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Ethics In Local Television Newsrooms: A Comparison Of Assignment Editors And Producers, Chris W. Allen, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz, Michael L. Hilt

Communication Faculty Publications

This paper examines the attitudes of local television news assignment editors toward ethics in the newsroom. A large majority of producers say newsrooms should have a code of ethics or discussions of ethics, that ethics should not change with the story and that newsroom ethics are being eroded by pressure to get ratings. It goes on to compare these attitudes with those of news producers from an earlier survey. Assignment editors also ranked how often discussion of certain ethical situations take place in the newsroom.