Raphael Cohen-Almagor







Towards responsible journalism: Code of practice, journalist oath and conscience clause

This paper draws on the codes of ethics of a wide range of countries to propose an ideal one for a newly constituted press regulatory body in the United Kingdom. It also suggests the adoption of a journalist oath and including a conscience clause in press journalists' contracts which would protect them from being coerced into doing clearly unethical work.

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References

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Note on the contributor

Raphael Cohen-Almagor has been Professor and Chair in Politics; Founder and Director of the Middle East Study Group, University of Hull, since 2008. A human rights and peace activist; he has published extensively in the fields of political science, philosophy, law, media ethics and medical ethics. Among his many books are also two poetry books. He was Visiting Professor at UCLA (1999-2000), Johns Hopkins (2003-2004) and Fellow, the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars (2007-2008). In 2003-2007 he was the Founding Director of the Center for Democratic Studies, University of Haifa. His most recent books are The Scope of Tolerance (2006, 2007), The Democratic Catch (2007, Hebrew), his second poetry book Voyages (2007, Hebrew), and Public responsibility in Israel, co-edited with Ori Arbel-Ganz and Asa Kasher (2012, Hebrew). Twitter: @almagor35; web: http://www.hull.ac.uk/rca; blog: http://almagor.blogspot.com