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Research into the evolution of journalism ethics from the perspective of innovation offers wonderful insights. Throughout the past decades, journalists have embraced the innovations implemented in many newsrooms and, at the same time, they have met the ethical challenges brought about by these innovations. In this process, we could establish a pattern. Initially, journalists tend to regard the new practices as a challenge to the established standards, that is, as something alien to the shared ethical guidelines and therefore, they tend to believe these new practices should be questioned on ethical grounds. This attitude often translated into a veiled rejection of those innovations that at first sight seemed to collide with the traditional professional practices. However, as the innovations gradually take hold in the newsrooms and the journalists accept them, ethical standards are adapted accordingly to this new reality.

In the digital media ecosystem, the boundaries between producers, audiences, content, technology, and business tend to fade away as the platforms and algorithms increasingly gather and distribute information through multiple channels, with a massive offering of news and entertainment that is seamlessly integrated into people’s lives (Ruotsalainen and Heinonen, 2015). Traditional sources of income based on advertising show symptoms of fatigue, and the competition between legacy media and digital pure players increases, as the business strategies that worked for decades have become obsolete (Küng, 2017).

After several stages of adaptation and integration into this digital ecosystem, the media are living up to constant change. However, what is new is not change itself but the pace and the degree of change in journalism: a constant and deep transformation accelerated by the simultaneous impact of different technologies (virtual reality, artificial intelligence, blockchain, voice, data mining, etc.) in the gathering, production, distribution, and commercialization of content. In addition, technological companies have burst into force, competing with the news outlets for users’ attention. These powerful players (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) monopolize a large percentage of advertising investment, as well as many successful live streaming platforms (Netflix, HBO, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Spotify, etc.).

In this complex scenario, aggravated by the worldwide crisis of COVID-19, the media have less control over how and where their contents are consumed, while their relationship with audiences is weakened by a more interactive, horizontal, and collaborative communication. On the other hand, digital-only media have been able to fully understand the mobile, social, and global ecosystem and, what is more important, they have rapidly adapted to the consumption habits of hyperconnected users. Therefore, when facing disruptive competition, legacy media companies need to focus their strategies on sustainability, market penetration, and innovation.

In this context, media innovation has been invoked as a “mantra,” which offers a solution to the complex industry problems. However, innovation advocates often lack a clear conceptual background about how innovations are differentiated from change, when exactly is something considered to be innovative, and at what level of analysis (individual, organizational, product, or process) does innovation lie (Prenger and Deuze, 2017). As both authors argue (p. 235), “epistemological challenges further amplify these wide-ranging questions, as innovation is invariably a moving object, raising the issue of how to adequately study something so dynamic.”

Any kind of innovative journalism should also be an ethical one. Without the essential component of ethics, no journalism is capable of innovating because the very professional activity of reporting itself is based on the commitment to the truth. Accordingly, journalistic ethics and quality are synonymous terms since all quality journalism is necessarily ethical. In Tony Harcup’s words, “ethical journalism is crucial for the health and well-being of a society” (2006, p. 144).

Journalism ethics is the result of multiple and complementary forces. Ethical reasoning is a unique and indivisible reality, which is individually, institutionally, and culturally based. Professional ethics cannot be isolated from individual or social ethics. When news organizations face ethical quandaries, they often implement regulations, norms, and codes that soon tend to become obsolete (Whitehouse, 2010).

We can distinguish three problems when making ethical decisions in journalism:

1 Technological determinism: When focusing on the role of technology, we can easily exaggerate the influence technology as the driving force of media innovation and overlook the impact that emerging journalistic practices have on the development of innovative technologies. Technology plays a role in facilitating change, but overall, we do not find sufficient evidence to conclude that it induces disruption in journalistic activity. Technologies must also be balanced with prevailing standards that have guided the journalistic field, for these standards play a role in how journalists conceive of and perform their social roles (Singer, 2003).

2 What we might call “normative apriorism:” That is, to regard ethics just as the result of the application of a series of norms embodied in codes and regulations. Ethical guidelines often become an excuse for ineffectiveness and reflects managements’ short sightedness when facing the challenges of making the right decisions. A focus on prescriptive ethics tends to ignore that there are competing views on how to address moral questions within the context of ethical reasoning (von der Pfordten, 2012). Hence, an ethical examination should focus on the correlation of moral principles, rather than on the single norms and codes.

3 Relativism: There are no universal or absolute ethical principles, so that performance depends on the conditions in production, social, cultural, political factors, etc., as well as the personal approach of everyone. Since this view considers that ethics is purely subjective, based on individual interpretations, any decision can be ethically correct if one justifies it according to their own beliefs.

My proposal about the ethics of journalistic innovation relies on three essential aspects that shape professional decision-making: the ethics of the ends, the ethics of the procedures, and the ethics of the values, following insights from scholars such as Friend and Singer (2007), von der Pfordten (2012), Ward (2018), and Ward and Wasserman (2010), among others.

The ethics of the ends are based on the question: Why do I do this?—that is, what do I intend to achieve with this project, product, or service? It could be a matter of investigating an issue, exposing corruption, expanding knowledge, acting in a responsible manner, or being accountable to society. Ethical goals could be related to the right to information, formulated in article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The ends also relate to freedom of expression, the right to privacy and honor, professional secrecy, and public service, and they deal with ethical problems such as sensationalism, misinformation, and data manipulation (Suárez-Villegas and Cruz-Álvarez, 2016a, p. 7).

Procedural ethics focus on the question: How do I do it? What processes do I follow to carry it out? The ethics of the procedures raise the constant and recurring question of whether the end justifies or not the means that are used (von der Pfordten, 2012). Journalists’ practices include verification processes, collaboration with third parties, confidentiality with sources, digital image manipulation, etc., which demand transparency and accountability.

The ethics of values, ultimately, raises the question: What principles guide my work? The list of values is very broad: truth, respect, trust, credibility, justice, accuracy, equanimity, solidarity, dignity, honesty, professionalism, impartiality, etc. According to the work of Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001, p. 24), based on interviews with hundreds of journalists in the United States, these principles should rule in the profession:

Seeking the truth; loyalty with citizens; a verification discipline; independence in regard to those who are informed; exercise control of power; become a public forum for criticism and commentary; offer suggestive and relevant information, as well as comprehensive and proportionate; and respect the individual conscience of the professional.

How can we evaluate the ethical consequences of innovations? Moreover, how can media ethics help us in this task? The report “Good and bad innovation: what kind of theory and practice do we need to distinguish them?” by Geoff Mulgan (2016) deals with the ambivalence of innovations. For example, the use of surveillance technologies to increase productivity and safety in the workplace also can generate a high level of stress in the workforce, as well as limitations to their privacy. Examples of negative innovations, such as concentration camps for mass extermination, can be extreme but most innovations have both positive and negative consequences. We can better address this ambivalence if we define the concept of innovation in journalism and its practical implications.