Covering terrorism : ethical challenges of journalists working in Norway's mainstream news media
Master thesis
Permanent lenke
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2591786Utgivelsesdato
2018Metadata
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The purpose of this thesis is to explore ethical challenges experienced by journalists working in Norway’s mainstream news media in relation to reporting international terrorism. Working with news sources; desire to be first to disseminate the news; the desire to attract audiences through graphical contents; and cooperation with security agencies all create ethical challenges while covering the news of terrorism. Another part of this project studies the influencing factors in news making of terror attacks. News sources, competition and audiences are major influencers in news making of terror events. The last part examines the essentiality of journalistic codes of conduct. The Norwegian Press Council’s statistics has no cases of violation of press ethics in relation to covering news of terror attacks. In the view of Norwegian journalists, there is no need to amend the existing Code of Ethics for the Norwegian Press to include the issue of terrorism. The study also discusses the possibility of avoiding news reporting of terror attacks. I conclude with a discussion that avoiding coverage is not an option, but alternative narratives and framing could be a possibility.