ABSTRACT
In the news business, experimenting with new forms of storytelling has become the new normal. After spending a decade to get familiar with simple virtual reality tools, however, the future of immersive journalism is still considered uncertain. Immersive storytelling appears to become more concentrated on special events and locations. Journalism follows its own production logics and ethics. The ethical premises of accuracy and transparency create tensions among journalists about how to be ethical storytellers in the virtual reality universe. Being transparent means making the users understand how immersive technologies work and how the users are affected by them. An early virtual reality (VR) experiment by the Finnish Broadcasting Company highlights some crucial challenges with implementing VR within news. In 2019, the public broadcaster funded a VR experience that imitated the first explosion of the hydrogen bomb Ivy Mike in 1952 in the Pacific Ocean.
