An integral part of being a modern journalist is to be governed by core principles.
Three of those core values are integrity, perseverance and courage.
Integrity is central to any journalist, or at least any good one. Integrity is what helps you make decisions before you’ve ever started writing, such as whether to even take on board a particular story, how to decide who to interview and what to ask. Integrity governs so many moral based factors and choices in journalism, which is of the utmost importance.
For example knowing when to not push a story or an interview with, let’s say, an emotionally vulnerable interviewee, who could be taken advantage of without the journalist governing themselves with integrity.
Perseverance is another key value for journalism, especially in the 21st century. Entering an industry that is quite difficult to break into journalists will definitely face challenges to produce original content, be innovative, to keep up with the turn over time for news stories.
Perseverance is a key way to maintain trying to produce that original story in a fresh way, to just keep trying over and over again, with different angles, different sources, until you have that breakthrough.
For example choosing to continue with a difficult story if it is beneficial for society to know about even if it poses numerous challenges is just one way to display perseverance in journalism.
Finally, a large part of journalism is being courageous. Courage doesn’t just mean embarking on a huge government corruption scandal expose-esque story, but rather could be anything from making difficult phone calls to secure an interview to pitching a story idea that you’re very proud of.
This is an industry where you get knocked down and whilst perseverance is key in terms of not giving in to those set backs, courage is what helps you to get back up again and keep making those difficult calls and pitches or even the government expose stories.
An example of some very good journalism (Pulitzer Prize winning in fact) that I believe incorporates all these values is Bill Dedman’s 1988 series of investigative articles, ‘The Colour Of Money’.
Dedman exposed that mortgage lenders in the city of Atlanta were not granting loans to African American people in the area and this investigation into racial discrimination was the winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
It was also one of the first examples of database journalism or at least one of the first examples that had influence and gained attention.
There is no clear cut list of values for any one person in the journalism industry but these three I have listed are some that definitely help in putting forward original content, bold ideas and pushing forward regardless of setbacks.
