When tradition meets innovation: Ethical journalism in the digital age. An exploratory case study and critical discourse analysis

In a world awash in digital media technologies, traditional journalism – as an occupational field and paradigmatic form of communication – is undergoing radical change. While the digital age scourged the professional journalistic practice with a poisonous blend of doubt and defiance; it also eroded a pre-digital consensus on journalism ethics. Considering the enduring nature of the traditional journalism industry today, the literature is mystified as to how professional journalists should comply with the norms and standards for ethical and responsible journalism while keeping up with a 24-hour news cycle in a regime of convergence news-making. This study looks at how a range of new media actors, communicating online, have challenged the pursuit of ethical journalism in the digital age. From the vantage point of the New York Times, the BBC, and ABC – three distinguished traditional news outlets – it purports to explore how leading international online news media approach ethical journalism in the digital age. An international perspective is thus taken to respond to this inquiry. The analysis is methodologically executed through an exploratory case study and a critical discourse analysis. The former method examines the current codes of ethics of the selected news organizations to identify what ethical and editorial values and standards they preach and abide by. The latter method explores how these values and standards are discursively shaped and implemented into practice in 60 health-related news coverage on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, specifically. The main overarching result indicated that leading international online news media’s approach to ethical journalism is still very much rooted in a pre-digital media era. Indeed, a consensus was found across the three selected news organizations on the continuing relevance of a pre-digital mindset to achieve responsible and ethical journalism today. Therefore, although the internet halted the unidirectional paradigm of mass communication, online news media are not (and perhaps should not be) entirely divorced from the value system of traditional news outlets. This finding not only challenges the “crisis narratives” in the existing literature on the quality and future of traditional journalism, but also scholarly assumptions on the futility of pre-digital journalism ethics to guide professional journalists as they sail the blustery sea of an ongoing media revolution.