Truth, Al Jazeera, and Crisis Journalism - Pages 79-91
Clifford G. Christians

Published: 16 January 2018

Abstract: Truth is the generally accepted standard of news media organizations and of social media networks. Most of the codes of ethics including Al Jazeera’s specify the reporters’ duty to tell the truth. In the traditional view, objective reporting is not merely the standard of competent professionalism, but considered a moral imperative. With the dominant scheme increasingly controversial, theoretical work in international media ethics seeks to transform it intellectually. Truth needs to be released from its parochial moorings in the West and given a global understanding. A new concept of truth as authentic disclosure accomplishes this, and that definition means to get at the core issue, to see the essence of things. The question in researching Al Jazeera is whether it practices what might be called “interpretive sufficiency.” This is a robust view of news as knowledge production, in contrast with news as simply informational. Using Al Jazeera as a case study, the new definition of truth-as-disclosure is applied to crisis journalism.

Keywords: International News, Truth, Media Ethics, Interpretation, Propaganda.