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Digital journalism is instantaneous. Journalists publish news content as it happens, in a 7/24 cycle, with short time to check it. Journalism tends to be increasingly opinionated because the news content is presented from the “ideological trench,” and is becoming more entertaining, including a mix of spectacle, sensationalism, and clickbait elements. In addition, news content is gathered and distributed in social media, where sources, journalists, media consumers, and citizens participate almost at the same level.

Journalism innovations facilitated the production of content in multiple formats, contributed to forge a more attractive and accessible journalism for a greater number of people and, at the same time, broadened the focus of the ethical issues raised in the newsrooms. Table 1.1 summarizes some ethical issues debated by journalists between 2010 and 2015.

Table 1.1 Ethical issues for news professionals who work in digital newsrooms.

Production stages	Ethical issues
Access-observation	• Verification of what is published on social media. • Check the information with two or more sources. • Journalists should not publish personal opinions in social media. • Fight against misinformation and lies.
Selection-filtering	• Verify the accuracy of UGC. • Label external content as such. • Pressure to promote topics that increase online traffic. • Transparency in accessing news sources.
Processing-editing	• Rejection of excessive multiskilling. • Convergence as a costsaving operation. • Low quality in production of multimedia content. • Separation between advertising and editorial.
Distribution	• Value the journalist’s byline. • Obsession to beat the competition. • Immediacy of live coverage. • Use of clickbait.
Interpretation	• Value of input from the users. • Moderation of comments and insults. • Correction of errors. • Transparency.
Source: Author

Thus, the ethics of traditional journalism, with values based on the accuracy, rigor, precision, and verification, was gradually extended to digital journalism, where collaboration with users, transparency, and immediacy predominate (Suárez-Villegas and Cruz-Álvarez, 2016a).