By Jean-Paul Marthoz

Though they often claim to be detached observers, journalists enjoy, even unconsciously, being on the right side of history, fighting the “Good War,” defending the “good guys”. The conflict in Ukraine is an example of what Herbert Gans, in his seminal 1980 essay Deciding What’s News, calls journalism’s “enduring values”. “Some wars are fiendishly complicated and contain multitudinous shades of grey, but this one is (…) easy to characterize as an old-fashioned morality tale of good versus evil, or David against Goliath,” Ben Coates wrote in Politico, 10 days after the Russian invasion.

By James Ball

Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine has been the biggest story in global affairs since the late days of February 2022.

The consequences extend far beyond the borders of Ukraine and Russia, and reporting on the effects of this war is not restricted to experienced conflict and foreign affairs reporters working on the frontlines. 

Given the long track record of sophisticated media manipulation by Russia in particular – though Ukraine has had its moments – and the potential that the conflict could escalate even further, the difficulties of reporting the stories raised by this war ethically, accurately and safely are manifold.

What right does any of us have to tell other people’s stories? That’s a question British-Swedish photojournalist Anastasia Taylor-Lind often asks herself.

Taylor-Lind has been documenting the lives of ordinary Ukrainians since the 2014 Maidan revolution. She has spent this year in Ukraine photographing the devastating consequences of the Russian invasion on civilians, some living only a few hundred metres from the frontline.

Ukraine is a country she loves, but Taylor-Lind questions why she is the one who gets to tell the story of this conflict.

The EJN gathered its media partners from South East Europe and Turkey at a regional conference held on 26-27 September in Istanbul. Journalists, editors, directors, press councils and media organisation representatives celebrated the results of the UNESCO project “Building Trust in Media in South East Europe and Turkey – Phase 2,” funded by the European Union – DG NEAR. The participants discussed the benefits and challenges of conducting ethical audits as part of the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) led by Reporters Without Borders. 

The EJN’s Aidan White joins a number of media industry specialists as part of the Aljazeera Media Institute’s eLearning Programme of eLearning media courses.

Aidan leads Ethics in Journalism, a free self-paced course in English, that explores the importance of ethical behaviour in journalism and why it is important to building public trust in news media in this age of the internet, fake news, disinformation and global communications.