to promote topics that increase online traffic. • Transparency in accessing news sources.
Thus, the ethics of traditional journalism, with values based on the accuracy, rigor, precision, and verification, was gradually extended to digital journalism, where collaboration with users, transparency, and immediacy predominate (Suárez-Villegas and Cruz-Álvarez, 2016a).
Immersive Journalism
Immersive journalism tells stories through virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), or 360-degree video and allows the user to become part of the story through a great variety of experiences. These formats raise important ethical issues (Pérez-Seijo and López-García, 2019), such as:
To what extent producers can modify the recorded content, altering elements of reality or making up scenes, so that the story works better.
Users’ exposure to content of a sensitive nature, including the use of violence, emotional abuse, obscene language, or explicit sex scenes.
The manipulation of emotions that influence the users and arouse feelings of adherence or rejection to ideas or institutions.
Business interests of companies that produce VR content or finance immersive experiences.
VR environments could become incubators for manipulation and propaganda, and for this reason, being unaware of the journalist orchestrating highly persuasive content could undermine the credibility of VR narratives (Kool, 2016). The use of VR technology raises complex ethical questions that require careful consideration by the producers of these formats to preserve journalistic standards (Pérez-Seijo and López-García, 2019).
Journalism and Big Data
Big Data refers to the ability to process large amounts of information, analyze it, and draw relevant conclusions. Big Data raises their own ethical dilemmas about user privacy, information security, and data manipulation, among other issues, when journalists decide how to incorporate the use of massive data into their stories.
The process of making public a large volume of data helps rethink their ethical quandaries, as many journalists have embraced such openness as a professional norm, facilitating public scrutiny of complete data sets and open programming code (Lewis, 2015). This trend can improve some journalistic processes, as Lewis (2015) states, by integrating principles such as transparency and participation in newsrooms.
The use of massive data raises ethical dilemmas associated with the collection, analysis, and dissemination of such information. Just because a content is publicly accessible does not mean that the journalist had permission to make it public for everyone (Lewis and Westlund, 2015). Problems often arise with public data provided by governments and institutions or gathered through techniques such as crowdsourcing or data scraping. Such problems can go unnoticed, either by the size of the data involved or by its public dissemination, so journalists must weigh the benefits of publishing open data against the risk of personal injury, especially when private information can be easily shared (Lewis and Westlund, 2015).
Automated Journalism
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are tools built by people to meet human needs and purposes. Data mining algorithms can influence the way journalists cover any topic, ranging from voting patterns to the spread of COVID-19 or the consumption of supermarket products. In addressing how journalists interact with AI, there is an opportunity for hybridization in the development of processes that involve journalists and technology. Algorithms often complement, but rarely replace the journalist. According to some studies (Dörr, 2016), an algorithm could replicate only 15% of the reporters’ time and 9% of the editors’ time.
To date, most news-writing robots have been used to provide news on topics such as stock market quotes, earthquake alerts, and sport. In the United States, The Associated Press leads the use of robots in business and sports news. The automated Heliograf system writes stories for The Washington Post, while the Swedish multimedia group MittMedia produces pieces written by robots on real estate issues, among others. Newsrooms are increasingly automated to track down breaking stories and trending issues. The rapid development of machine learning is likely to make journalism more speedy, efficient, and cost-effective (Diakopoulos and Koliska, 2017).
We must consider whether automated journalism can play a role of responsibility as humans do. There are concerns regarding the algorithmic strategies, personalization of contents, filtering, and transparency. As computers assume greater prominence in the evaluation of the news, encouraging a certain type of selection and consumption, how are they “taught” to act ethically? Is there an “algorithm ethic?”
Ethics must unravel numerous dilemmas about the selection, interpretation, and anticipation of news content, including how algorithms structure reality through machine learning. Therefore, it is necessary to study the codes, the “black boxes” of the algorithms, to discover “the power structures, biases and influences that computational artifacts exert in society” (Diakopoulos and Koliska, 2017, p. 815).
Newsrooms as Communities of Practice
Professional news practices, such as the proper transcription of a statement, the verification of the source of an amateur video, or the double-checking of the information provided by a source, always have an ethical dimension (Suárez-Villegas and Cruz-Álvarez, 2016a). In this sense, the coherence of journalistic practices differentiates the professional activity from the amateur level. There are few shared values about the professional practices in journalism. The ethical decision depends on each professional, who is solely responsible for their own actions. Companies carry out the reporting activity, but specific individuals, men, and women with their beliefs and ethical convictions, are the ones who produce the news.
Journalists are continually transforming their traditions in the newsgathering, production, and distribution processes. News practitioners follow the criteria about what they consider appropriate, true, and fair, according to newsroom standards and professional culture. Through a process of trial and error, journalists incorporate the innovations as appropriate practices or dismiss them as unacceptable. The application of ethical standards, in short, determines the very nature of the journalistic activity as a professional practice in the full sense of the term.
Professions can become “communities of practice” whose members share a common identity and goals. According to Alasdair Macintyre (1984), the effectiveness of a community of practice depends on the degree of cohesion among its members. In any professional community, Macintyre (1984, pp. 65–67) identifies three main characteristics:
1 The need for learning how to carry out that activity in a professional way.
2 Excellence provides the participants with the goal of their activity.
3 The learning process, based on decision-making and the assessment of actions, products, and people, allows practitioners to evaluate their own performance and to reach excellence.