IMI director: Media co-regulation bodies should develop joint codes of ethics
Media co-regulation bodies should develop joint codes of ethics for the sake of efficiency, said Oksana Romaniuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information, at the online conference “Intersection Point: The Interaction Between Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation in Ukraine's Media”, organized by the Commission on Journalistic Ethics on December 10.
She said that task forces focusing on online media, print media, video sharing platforms, audiovisual or audio media do not need to create five codes of ethics on gender balance or children's rights. Instead, there should be a single code with clauses pertaining to specific platforms added to it.
Oksana Romaniuk believes that developing five separate codes for video content, online platforms, and other media formats will become an additional bureaucratic burden for task forces and confuse media teams, especially for multi-platform media outlets.
“We should think about how to streamline this mechanism, make it less cumbersome. For example, instead of five codes on the same topic by different co-regulation bodies, we could sign one joint document with basic provisions and add some clauses to it about the specifics of different types of media. This approach will optimize the work of task forces, increase their efficiency, and make it simpler for media teams to comply with the ethical norms,” Oksana Romaniuk added.
However, says the IMI director, developing such a document will also depend on the co-regulation bodies' success in effectively coordinating their efforts.
“Perhaps we should consider creating a separate task force involving representatives of all co-regulation bodies, which would develop the single code, taking into account the experience of other countries and international standards. Such a single code could consist of a basic section containing general ethical principles, and separate modules for specific media formats (online, audio, video, etc.),” Oksana Romaniuk said.
The article "Self-regulation as a stumbling block for Ukrainian media" by IMI media analyst Dmytro Barkar explains why Ukrainian media need self-regulation, what that is, and how it will protect the media against influence by the state.
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