IMI study names media outlets with top adherence to professional standards in IV quarter of 2024
Ukraine's top online media outlets have improved their adherence to news feed standards in the last quarter of 2024. There have been fewer citations of unreliable sources, fewer breaches of presumption of innocence or uses of other value judgments in news, as shown by the December 2024 monitoring study of professional standards by the Institute of Mass Information*.
According to the monitoring study, the following online media outlets showed most adherence to professional standards when producing their news feeds:
- Babel,
- ZN.UA,
- Suspilne,
- Liga.net,
- Ukrainian Pravda,
- LB.ua,
- Hromadske.
The list of websites with the lowest levels of adherence to journalistic standards in their news feeds has not changed. It includes TSN, Telegraf, Focus, Channel 24, Obozrevatel, and UNIAN.
"Over the year, the monitored media outlets improved their overall level of adherence to professional standards in the news. The current indicators are very close to those recorded at the end of last year. In the summer of 2024, the IMI study showed a considerable drop in the overall level of compliance with news feed standards: back then, the amount of unreliable news in online media had spiked, as did the number of breaches of the presumption of innocence, which goes against the standard of separating facts from comments.
"However, during the fourth quarter of 2024, the amount of such errors dropped. The overall level of adherence to standards has gone back up and is now practically equal to last year's," noted media expert Dmytro Barkar.
*The monitoring sample included 23 online media outlets popular in Ukraine: Babel, Hromadske, Suspilne, ZN.UA, Ukrainian Pravda, Espreso, Ukrinform, Liga.net, NV, LB.ua, Censor.Net, Interfax-Ukraine, TSN, Korespondent.net, RBC-Ukraine, Focus, UNIAN, Channel 24, Obozrevatel, Telegraf, Gordon, Rubryka, and Novynarnia. With the help of the IMI monitoring robot, 100 items posted after 9:00 a.m. on December 6, 2024, were pulled from the news section of each website. All news items selected for monitoring were manually processed by experts according to the methodology.
The Institute of Mass Information (IMI) is a Ukrainian non-governmental media organization that has been operating since 1996. The IMI defends the rights of journalists, analyzes the media field and covers media-related events, fights propaganda and disinformation and has been providing media outlets with safety gear for trips to the combat zone since the start of the Russo–Ukrainian war in 2014.
The IMI carries out Ukraine's only freedom of speech monitoring and keeps a list of high quality and sustainable online media outlets, documents Russia's crimes against the media committed in the course of the war on Ukraine. The IMI has representatives in 20 oblasts of Ukraine and a network of "Mediabaza" hubs to provide journalists with continuous support. The IMI's partners include Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House; the organization is a member of the International Organization for the Protection of Freedom of Expression (IFEX).
Help us be even more cool!
