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15 Journalistic Codes

of Ethics in Europe

T iina Laitila

Introduction

This article is based on my MA thesis ‘European Media Ethics. In Search of a
Common Basis’ which deals with the possibility of a common code of ethics for
1
European journalism. The notorious Resolution and Recommendation on ethics
of journalism moved by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in
1993 have served as my provocateurs, the European journalists’ ethical codes as
my starting point.
The Resolution and Recommendation suggested an establishment of a media
ombudsman functioning on a European level, in addition to a set of ethical prin-
ciples for European journalism. These suggestions were based on an idea that the
media in Europe share similar problems and practices to a degree that they could
be regulated by common rules and mechanisms. But do the journalists, editors
and owners of the media – the real actors in the field – share similar norms and
ideals in their work? This is the framework for my elaboration in this article.
The elaboration is made with the help of the national codes of ethics, which
are seen to represent journalists’ values and norms. The comparison of the codes
shows whether the European journalists share similar rules and ideals, and
whether it would thus be possible to create common ethical guidelines for
European journalists. Here possibility is regarded as a theoretical, not as a prac-
tical question. The starting point is the codes of ethics of the European journal-
ists, and the ideals of good journalism they offer.
While my research addresses the ethics of journalism in contemporary Europe,
it can also be regarded as a part of the tradition to accumulate documentation
about professional codes of ethics – a tradition already initiated at the University
of Tampere in the mid-1970s (Leppänen, 1977; Alanen, 1979; Juusela, 1991). The
next stage will be an electronic database including the texts of these codes.

Codes and their founders

Thirty-one journalistic codes of ethics representing 29 European countries were
included in the comparison (see Table 15.1). Two-thirds of them are adopted by

Source: EJC (1995), vol. 10, no. 4: 527–44.