ABSTRACT

This article examines press ethics across different news beats. Traditionally, studies of news beats have focused on the development, output or routines of a particular news beat, but few studies have focused on press ethics. In Denmark, the debate on press ethics began in the 1930s and has often focused on the crime beat. Today, the “Advisory rules of sound press ethics” apply to all content produced by leading news media and are under the supervision of the Press Council. We analyse rulings from the Press Council from 1999 to 2019 to investigate if and how breaches of press ethics differ across news beats. We find that out of 3406 complaints, 764 have led to rulings that criticise specific news media for ethical violations. We code each violation according to news beat, finding that breaches most often concern the business beat, the crime beat, and the health and social beat. We also find that the types of ethical breaches differ across beats. Thus, the most common breach within the business beat is not following up on a ruling from the Press Council, whereas the most common breach in crime reporting is the unnecessary identification of persons mentioned in crime stories.

摘要

本文研究了不同新闻节拍中的新闻道德。传统上，对新闻节拍的研究集中在特定新闻节拍的发展、输出或惯例上，但很少有研究关注新闻伦理。在丹麦，关于新闻伦理的辩论始于 1930 年代，并且经常集中在犯罪节拍上。今天，“良好的新闻道德咨询规则”适用于主要新闻媒体制作的所有内容，并受新闻委员会的监督。我们分析了新闻委员会从 1999 年到 2019 年的裁决，以调查违反新闻道德的行为是否以及如何在新闻节拍中有所不同。我们发现，在 3406 起投诉中，有 764 起导致了批评特定新闻媒体违反道德规范的裁决。我们根据新闻节拍对每个违规行为进行编码，发现违规行为最常涉及业务节拍、犯罪节拍、以及健康和社交节拍。我们还发现，不同节拍的道德违规类型不同。因此，业务节拍中最常见的违规行为是没有跟进新闻评议会的裁决，而犯罪报告中最常见的违规行为是对犯罪报道中提到的人员进行不必要的识别。