Defining Freedom of the Press: A Cross national examination of press ethics and regulation in ten European countries

一系列与报纸有关的丑闻引发了对英国媒体道德的调查，迄今为止，这些调查过于狭隘：它们过于关注英国本身，错过了从海外类似的事态发展和担忧中学习的机会。相比之下，这个项目将发展知识和理解，了解欧洲各地类似司法管辖区的新闻委员会如何处理平衡自由和责任的媒体伦理难题。重要的是，它还将审查新闻工作本身，并探讨道德准则对记者、新闻工作者和直接受新闻活动影响的人的日常工作习惯的影响程度。关于新闻道德的辩论的特点是孤立主义，迄今为止，这种孤立主义阻碍了制定标准和向其他社会学习的可能性，在这些社会中，立法者、新闻记者和一般公众已经处理了道德和监管问题。通过检查世界新闻自由排名中的欧洲国家，该项目将向英国监管机构（IMPRESS）提出一套基于证据的建议，可用于为英国新闻道德准则提供基准。这个项目将直接帮助IMPRESS和其他组织审查和更新他们的代码和相关指南的未来迭代。它将有助于在这些领域建立新闻伦理规范。此外，通过研究这些国家的新闻委员会如何与法律交叉（例如，它们是否具有法定地位或得到承认；它们的判决是否得到法院的承认；它们的法规如何与法律重叠？），我们将更深入地了解新闻监管是如何在实践中而不是在理论上运作的。这将提供从最佳实践中学习的可能性，以了解在解决新闻界自我监管问题方面什么是可行的，什么是可行的。通过让他们对更全面的标准负责，这项研究将使监管机构能够支持出版商获得新的地位和形象，这将使他们既可以追求新闻业作为“看门狗”或“第四产业”的经典自由主义理论，也可以挑战企业媒体的霸权。鉴于新闻领域所面临的技术和社会变化，这可能产生深远的社会影响，这些变化不仅在制定可行和可持续的行为守则方面，而且还有助于加强新闻媒介的这一新部门，并保护迄今为止一直受到新闻滥用的群体。

Inquiries into the ethics of the UK press, prompted by a series of scandals associated with newspapers, have hitherto been far too parochial: too focussed on the UK itself, they have missed opportunities to learn from parallel developments and concerns overseas. This project, in contrast will develop knowledge and understanding of how press councils in comparable jurisdictions from around Europe approach the difficult questions in media ethics of balancing freedom and responsibility. Significantly, it will also examine news work itself and explore the extent to which ethical codes impact on the daily working practices of journalists, news workers and those directly affected by the activities of the press. The isolationism that has characterised the debates about press ethics has hitherto hindered the possibility of benchmarking and learning from other societies in which problems of ethics and regulation have been addressed by legislators, journalists and the general public. By examining the top European nations in the World Press Freedom rankings, this project will develop a set of evidence based recommendations to the UK regulator (IMPRESS) that can be used to provide a benchmark for the UK press code of ethics. This project will directly help IMPRESS and other organisations review and update future iterations of their codes and related guidance. It will help establish norms of journalism ethics in these areas. Moreover, by examining how the press councils in these countries intersect with the law (e.g., do they have statutory status or recognition; are their judgments recognised by the courts; how do their codes overlap with the law?), we will gain a much richer understanding of how press regulation operates in practice, rather than in theory. This would then offer the possibility of learning from best practice as to what can work and what can be viable in addressing issues around press self-regulation. By holding them accountable to more comprehensive standards, this research will allow regulators to support publishers in achieving a new status and profile, which will allow them to both pursue the classical liberal rationale for journalism as 'watchdog' or 'fourth estate' - and challenge the hegemony of the corporate press. This could have far-reaching social impact given the technological and societal changes that that the news landscape faces not only in producing viable and sustainable codes of conduct but also helping to strengthen this new sector of the news media and protect groups that have hitherto been subject to press abuses.