Ethics, human rights and violence in Chihuahua’s digital journalism: Evidence from a media observatory
ISSN: 2059-5816
Article publication date: 10 January 2020
Issue publication date: 9 March 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents the findings of a project that aims to analyze the ethical treatment of the news, with special attention to the reporting of violent events, as it is carried out by digital news outlets from the State of Chihuahua (Mexico).
Design/methodology/approach
A media observatory was established to collect and analyze the 9,115 news reports of violent events from February to June 2019 and was published by 12 digital news outlets in Chihuahua. Quantitative data analysis was carried out using three analytical axes – ethics, human rights and violence. Each axis was, in turn, subdivided into three criteria, and this paper identifies how compliant were each news outlet and individual news report with those criteria.
Findings
Data analysis established that 5,385 of the news reports (59.1 per cent of the total news analyzed) met all the nine desirable criteria, whereas other subsets did not comply with up to a minimum five criteria. How the observed news outlets and their reports complied with the criteria used is specified in this paper.
Originality/value
The methodology used and the data analyzed seek to develop ethical and socially responsible journalism. Hence, this paper offers various possibilities, such as raising new questions related to journalistic deontology, helps engage responsible journalists and also represents an area of opportunity for library and information professionals who are immersed in digital environments (e.g. digital libraries and library professionals that are the ideal professionals to store, manage and disseminate the records produced by media observatories). Moreover, the data analyzed help to set a maximum limit for the non-compliance with each of the criteria analyzed, which can even lead to the development of an ethical and social responsibility accreditation that can be granted to news outlets with the best practices for journalism.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors of this research would like to thank the Professional Teacher Development Program for Higher Education (PRODEP) of the Government of Mexico and the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) for the funding they granted to this project, according to the assigned folio UACH-PTC-385, number 511-6/18-8538, from which this paper was derived.
Citation
Villanueva-Ledezma, A., Machin-Mastromatteo, J.D., González-Quiñones, F., Cordero-Hidalgo, A. and Flores-Flores, J. (2020), "Ethics, human rights and violence in Chihuahua’s digital journalism: Evidence from a media observatory", Digital Library Perspectives, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 55-68. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-09-2019-0035
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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