ABSTRACT

Ethical scandals involving journalists in English-speaking West African countries have been documented to include conflict of interest, freebies, intellectual theft, deception, carelessness, kowtowing to advertisers and politicians, use of dubious evidence, and outright bias. This study explores how pronounced and clear the rules relating to these breaches are in the codes of these countries and whether the similarities and dissimilarities in wording indicate the influence of individual actors involved in writing them. Relying on thematic and qualitative document analysis methods, the study found that rules in the codes addressing the ethical breaches are pronounced and clear. Although largely similar in content, the codes also feature important differences that are strongly related to the composition of the groups that wrote them. This study discusses why ethical challenges in these countries persist in the midst well-written code of ethics.

摘要

据记载，西非英语国家新闻工作者的道德丑闻包括利益冲突，赠品，知识分子盗窃，欺骗，粗心，对广告商和政客的了解，使用可疑的证据以及完全的偏见。这项研究探讨了这些国家/地区的法规中与这些违规行为有关的规则的发音和清晰程度，以及措辞的异同是否表明参与编写这些行为的个人行为者的影响。该研究依靠主题和定性的文件分析方法，发现规范中有关道德违规的规则是明确而明确的。尽管内容在很大程度上相似，但是这些代码还具有重要的差异，这些差异与编写它们的组的组成紧密相关。