Results of mass media monitoring by the level of adherence to professional standards of journalism. Second quarter of 2018

In the national online media outlets, the level of observing the balance of opinions, compared to the previous monitoring period, reduced almost by two times. Where in the first quarter of 2018, it was violated, at average, in 6% of materials, in the second quarter the level of violations was already 11%. These are the results of IMI research studying the level of adherence to key professional standards of journalism in 10 online media outlets and in 5 printed media outlets that are conducted with support of «Internews Network»*. The level of adherence to two standards – accuracy and separating facts from opinions – remains the same. The percentage of news adhering to the standard of accuracy in online media outlets is at average 89%, and adherence to the standard of separation facts from comments is equal to 93% (in the previous monitoring period, the same indicators were, correspondingly, 88 and 92%). In printed media outlets, the indicators of adherence to the standard of separation of facts from comments and balance of opinions also showed decline - by 7% and 5%, correspondingly. Where in the first quarter, the level of adherence to the standard of separating facts from comments in pronted media was equal to 90%, in the second quarter it reduced to 83%. Also, the percentage of accurate news declined from 88% to 83%. «Increased number of unbalanced news can be related to the electoral campaign getting closer, IMI expert Olena Holub says. – The elections force politicians to become more active, so they are more prone to giving comments and writing entries in social networks. Such comments  are often presented by online media outlets as news - without any balancing, or simply promote them for money, thus making money on elections ». In the second quarter of 2018, the rating of adherence to standards of journalism in online media outlets was headed by two websites – Liga.net and Ukrinform, where 96% of materials were published without violations of the standards of journalism. The worst indicators of adherence to professional standards of journalism in the second quarter of 2018 were registered for online media outlets «Strana.ua» and «Obozrevatel» (36 and 40% of materials were with violations), and the worst printed media outlet was «KP v Ukrainie » (50% of violations). The best printed media outlet in adherence to the standards of journalism was media outlet «Segodnia» and «Hazeta po-ukrainski» – 80% of their published materials were without any violations. *The monitoring was conducted in the following media outlets: «Ukrainska pravda», Liga.net, UNIAN, Ukrinform, Korrespondent.net, 112.ua, TSN.ua, Strana.ua, «Obozrevatel» and Censor.net, «Vesti», «Segodnia», «KP v Ukrainie», «Fakty i kommentarii» and «Hazeta po-ukrainski». **The methodology of the monitoring is aviailable on IMI website, at this link.