Not associated with News Group, News Corp, News International, or the old Murdoch regime and hacking scandal in anyway.
Not the News of the World
Tuesday, 19 March 2024      

What are the ethics of "Not the News of the World?"

The founders of "Not the News of the World?", intend it to be an open platform where journalists and bloggers can publish their stories. There is no intention of editing which stories are published. The web site wants to give people what they want and to this end, authors will be rewarded based on the popularity of their content, which will provide an incentive to write ever more popular copy.

However, "The News of the World", for all it's popularity did have a reputation for questionable ethics, which ultimately tarnished the paper. We therefore have an ethics policy which all journalists should adhere to. It is planned to make this dynamic so that the journalists themselves can agree what should be in it. As "Not the News of the World?" was only conceived a few days ago, we don't have that yet, and an initial ethics policy has been provided by the founder. All stories on the web site should comply with this ethics policy and any that are not will be removed and the author may be prevented from publishing future stories.

The current ethics policy is detailed in the panel to the right.

Ethics Policy

Truth: all stories should be true. Any inaccuracies identified after publication will be corrected and a note of the correction added to the story.

Legality: all stories must comply with all laws of the UK, and all journalistic methods should be legal.

Privacy: privacy of individuals and families should be respected. Any stories which include details of personal life should have a clear and unambiguous public interest.

Persecution: no individual or company should be persecuted through the use of this site or placement of content on it.

Libel: all journalists are responsible for ensuring that any statements in their stories which might be detrimental to someone are supported by sufficient evidence to justify it, in the event of a complaint of libel. We encourage the use of qualification and justification where applicable within the story, both for accuracy, and legal protection.

Racial Harmony: the UK is a multicultural society and no stories should incite hatred, promote generalisation, or in anyway disrespect any racial group.

Personal Opinion: where an author is expressing a personal view which is not based on evidence, this should be made clear.

Religion: people are entitled to whatever religious views they want, and authors should avoid making references to religion or religious views, unless it is significant to a genuine news story.

Politics: our readers probably have a range of political views and loyalties. Authors should seek to avoid making politically biased copy, unless clearly marked as personal opinion. That is not to say that specific political issues cannot be investigated and criticised but any such stories should do so in an evidence backed manner, and avoid simple tribal assertions or ideology. Contributors must ensure that they comply with any relevant election impartiality laws.

Discrimination: no stories should incite hatred, promote generalisation, or in anyway disrespect any group of people, whether defined by gender, sexual orientation, social status, education, type of car owned, or in any other way.

It's not much, but it's a start.