Ethics for Student Reporters

Since its inception, Mobile Stories has supported students with an ethical guide for journalistic work and publishing. The first version was developed in collaboration with the Swedish Media Ombudsman in 2015, inspired by the Swedish Media Ethics System for professional journalists. These rules have been widely used and slightly adapted over time, but their core principles remain the same:

1. Stick to the truth.

2. Respect others’ privacy.

3. Respect copyright.

These guidelines help emphasize individual responsibility in protecting democratic values online and can support schools when discussing acceptable and unacceptable behavior on the internet.

To fit a broader, international context, the rules were further developed in collaboration with the partner organization News Decoder and the Trust Project within the EU project ProMS. In response to the rapid development of AI, Mobile Stories and News Decoder, in cooperation with our experienced advisory group, have also developed an ethical code for the use of AI in student journalism.

We hope that our ethical guides can support and inspire more educators and teachers. To this end, we have created posters available for free download, along with the complete ethical guidelines in PDF format for teachers.