Beyond clickbait and commerce

news organisation are decisions to subordinate journalism norms to
profit norms ethical.’
For individual journalists, economic necessities create conflicts
between the ideal of independence and the need to pay production
costs. There is a tension of loyalties: to those who pay you, your
own values and your readers (Shrader 2011). In fragile states, this
can become self-censorship for job security (Loza 2015). Sullivan
(2013) urges local assessments of ethical behaviour when looking
at investigative journalism in emerging democracies. Podesta (2014)
finds that business journalism can thrive in repressive regimes
because economic stories seem to be ‘viewed as less threatening’.
Discussing journalists’ ethical duty to seek independence from
economic pressures, Martin and Souder (2009) frame editorial
independence as a matter of degree, proposing ‘interdependence as
a guiding principle for media ethics’. It is widely acknowledged that
many journalists find business-related policy and entrepreneurial
practices and content difficult to accept (Sylvie and Witherspoon
2002; Pekkala and Cook 2012). However, none of this directly
confronts the ethical considerations for oppositional news outlets
created by scarce resources and flawed markets.
RESEARCH
PAPER
Research method
The findings are based on further analysis of empirical data from semistructured
interviews and a discussion group between December
2013 and 2015. It includes 23 non-profit media in exile or restricted
environments producing content to reach Tibet, Zimbabwe, Zambia,
Sudan, Syria, Iran, Burma, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Russian Caucasus,
Eritrea, Azerbaijan, central Asia, Turkmenistan and Belarus. The
media outlets were all groups or organisations producing content
independent from, and alternative to, state-controlled media and
were mixed format: online media, broadcasting, shortwave radio,
satellite and phone transmission. The sample was selected from
grantees working with three philanthropic, non-governmental
donor organisations. More systematic sampling was not possible,
as no listing or database exists. In a new research field such as this,
data gathered in this way is still valuable. The aim was to offer
comparability by detecting ethical value sets in income-generation
and revenue by a range of media. Anonymity was agreed to assure
the participants’ safety, yet common factors were drawn out to
preserve analytical relevance. Exiled editors who choose to live in
a more open market area and supply content exclusively to the
diaspora community were not included. Nor does the research
include journalists who may be in exile but who work for large,
government-sponsored organisations. A further ten semi-structured
interviews with project managers from donor organisations, project
coordinators or consultants working in the field were carried out.
These were conducted to document reflections on ethics relevant
to the sector more generally.
Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016 71