ABSTRACT

Ethical Reporting of Sensitive Topics explores the underlying complexities that journalists may face when covering difficult news stories. Reporting on issues such as suicide, sexual abuse, or migration is a skill that is often glossed over in a journalist’s education. By combining theory and practice, this collection will correct this oversight and give journalists the expertise and understanding to report on these subjects responsibly and ethically.

Contributors to this volume are an international group of journalists-turned- academics, who share their first-hand experiences and unique professional insight into best ethical journalistic practice for reporting on sensitive topics. Drawing from a range of case studies, contributors discuss the most appropriate approach to, for example, describing a shooter who has killed a group of schoolchildren or interviewing someone who has lost everything in a natural disaster. Readers are invited to consider factors which have the potential to influence the reporting of these sorts of topics, including bias, sensationalism, conflict of interest, grief, vulnerability, and ignorance of one’s own privilege.

Ethical Reporting of Sensitive Topics aims to support all journalists, from students of journalism and individuals encountering a newsroom for the first time, to those veteran journalists or specialist journalists who seek to better their reporting skills.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

part |2 pages

Ethics, responsibility and self-care

chapter |15 pages

Journalism standards on the job

part |2 pages

Reporting sensitive topics

chapter |21 pages

Reporting child sexual abuse

chapter |25 pages

Reporting suicide

part |2 pages

Reporting violence

chapter |18 pages

Reporting mass shootings

part |2 pages

Reporting health

part |2 pages

Reporting science and the environment

part |2 pages

Reporting cultural, ethnic and geographical difference

chapter |16 pages

Reporting “OTHER” cultures

chapter |10 pages

Conclusion

Further hints and tips