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The PC President, Viorica Zaharia, said that the need to adopt a new Code of Ethics resulted from the changing realities, especially in the online environment, ‘which is not covered at all in the current code’. PC President also highlighted that media begun to widely use various manipulation techniques, exploit the images of vulnerable persons or neglect the rules for child media coverage.
According to Viorica Zaharia, the new edition of the Code targets not only the journalists, but also media consumers, who have to consult the document in order to require from journalists quality information.
Freedom House representative, Lolita Berzina, who guided the authors of the Code – PC President Viorica Zaharia and Executive Director of the Electronic Press Association (APEL) Ion Bunduchi, in developing the document, also participated in the round table via a Skype call. The expert believed that the new Journalist Code of Ethics also ensures the right of society to receive quality information, which will help journalists to be more responsible. Lolita Berzina mentioned that media law sets the legal framework for regulating the field, but Codes of Ethics are necessary to cover those aspects of the journalists’ work, which remained uncovered by the law.
As regards the dilemma of who can and who cannot be called a journalist, Lolita Berzina reminded those present that in Europe there is more and more talk about a functional definition of journalist. According to her, in most of the cases the conclusion is that ‘anyone who fulfills the journalist role is a journalist’. ‘It no longer matters whether he or she was registered or not as a journalist, but whether he or she observes the journalist ethical rules’, Berzina said.
The definition of the journalist profession, in the authors’ drafting, triggered polemics among the participants in the round table. According to the new Code, the journalist is the ‘individual, either employed or not employed by a media outlet, who regularly carries out one or more activities such as: collecting information of public interest from any relevant source, writing and editing it under any form – text, photo, video and/or audio recording, drawing, graphics, etc., in view of their public dissemination through the media’.
Tudor Iascenco, the editor-in-chief of ‘Cuvântul’ newspaper, was dissatisfied with this wording, arguing that it would be too general and that ‘we can include half the population of the Republic of Moldova who write any kind of information on social networks’, including the communicators working in public institutions.
In his turn, Ion Bunduchi argued that journalism is a freelance activity, which means that no one can hold a monopoly on this field. ‘The construction materials of a journalist are nothing but the word and the idea. We don’t have to draw an exact parallel between journalism and jurisprudence or surgery. They cannot be compared. (...) Someone who worked a day in journalism can have more valuable ideas than anyone else who has worked for 50 years in journalism’, Bunduchi said. In his view, only the reader or the consumer of information can decide who is a journalist and who is not.
The new Code has 89 Articles and is double the volume of the current Code. In addition to general principles, the document has new provisions at the chapters on ensuring accuracy of information, commercial/political communication, human rights protection, journalist and conflict of interest, special information collection techniques and equipment, mutual obligations between the journalist and the employer, and a separate chapter is dedicated to self-regulation.
Photo source: Cristina Bobirca
