Ethics of data journalism : Four ethical phases in the working process

Abstract

A paper presented at Nordic Data Journalism Conference NODA 2016, 21 April 2016 in Helsinki, Finland. Data journalism has emerged remarkably during the last years. Discussions of data journalism have mostly concentrated on access to data, preparing a data story and providing truthful information based on data. However, ethical requirements and responsibilities of data journalism have not been widely discussed. For instance, press councils do not particularly discuss data and its impact on journalism ethics. Data when mentioned in the codes usually refer to information and its accuracy requirements to be take into consideration in information gathering and publishing. This paper analyses ethical issues of data in conventional journalistic working process starting at access to data and followed by data analysis, publishing a data story and collecting feedback from the public. Each of the four phases contains several important ethical points of attention. Phases have also consequences to subsequent phases.