News Media Innovation Reconsidered. Группа авторов

maps of neighborhoods, crime statistics, sensors, etc.) can make to “uncover disparities and inequalities.”

      When journalists attempt to stand on the side of their public by choosing, preparing, and telling stories in a way that helps the public to be informed participants in democratic society, the ethics of news innovation become a real challenge. Too often media scholars offer only more reasons to despair. Overall, the reader will find grounds for optimism in these pages. This positive spirit was what inspired this collective book project.

      Some of the texts in this book were first drafted for the IAMCR preconference “News Media Innovation Ethics: Activating Human and Civil Rights Through Core Professional Values,” held at Carlos III University (Madrid, July 6, 2019). An enriching dialog between participants (including scholars and practitioners specializing in news media innovation) and organizers (the editors of this book) started before the conference and kept going during and after it. Our book reflects this continuous conversation as well as the further engagement with each contributor that was undertaken by the editors to unify the various texts around the aim, themes, and scope of the book.

      References

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      2 Alexander, J.C. (2016). Introduction: journalism, democratic culture, and creative reconstruction. In Alexander, J.C., Breese, E.B., and Luengo, M. (Eds.). The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital Future. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–28.

      3 Alexander, J.C., Breese, E.B., and Luengo, M. (2016). The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital Future. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

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      5 Breese, E.B. and Luengo, M. (2016). Conclusion: news innovations and enduring commitments. In Alexander, J.C., Breese, E.B., and Luengo, M. (Eds.). The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital Future. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 282–289.

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      7 Carlson, M. (2016). Telling the crisis story of journalism: narratives of normative reassurance in Page One. In Alexander, J.C., Breese, E.B., and Luengo, M. (Eds.). The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital Future. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 135–152.

      8 García-Avilés, J.A. (2016). Developing an index of media innovation in a national market, journalism studies, Journalism Studies, 9(1) 1–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1161496

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Journalism, Ethics, and Innovation in Times of Digital Turbulence

1 An Inquiry into the Ethics of Innovation in Digital Journalism

       José Alberto García-Avilés

       Universidad Miguel Hernández

      An Ethical Perspective on Journalism Innovation

      Research into the evolution of journalism ethics from the perspective of innovation offers wonderful insights. Throughout the past decades, journalists have embraced the innovations implemented in many newsrooms and, at the same time, they have met the ethical challenges brought about by these innovations. In this process, we could establish a pattern. Initially, journalists tend to regard the new practices as a challenge to the established standards, that is, as something alien to the shared ethical guidelines and therefore, they tend to believe these new practices should be questioned on ethical grounds. This attitude often translated into a veiled rejection of those innovations that at first sight seemed to collide with the traditional professional practices. However, as the innovations gradually take hold in the newsrooms and the journalists accept them, ethical standards are adapted accordingly to this new reality.

      In the digital media ecosystem, the boundaries between producers, audiences, content, technology, and business tend to fade away as the platforms and algorithms increasingly gather and distribute information through multiple channels, with a massive offering of news and entertainment that is seamlessly integrated into people’s lives (Ruotsalainen and Heinonen, 2015). Traditional sources of income based on advertising show symptoms of fatigue, and the competition between legacy media and digital pure players increases, as the business strategies that worked for decades have become obsolete (Küng, 2017).

      After several stages of adaptation and integration into this digital ecosystem, the media are living up to constant change. However, what is new is not change itself but the pace and the degree of change in journalism: a constant and deep transformation accelerated by the simultaneous impact of different technologies (virtual reality, artificial intelligence, blockchain, voice, data mining, etc.) in the gathering, production, distribution, and commercialization of content. In addition, technological companies have burst into force, competing with the news outlets for users’ attention. These powerful players (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc.)