The NUIJ has had a Code of Ethics (CoE) since 1965, with a functioning Ethics Committee ruling on complaints from that time, with a total of 251 complaints being ruled on in this period. In these 55 years, the CoE has changed relatively little. It has been concise and general from the beginning, with only five clauses on “dos and don’ts” in journalistic work, and one clause on the handling of complaints by the NUIJ Ethics Committee. This is very different from the vast majority of CoEs in most Western countries, especially the other Nordic countries, where the codes are much more detailed. The NUIJ’s CoE has clauses that promote fair, balanced, and impartial reporting. It stresses the public’s right to information, freedom of expression, and criticism, and the highest possible standards in gathering information, including the avoidance of reporting that may cause unnecessary pain or humiliation. It warns against bribes and threats, promotes caution when publishing names, observes the general rule that every person is innocent until proven guilty, warns against conflicts of interest, and informs journalists not to confuse editorial material of clear informative, and educational value with advertising in pictorial or written form. In its rulings, the Ethics Committee has throughout the years stressed fairness, impartiality, and holding those in power accountable.
The CoE is generally accepted by journalists and media outlets, even if some of the rulings have, through the years, been debated and criticised. According to most of the journalists interviewed, they were familiar with the rules and used them as a roadmap, to a certain extent. It was the same for the editors interviewed. Since the rules are quite broad, some journalists and editors stated that they mostly represented common sense, and so it was not necessary for them to look them up regularly. But, if there were some difficult issues to address, the rules were a good guide to use as a compass, according to most of the interviewees.
Besides the NUIJ Ethics Committee, the public broadcasting service RÚV has a special in-house CoE, and the reporters there are in a separate union. The CoE at RÚV, and a ruling committee, was set up in 2016, but has had a very slow start, with only three cases submitted. The first two were dismissed, but the most recent one found one journalist in violation of RÚV’s code of conduct on social media (see Indicator F11 – Protection of journalists against (online) harassment).
There are no other journalist associations which disseminate good practice – for example, improving skills and raising ethical standards or other provisions regarding the accountability of the media to civil society – aside from the courts. It should be added that the MC also receives complaints on the media and makes rulings. For years, these cases mostly had to do with advertisements, children’s material, and so on, but two recent rulings were on complaints over editorial practices. The NUIJ did not respond well to this change and said that it overlapped with the function of the NUIJ Ethics Committee, and the union withdrew its representative on the MC’s ruling committee. This feud is unresolved.
