IFJ calls on journalists to respect the professional principles of the Global Ethics Charter

Two weeks after the start of the war between Hamas and Israel, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion war is intense, with each side defend­ing “its” truth. Banned from work­ing in the Gaza Strip, an open-air prison for Pales­tin­ian civil­ians, many for­eign jour­nal­ists all too often use sec­ondary sources or “offi­cial” sources from each side, with­out being able to check their verac­i­ty. This works to the detri­ment of cit­i­zens, one of whose fun­da­men­tal rights is “to be well informed”.

Con­fus­ing haste with speed, many media have pub­lished false infor­ma­tion and images that have not been con­tex­tu­alised, ver­i­fied or pre­sent­ed as reli­able. This has led some news organ­i­sa­tions to make offi­cial apolo­gies, such as BBC about their cov­er­age of pro-pales­tin­ian demon­stra­tions across Britain or CNN a few days ago, which had claimed that Israeli babies had been behead­ed in south­ern Israel, right­ly pro­vok­ing out­raged reac­tions around the world.

How­ev­er, arti­cle 5 of the IFJ’s Glob­al Code of Ethics for Jour­nal­ists, to which all news­rooms should com­mit them­selves reminds us that “the notion of urgency or imme­di­a­cy in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion shall not take prece­dence over the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of facts and sources […]”. 

In addi­tion to check­ing its sources, the IFJ calls on news­rooms around the world to “respect the dig­ni­ty of the per­sons quot­ed and/or rep­re­sent­ed” (arti­cle 8) by refrain­ing from pub­lish­ing shock­ing images that are often wide­ly shared on social net­works. Arti­cle 9 of the Glob­al Ethics Char­ter also reaf­firms that “jour­nal­ists must ensure that the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion or opin­ions does not con­tribute to hatred or prej­u­dice”.

In Gaza today, only local Pales­tin­ian jour­nal­ists, the vast major­i­ty of whom are mem­bers of the Pales­tin­ian Jour­nal­ists’ Syn­di­cate, the IFJ’s nation­al affil­i­ate, can pro­vide infor­ma­tion to the for­eign media. It is then up to these col­leagues to analyse the images and videos and check the infor­ma­tion with sev­er­al sources in order to inform the pub­lic.

IFJ Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Antho­ny Bel­langer said: “Our pro­fes­sion­al prin­ci­ples, detailed in the IFJ Glob­al Ethics Char­ter, are the foun­da­tion of the jour­nal­ist’s mis­sion. The jour­nal­ist’s respon­si­bil­i­ty towards the pub­lic takes prece­dence over any oth­er respon­si­bil­i­ty, in par­tic­u­lar towards their employ­ers and the pub­lic author­i­ties. I call on jour­nal­ists the world over not to fall into the trap of infor­ma­tion over­load, dri­ven by social net­works, where say­ing counts for more than what is said, writ­ing counts for more than what is writ­ten, and show­ing counts for more than what is shown. Respect for the facts and for the right of the pub­lic to truth is the first duty of the jour­nal­ist. At this dif­fi­cult time, the IFJ, Asso­ciate UNESCO mem­ber, reaf­firms its sol­i­dar­i­ty with its Pales­tin­ian affil­i­ate and its sup­port for all jour­nal­ists. wher­ev­er they are.”

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