JO Ethics
WHY WE HAVE AN ETHICS POLICY
Ever since JO magazine started in 2003, we've focused on upholding a high standard of ethics and professionalism. Beyond just making sure our stories are true and accurate, that's meant trying to make sure they are significant, that we are giving people information they want and need, and that our work is contributing to the public good.
We're here to provide ongoing coverage of of what's current and interesting in local culture and current affairs, to offer thoughtful commentaries on events of local and regional significance, and to carry out in-depth investigations of local affairs when the public's right to know demands it.
For the last few months, JO's editors and writers have been working on putting together a formal code of ethics. To do so, we looked at the ethics policies of other publications we respect, and we consulted with each other on the specific issues we face in reporting here in Jordan. These guidelines were put together and agreed upon in a series of meetings held in the first half of 2010; they draw inspiration and sometimes wording from the ethics policies of several other media institutions, in particular those of The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor.
We're posting a formal ethics policy now, in 2010, because people's faith in news organizations is at a particularly low ebb; because it's a way we feel we can do what we do better; and, really, because it's about time. To paraphrase the editor of another publication: well-meaning and well-informed people can still disagree about what's the most ethical behavior for a person or an organization. In the past, we have applied high standards to every article—but we'll be the first to admit they haven't always been 100 percent consistent, from reporter to editor. In the future, we want to not only ensure that we're behaving ethically, but that the same standards are applied in every case.
Our work is based on the assumption that a reporter is not a special class of citizen: he or she is simply a person whose job it is to uphold and enable the human right of every human being to seek and impart information, as described in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A reporter asks the ordinary questions that anyone might ask, if they had the time to dedicate to the task of researching and seeking information. At JO, some of our staff and freelancers have formal training and years of professional experience; others are young writers just getting started with their first stories. Our code of ethics exists in part to provide a set of guidelines that all those individuals can agree on and follow.
In some cases, too, particularly when it comes to anonymous sources, we're putting out this code of ethics to impose a higher standard than what we've previously adhered to.
Most importantly, though, this page is our promise to you, the reader: that what you find in our pages will be accurate, fair and understandable, that we will be transparent about how we conduct our reporting and will let you know where the information we present is coming from.
In the end, our reporter's prime responsibility is not to editors, advertisers, governments or even sources, but to the public: to give them to the best of our abilities the unvarnished, unflinching truth about the world we live in.
—June 2, 2010
