126) while commenting on journalist being objective says that “objectivity hinges on separating independently verifiable facts from subjective value”.

To large extent reporters should minimize their own attitude, opinion or involvement in their stories. Impartiality and neutrality in news coverage and dissemination should be the cornerstone of professional broadcasters.

The objective non guides journalists to separate facts from values and to report only the facts. Objective reporting is supposed to be cool, rather than emotional in tone. Objective reporting takes pains to represent fairly each  leading side in a political controversy. (Schtudson, 2001, p. 150).    

            According to the objectivity norm, the journalist job consists of reporting something called news, without commenting on it, slauting its formulation in any way.

            Broadcast journalists in UK have a statutory requirement to be objective. According to the BBC objectivity entails “a mixture of accuracy, balance, context, distance, even handedness, fairness, impartiality, open mindedness, rigour and truth”. Objectivity implies that all sides to an issue are presented to the audience and reporter is obliged to present facts fairly and fully.

Schneider (1984) perceived objectivity views report items  as one that separate opinion and news, sticks to the facts it does not change, suppress or report as a favour and each item contain a minimum of balance.

In journalism, as distinct from fiction, there is a truth of the matter and this is what objectivity in journalism aims at… where reporting turns away from the goal of truth and journalists treat events as open to many interpretations, according to their prejudices, assumptions, news agenda or the commercial drive towards entertainment, the justification and self confessed rationale of journalism threaten to

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