Chuẩn mực đạo đức của người làm báo

Recently I've read a new entry on Nguyen Ngoc Tu's blog. She's a famous writer (and I love her writings, of course). As a "famous" one, she worried about the privacy not only for herself but also for other colleagues.

It made me think 'bout the code of ethic for journalist, like the code of ethics for CFA members. I Googled and found out some different versions of those things. Generally, I think this is a good one: SPJ Code of ethics

To make the long short, journalists should seek truth and report it whereas managing to minimize harm and to act independently. They also should be accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

Among those codes, I'd like to highlight the point below.

Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.

Feeding the readers who have a huge sense of curiosity is the main task of Vietnamese "lều báo"(*) now. That's why most of newspapers/magazines, either printed or electric version, are full of messy news: criminal, scandal and sex. To create those "hot" news, those journalists don't mind to seek for personal "material" and publish personal private information whereas they're accepted or not. For instance, personal Facebook status was captured for reviewing and judging, personal talks between two famous song composers was recorded and labeled as "giving opinion about this and that". Sometimes, the "lều báo" writers are even willing to modify the interview, just to drive it into the way they want.

In the theory of (political) power separation, media is called "the fourth power", besides the three traditional branches: executive, legislative and judiciary. Based on what Vietnamese "lều báo" providing to their audiences everyday, I wonder what's their purpose behind it? Or they're just only NOT professional enough and NOT have enough sense of ethic to find out other topics and write better articles?

Think about it.

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(*) lều báo: "journalist" means "nhà báo" in Vietnamese. "nhà", in Vietnamese, means "house" whereas "lều" in Vietnamese means "tent". Thus, Vietnamese use "lều báo" instead of "nhà báo" to describe a bad journalist.