Ethical Boundaries among Freelance Journalists

ABSTRACT

This article sheds light on the professional role of freelance journalists and examines ethical dilemmas faced by Norwegian freelance journalists. Freelancers and self-employed journalists have to manage their own financial interests and secure their income, as well as the professional ethics of journalism. Finding themselves placed between autonomy and precarity, these freelancers are also engaged in non-journalistic activities, such as PR, because these kinds of jobs usually pay better than news work. This article discusses freelancers and ethical dilemmas. Further, it addresses how freelancers deal with the blurring borders between journalism and PR.

KEYWORDS:

• Freelance journalism
• journalism ethics
• flexibilisation of work life
• self-employment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The project is approved by the Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD).

2 Two researchers are part of this project. Jan Erik Andreassen is responsible for both the interviews and surveys among the editors. My part is interviewing the freelancers. This article is based on the data I have been sampling and have analysed.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Medietilsynet - The Norwegian Media Authority.