The most important ethical issues in the Belarusian media — results of a survey of journalists

These are the results of research that were con­duct­ed among col­leagues by the press ser­vice of the NGO «Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists». BAJ mem­bers through an inter­nal newslet­ter and on Face­book pro­fes­sion­al group were asked to rate the main prob­lems of pro­fes­sion­al ethics they face more often.

The sur­vey involved more than 200 mem­bers of the jour­nal­is­tic com­mu­ni­ty. And that is how the views of respon­dents were dis­trib­uted on scores from 0 up to 10

In addi­tion to the fixed answers Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists were asked to name their own eth­i­cal prob­lems that they see in the media. We pub­lish the most fre­quent opin­ion:

- the gen­er­al per­func­to­ry reflec­tion of the prob­lems in the coun­try, con­scious avoid­ance of com­pli­cat­ed top­ics (for exam­ple cor­rup­tion, work of indus­tries), move­ment towards exces­sive light and enter­tain­ing texts, lack of eco­nom­ic intel­li­gence;

- ignore of incon­ve­nient facts and top­ics, unfor­tu­nate­ly, is hap­pen­ing both in offi­cial and inde­pen­dent media;

- the most eth­i­cal vio­la­tions are in the state media;

- dis­crim­i­na­to­ry lack of infor­ma­tion in rela­tion to cer­tain social groups;

- using of pub­lic media plat­form for solv­ing par­tic­u­lar con­flicts, to insult per­son­al oppo­nents;

- using of low aspi­ra­tions of peo­ple to attract atten­tion.