Freelance journalists' ethical boundary settings in information work

Abstract

The borders between the media genres journalism and information or PR are blurring, and this development is especially noticeable among freelance journalists. How does this affect freelance journalists, particularly their ethical reasoning? Thirteen interviews with freelancers living in a peripheral northern county in Sweden were analyzed, using a combination of discourse analysis and narrative theory methods and a virtue ethics theoretical framework. It was found that 11 out of 13 informants worked occasionally or regularly with information-type assignments. To sustain the informants' professional roles and self identities of integrity and impartiality, having boundary settings between, first, information/ PR and journalist roles and, second, information and journalist type assignments was crucial. It was evident that individual ethics had replaced professional principles. The freelancers reflexively process media industry constraints, together with their everyday working conditions, in a situation where the ideals and norms of the profession constitute the background for their individual action ethics.