4. Accuracy and fairness a) Media practitioners and media institutions must report and interpret the news with scrupulous honesty and must take all reasonable steps to ensure that they disseminate accurate information and that they depict events fairly and without distortions. (b) Media practitioners and media institutions must never publish information that they know to be false or maliciously make unfounded allegations about others that are intended to harm their reputations. (c) When compiling reports media practitioners must check their facts and the editors and publishers of newspapers and other media must take proper care not to publish inaccurate material. Before a media institution publishes a report, the reporter and the editor must ensure that all the steps that a reasonable, competent media practitioner would take to check its accuracy have in fact been taken. (d) Special care must be taken to check the accuracy of stories that may cause harm to individuals or organisations or to the public interest. Before publishing a story of alleged wrongdoing, all reasonable steps must be taken to ascertain the response of the alleged wrongdoer to the allegations. Any response from that person must be published together with the report setting out the allegations where possible. (e) Media institutions must endeavour to provide full, fair and balanced reports of events and must not suppress essential information pertaining to those events. They must not distort information by exaggeration, by giving only one side of a story, by placing improper emphasis on one aspect of a story, by reporting the facts out of the context in which they occurred or by suppressing relevant available facts. They must avoid using misleading headlines or billboard postings.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 07:04:41 +0000
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