EXPLAINING THE NEED FOR SPEED Speed and ...

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EXPLAINING THE NEED FOR SPEED Speed and competition as challenges for journalism ethics © Laura Juntunen

The study observes the ethical challenges faced by news journalists in the contemporary 24/7 media environment. Of specific interest is how increased online competition affects the journalistic process as a whole. The paper also seeks to explain why the ever-growing “need for speed” often seems to be regarded as selfevident among journalists. The new web-related ethical and ideological dilemmas, in particular, are examined through two specific cases, namely, the press reporting of the Finnish school shootings that took place in 2007 and 2008. Consideration is given to how concrete ethical choices – or lack thereof – were being justified. Also in focus is how journalists seek to self-legitimize the journalist position in society when faced with public criticism.

KEYWORDS crisis journalism; journalism ethics; journalistic practices

Introduction In the Finnish context, the Jokela and Kauhajoki school massacres were exceptional media events in many respects. Jokela was the first big case where all the Finnish national news media competed seriously with each other on the Internet. This inevitably changed the whole scheme of things, as most of the media garnered extra material for their web sites – eyewitness comments, video clips, etc. Second, this was one of the most highly saturated media sites of all time in the country. Most domestic media organizations rushed their own news crews to the crime scene, with the foreign media following in force. It has also been argued that in this case the whole of the Finnish media was said to glide towards the tabloid style in their coverage. From the perspective of journalism ethics, the case of school shootings is relevant because it led to a public debate over proper journalistic behavior. The debate was sparked by a petition, in which the Jokela youth, deeply dissatisfied with the way they were treated by the media, wanted to “express their disappointment over media performance” and raise the question of “what is considered acceptable in disturbing circumstances.” Consequently, journalists had to defend their actions to the general public and were urged to discuss ethical issues in their midst. Quite unusually, the outside criticism in the Jokela case was mainly directed at the journalistic process and behavior and not at the eventual outcome, which is more commonly criticized by researchers and the audience. What was criticized was not the news itself, but the means used to obtain it. The purpose of this article is twofold: First, it observes journalism ethics in crisis situations. Second, the aim is to discuss on a more general level whether the ethical principals of the profession are somehow led to crisis as the economic and technical boundaries change. A central question is how the increasing need for speed and ever

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growing competition shows in the journalistic ethos. Also, I will take a closer look at the journalistic ideologies and how these are reflected in the debate over journalism ethics. The primary data of this study consists of 35 interviews with Finnish news journalists actively involved in the school massacre reporting during the first days of coverage.1 Two thirds of the interviews were conducted after the Jokela school shootings and one third after the Kauhajoki tragedy. The advantage of a case approach is that it allows us to observe the ethical challenges of journalism on the level of everyday news practices. I find this essential because research on journalism ethics all too often lacks a link to concrete choices and instead concentrates on abstract moral principles. However, it must be noted that an interview study does not necessarily reveal the “real” ethical decision making processes. First, the temporal aspect must be taken into account: some ethical questions were discussed during the most intense phase of the news process, but many of them have been brought up later on. Thus, it is partly about finding legitimate explanations afterwards. Second, the interviewed journalists were also defending themselves from outside criticism, of which they were very much aware. The competitive ethos in news work In the following, it is first observed how the journalists themselves evaluated and explained their ethical choices. Roughly speaking, the choices were legitimized in two ways: On one hand, journalists tended to justify their actions by referring to journalistic values and ideals and in particular to the journalistic duty to provide and process information. During the first day of coverage, the journalists perceived that their first and foremost duty was to observe and report the news, while all other aspects were considered secondary. At a later phase, they underlined the media’s role in helping the audience understand and process the event and, in the long run, the watch-dog function of media. Previous studies have suggested that during disasters even aggressive styles of reporting can be legitimized by referring to the public-service function of the media (e.g. Sanders, 2003 pp97; see also Deuze, 2005 pp447). For example, the duty to ”process collective mourning (see also Riegert and Olsson, 2007 pp. 154) seemed to be so embraced by journalists that respecting private grief was considered less important. On the other hand, the journalists referred to journalistic practices, to the internal rules of journalistic culture and, in particular, to increasingly tight deadline and competition pressures. In the present day media environment an interesting question is how the increasing competition affects the production processes, managing news organizations, and journalistic culture (e.g. Deuze, 2003 pp216). Although the shift to the Internet has been a gradual process starting from the early or mid 90s in Finland, from the perspective of competition things had changed drastically during the year before Jokela. This was largely because both of the Finnish tabloids had invested significantly in the Internet and were now ready to challenge the rest of the national media. Thus, the traditional print media, radio and TV were competing with each other as never before. In the newsrooms the most obvious consequence of the competition was of course the immense deadline pressures. This in turn posed new challenges to accuracy. During the most intense phase of the news process, one of the most difficult questions was how to deal with unverified information, rumors and speculation. The biggest fear of the editors and online journalists seemed to be that false information would slip through the system, as this could damage the company’s reliability in the eyes of their audience. On the level of principles, the interviewees gave precedence to reliability over speed. Many of them admitted, however, that in practice the pressure to publish unconfirmed information was high.

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The field journalists, for their part, gave somewhat mixed reviews about the impacts of the increased net-competition aspect of their work. Many of them stated that they were doing “normal news work” and “not striving for anything extra because of the Internet,” although it was evident that the concepts of what normal news work actually is were – perhaps unknowingly – in motion. Some believed that the competition pressures “were given a lot of thought in the newsrooms but not so much in the field.” In a way the facelessness of the Internet combined with the collaborative production method seemed to lessen the field journalist’s ambitions to beat the competitors in speed because they did not feel “personally responsible for the eventual outcome.” Others, however, were of the opinion that the situation “definitely did not enhance the solidarity among the professionals” and many described feeling anxious about the increasing presence of competitors covering the story. Especially those with lesser resources were stressed out.2 At some point I started feeling very inadequate. Am I at the right place or should I be there…? And then you see colleagues walking somewhere very decisively and you start thinking that, wait a minute, there’s really nothing going on here right now, so should I follow them? [Photographer, J] In all, the fierce competition seemed to increase the media’s tendency to formulaic coverage and herd-like behavior instead of striving for the unique angles of a story. Judging by the outcome, one of the most striking observations is indeed how identical the stories were regardless of the medium. Even though one would think that playing the same eyewitness comments over and over again would not give anyone a competitive edge, other studies have similarly suggested that as the number of journalists covering a news story grows an individual journalist is more likely to take the path pursued by other reporters (for example Hamilton, 2004 pp23). Afterwards, the field journalists defended themselves by stating that the area was relatively small and there were not too many potential interviewees in sight. One of the reporters concluded, however, that this is based on a certain insecurity: It’s a kind of a safe haven, being where everybody else is. [---]And it’s easy to tell the news room that “look, you can’t get anything here, we’ve got the same as the others.” [Journalist, K] In the newsrooms, the competitors’ websites were monitored extra carefully, mostly in search of new details, but sometimes also in hopes of moral support regarding publishing decisions. One online editor openly confessed, for example, that he had purposely delayed using the shooter’s video material until someone else had used it first. Apart from competing with each other, the traditional media have to compete with the “prosumers” and a number of other actors in the online environment. The journalist’s identity is increasingly shaped by new media technologies, which force the professionals to rethink the traditional news producer-consumer relationship and, in the words of Deuze (2004 pp146), challenge the “we write, you read” dogma in journalism. Kellner (2007), who has studied the U.S. school shootings from the perspective of media spectacles, goes on to argue that the media no longer write the first draft; rather it is written by the people on the ground at these events. In the Finnish case, material drawn from new media sources was used widely in the mainstream media. Active citizens had an important role especially in the beginning of the Jokela reporting, as most of the newsrooms first heard about the incident from audience members.

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Nevertheless, most of the journalists did not regard the content-producing citizens as their rivals. Instead, they stressed that the duty of the established media is “to supply accurate and reliable information in order to counterbalance all the quickly spreading rumors and speculations.” Yet, at the same time, it was admitted that the pressure to publish unconfirmed information was high precisely because the information was already “out there.” Especially the managing editors were painfully aware that “sitting on the information for too long would make the audience go elsewhere.” A couple of interviewees found it unfair, though, that “the non-professionals can say just about anything on the web,” while the established media “have to live up to certain standards.” Some journalists were also pessimistic about the meaning of journalism ethics in the present day media environment: It makes you feel kind of hopeless, when you wish that the world continues to be a relatively nice place and that press ethics would help to accomplish that so that we wouldn’t show just about anything. But [---] what’s the use of hiding things when all the unofficial sites have all possible [shooter’s material]? [Journalist, K] Exlaining the need for speed In the scholarly literature it is often emphasized how commercial imperatives override ethical considerations in the current profit-oriented media. For example, Kellner (2007) notes that the ever more intense competition for attention is “leading the media to go to sensationalistic tabloidized stories in an attempt to attract maximum audiences for as much time as possible.” Also, in the studies on the past school shootings, the focus has been on the conflicting interests of professional or personal ideals and, on the other hand, occupational demands in journalism (e.g. Muschert, 2007 pp65; Berrington and Jemphrey, 2003 pp229-242; Jemphrey & Berrington, 2000). What this paper suggests, however, is that the contradiction between present-day organizational pressures and journalistic core-values is smaller than often assumed. Instead of automatically conflicting with each other, the different types of pressures seem to contribute the same way. What also needs to be acknowledged is that in everyday journalistic work the commercial and technological requirements are hidden behind the organizational culture, which functions as an adjusting buffer in between the outside pressures and professional ethos. In the course of time, the “practical realities” have shaped the journalistic values so that the norms and practices are in harmony with each other. Figure 1 is an attempt to explain why the ever-growing time pressure and “need for speed” often seem to be regarded as self-evident among journalists. At the same time, it aims to illustrate why news competition is generally considered as something fundamentally “bigger” than market competition by media professionals. What is of the essence here is how all three components – on one hand the commercial and technological pressures, and on the other hand journalistic core values – back up the same argument, namely, that the news have to be told as soon as possible – perhaps at the expense of, for example, accuracy and sensitivity. As Deuze (2005) remarks, speed can be seen both as an essentialized value and as a problematized side effect of news work. A certain sense of immediacy has always been in-built in the journalistic culture; news is supposed to be novel by definition, and in the present day 24/7 environment immediatism means real-time reporting. In the school shooting cases, the assumed audience expectations and the “public’s right to know” were used together as grand legitimizing arguments in explaining the need for speed. Many of

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the online news sites broke their own records in click-counts, which was interpreted as an indicator of high demand for information. In the research interviews it was repeatedly brought up that news competition is the “reality” against which journalistic performance is weighted. This view is also reflected in a resolution given by the Council for Mass Media in Finland in the Kauhajoki case. According to the statement (JSN 3988/4/08) ”communication has become almost realtime, and the competition between the news media have tightened, whereupon also the need for information is immense.” The sentence encapsulates a view often brought up by journalists. According to this there is a logical connection between 1) technological development and the shift to real-time reporting in particular, 2) tightened media competition, and 3) the audience’s growing need for information. The argument embodies the idea that the audience has not only the need but also the right to real time information. Implicitly, the statement also suggests that competition and haste are some kind of mitigating factors against which the media performance should be evaluated. In academic writings, news competition is often understood as an economic imperative, whereas the social and cultural aspects of competition are commonly ignored. However, speed also has value in itself in the journalistic culture. In crisis situations the need to be the first seems to be even stronger, because in these situations the organization is “really tested” (Riegert & Olsson, 2007). In general, journalistic performance is often measured against that of competitors. Interestingly, in the online environment the journalistic victories seem to be divided into smaller and smaller units, so that every new detail can be regarded as a “mini-scoop” that brings glory to the newsroom. Correspondingly, having to cite one’s competitors is commonly seen as a setback. Some of the journalists admitted openly that the “need for speed” is strived for, not necessarily because of the public or because of sales figures, but because of the news organization’s ambitions to beat their rivals. That you’re telling something four minutes earlier… to whom does it really matter, to the audience or to the other journalists, when you can say that “ha ha, we were first”? But that’s what makes the job interesting from our perspective – and, at times, a bit annoying too. [Online editor, J] For example, Riegert and Olsson (2007), who have studied crisis reporting as media rituals have noted that the sales figures are also not just economic indicators, but may have psychological importance, which has to do with the news organizations’ need to evaluate their performance. In reality the line between servicing the public and attracting maximum audiences has, of course, always been thin. The idea of catering for the needs of the public is strongly connected to the economic interests and possibilities related to new media (see Figure 1). Nevertheless, from the journalistic point of view the public service ideal is not merely an empty argument that makes the news media immune to all outside criticism. Like every other norm, it serves several functions simultaneously: in addition to working as ethical guidelines, codes of conduct help to legitimize the profession to outsiders as well as to the professionals themselves. The latter two functions should not be underestimated. [Insert figure 1 here] Final remarks: evaluating ethical ideologies The comparison between the school shooting cases allows us to observe the lessons learned. Despite of the fierce outside criticism, very few of the interviewed journalists expressed any regret about their own behavior nor did the newsrooms publicly

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admit making any severe mistakes or precipitate decisions in covering the first school massacre. However, the outside criticism clearly had an influence on the media behavior. As the critics got louder, all the news media quickly decided to pull out from coverage. Many of them also took a more restrained approach in their Kauhajoki coverage – largely because of the negative feedback from the audience. The field journalists were more conscious of the problems of crisis reporting and approached the eyewitnesses more cautiously – even too cautiously, according to some news executives. However, also the situation was different in many ways and, thus, it is hard to tell whether the journalists really learned something. In a way, news journalism is all about dealing with the unexpected in an expected way (Riegert & Olsson 2007; Ekström & Nohrstedt 1996). Although crisis journalism is less routinized than everyday journalism, the news organizations tend to cope with unexpected situations by applying familiar patterns of doing and interpreting things. The speed and hastiness, of course, add to the need for these patterns. In crisis situations, journalists rely partly on everyday news routines and partly on experiences from past crises, which work as cognitive shortcuts in new situations. The routines are valuable in minimizing the pressures created by the conflicting ideals and expectations. Thus, journalistic routines simultaneously guide the journalistic work and create standards according to which the outcome is evaluated. (Riegert & Olsson, 2007; Ekström & Nohrstedt, 1996; see also Berrington & Jemphrey, 2003; Killingbeck, 2001.) Several studies have suggested that in hasty crisis situations journalists tend to go on “autopilot” (e.g. Berrington & Jemphrey, 2003). In fact it seems that the journalists were so overtaken by the fierce outside criticism precisely because, in their own view, the media did not do anything differently from previous crisis reporting cases. However, the fact that the media was consistently following its own logic does not mean that the media performance and the acceptability of certain journalistic routines should not be open to public debate. In the research interviews it became evident that after Jokela the newsrooms had paid attention to managing the news organization, clarifying the command procedures, and better coordination of the newsroom in crisis situations, whereas profound discussion on ethical questions was lacking. In particular, new ethical dilemmas regarding information responsibility in the online environment were clearly not discussed in depth during the news process. Some thought that especially the so-called quality media was presumptuous in thinking that ethical problems do not concern them. We have concentrated a lot on organizing [---] but what we would need more is conversation over ethics. In our case, what’s stopping us is that it’s not considered necessary because we tend to think that [name of the news organization] is more ethical than the others [---] and that a certain kind of ethicality is embedded in our systems, which is not necessarily true. [Managing editor, K] What I’ve challenged my supervisors for [---] is that we’re expected to have all the same information as the tabloids, for example, but with house-broken methods. And that’s pretty impossible. They should clarify what the methods are then that we use. [Journalist, K] Despite the fact that the Jokela case raised exceptionally loud public discussion over journalism ethics, the actual debate over proper journalistic behavior among the professionals was relatively mild. In addition to defensive attitudes, there seemed to be two things hindering the conversation: First, the journalists’ tendency to attach situational

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ethics and downplay the importance of generalizable rules, and second, their tendency to concentrate on individual ethics and ignore the collective aspects and the overall impact of the media. Plaisance (2005) and Hanitzsch (2007) have been inspired by the work of psychologist Donelson R. Forsyth, who provides a useful classification of ethical ideologies. Forsyth’s (1980) taxonomy takes into account two basic factors (see Figure 2): The first dimension refers to whether the individual believes that moral rules are universal or relative. The second dimension focuses on idealism in one’s moral attitudes and whether the person is outcome-oriented or assumes that desirable outcomes should always be obtained with the “right” action. When the two dimensions are dichotomized and crossed, they yield a taxonomy that takes into consideration individual variations in moral judgments. Four distinct ethical perspectives are discussed: a) situationism, which advocates a contextual analysis of morally questionable actions; b) absolutism, which uses inviolate, universal moral principles to formulate moral judgments; c) subjectivism, which argues that moral judgments should depend primarily on one’s own personal values; and d) exceptionism, which admits that exceptions must sometimes be made to moral absolutes. (Forsyth, 1980 pp175) [Insert figure 2 here] According to my study, most of the journalists appeared to be relativists, in the sense that they rejected universal moral principles and emphasized the importance of individual conscience. Another central observation is that, according to most journalists, ethical issues cannot be decided in the abstract but should be grounded in the concrete of actual situations (see also Hanitzsch, 2007 pp379). Attempts to formulate specific ethical principles that would be applicable in most situations were seen by many as rather pointless and, at the very least, extremely difficult if not impossible to carry out in practice. After the school shootings there was some discussion in Finland on whether some sort of profession-wide guidelines for crisis reporting should be introduced. For the time being, the only codes that touch upon this issue are the best practice codes of the Darts Center for Journalism and Trauma, which were imported and translated into Finnish shortly after Jokela. For example, the Finnish national codes of conduct, which are largely recognized by the professionals themselves, say nothing about intrusions into personal grief and distress. Nonetheless, the importance of the instructions was generally downplayed by journalists, and many doubted if written form instructions would be of much help in concrete decision making situations. The norms are always rather open to interpretations. You can never create a set of codes that would be valid literally in all situations. [Journalist, K] No matter what kind of codes and norms we create [---] of how to report in certain kinds of situation [---] or how we avoid this next time [---] the exceptionality of the situation is always the deciding factor. [---] The situation is always unique and you can never prepare for it completely. [---] In the end it’s always the individual reporter making the decisions. [Journalist, K] Some journalists took up a somewhat more positive attitude towards clarifying the common rules of the game. Quite a few of the newsrooms announced that they had updated their own style books or codes of practice or, in some cases, developed some

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sort of house rules from scratch (e.g. relating to confronting the victims and interviewing minors). However, most of the journalists interviewed underlined that these rules should not be regarded as carved in stone but more as directional guidelines, which are to be applied case by case. Even those who regarded universal rules as somewhat useful claimed that making exceptions to the rules and using exceptional means should be allowed if the situation requires. Present day journalism seems to rely largely on individual ethics. After Jokela, one of the issues that received the most attention was how to confront people who have just experienced a potentially very traumatic event. According to the field journalists, they relied largely on their own “intuition”, “life experience,” and “empathy” or, on a more general level, on “common sense.” The editorial guidance was minimal, but both the journalists themselves as well as the editors stressed strongly the importance “inborn” or “natural” skills of a reporter in unconventional circumstances, whereas the role of education and guidance was downplayed. A quote from one of the managing editors sums up the general attitudes towards training and education: You cannot teach people how to approach another human being in a situation like that. [---] Some people may have had as much training as possible and it’s of no use. And the other way round, another reporter has got no training, but he or she has the natural skill [---] to confront people and understand their situation. [Managing editor, J] It’s really natural to me, knowing how to behave in the field. It’s like an inborn thing, that you just kind of know. [Journalist, K] One of the ultimate myths in journalism is that true professionalism is some sort of intuitive practice that cannot be properly guided or taught to others. If this is to be taken literally, a proper ethical guideline for a journalist would be to follow one’s instincts and personal moral codes in order to know what is the right action in a given situation. However, what then remains un-acknowledged is that most journalistic work is guided by silent and largely unquestioned rituals. Indeed, what is considered “intuitive” practice is often strongly grounded on journalistic routines. This interpretation is supported by the fact that, in general, contradictions between personal ethics and company policy seem to be rare. This indicates, of course, that people tend to gravitate to jobs they can live with. Yet it seems to also be the other way around, meaning that personal ethics is guided by “company policy.” For example, all the national news organizations declared that it is against their policy to approach victims’ families, and most of the journalists condemned such a practice as entirely inappropriate. However, those that actually had experience in “doorstepping” or making “collect calls” themselves did not seem to suffer from pangs of conscience, but rather defined it as part of their job. Another thing damping down the debate over professional ethics is the news professional’s tendency to define and deal with ethical dilemmas on an individual level rather than on a collective level. Discussing the broader impacts of the media would have been particularly important in the Jokela case, however, because what seemed to cause the most anxiety to the victims of the tragedy was the massive number of journalists covering the event. In the descriptions of the local youth, the pack of reporters appeared as an “inescapable wall” or a “herd of vultures looking for blood” (Raittila et al., 2008). Thus it can be assumed that the increasing presence of media probably would have made the locals frantic even if all journalists had behaved sensitively. The overblown volume of coverage is also one of the things that the news media got the most feedback from their

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audience in crisis reporting. Although most of the journalists were aware of the problems caused by the pack of reporters covering the event, they did not seem to feel co-responsible for solving the problem – or rather, they did not think that much could be done in the context of current news competition. However, a question to be asked is whether the media could be more sensitive to their impact in crisis situations, and could we as audience members, at least in principle, expect some sort of collective responsibility and broader distribution of liability in crisis reporting? Or can each of the media companies be lulled into thinking that they have done the best in minding their own business? Finally, it seems reasonable to ask what is the role of professional ethics if everything is left up to self-guided individuals to decide. A general problem of research on journalism ethics is that ethical questions are commonly observed on the high level of self-regulatory systems and professional ideals, while the link to everyday practices is lamentably weak. On the other hand, ethical and moral-philosophical questions are seldom at the center of current research on journalistic practices. The debate over journalism ethics can and should, however, be much more than elaborating universally applicable moral principles. Future research in this field should concentrate on analyzing the normative premises and hidden values that – consciously or unconsciously – guide everyday choices in journalism. This can be done by analyzing concrete cases. The role of subsequent considerations is emphasized in crisis journalism, because discussing concrete cases helps the newsrooms to prepare for future tragedies. By paying attention to automated patterns of behavior, journalistic processes can be shaped to give more room to situation-specific ethical considerations.

NOTES 1 Twenty-two of the interviews were done after Jokela (January-March 2008) and 13 after Kauhajoki (September-November 2009). The interviewees (journalists, photographers, online editors, managing editors) represent both print and television and work in seven different Finnish national media companies (Yle, MTV3, Nelonen, STT, Helsingin Sanomat, Ilta-Sanomat, and Iltalehti). Most of the interviewees participated in the study on both rounds. In addition, the secondary data of this study consists of hundreds of news stories, which I have gone through when preparing for the research interviews. 2 The quotes (in inverted commas) are extracts from the interviews. After the longer citations, the letter “J” refers to interviews made after the Jokela shootings and letter “K” to interviews made after the Kauhajoki massacre.

REFERENCES BERRINGTON, EILEEN

& JEMPHREY, ANN (2003) “Pressures on the Press: Reflections on Reporting Tragedy”, Journalism 4(2) pp. 225-48 DART CENTER FOR JOURNALISM & TRAUMA (2003) “Tragedies & journalists: A Guide for More Effective Coverage”, http://www.dartcenter.org, accessed 15 January, 2009 DEUZE, MARK (2003) “The Web and its Journalisms: Considering the Consequences of Different Types of Newsmedia Online, New Media & Society 5 (2) pp. 203-30 DEUZE, MARK (2004) “What is Multimedia Journalism?”, Journalism Studies 5(2) pp. 139-52 DEUZE, MARK (2005) “What is Journalism?”, Journalism 6(4) pp. 442-64 EHRLICH, MATTHEW (1997) “The Competitive Ethos in Television Newswork”, in Daniel A Berkowitz (eds.) The social meaning of news: A text reader, London: Sage: pp. 301-

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17 & NOHRSTEDT, STIG ARNE (1996) Journalistikens etiska problem, Stockholm: Rabén Prisma. FORSYTH, DONELSON (1980) “A Taxonomy of Ethical Ideologies”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(1) pp. 175-184 HAMILTON, JAMES (2006) All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News, Princeton: Princeton University Press HANITZSCH, THOMAS (2007) “Deconstructing Journalism Culture: Towards a Universal Theory”, Communication Theory 17(4) pp. 367-385 JEMHREY, ANN & BERRINGTON, EILEEN (2000) “Surviving the Media: Hillsborough, Dunblane and the Press”, Journalism Studies 1(3) pp. 469-483 KELLNER, DOUGLAS (2007) “Media Spectacle and the ‘Massacre at Virginia Tech’”, Fast Capitalism, Issue 3.1, http://www.fastacapitalism.com, accessed 15 January, 2009 KILLINBECK, DONNA (2001) “The role of Television News in the Construction of School Violence as a ‘Moral Panic’”, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 8(3) pp. 186-202 KIERAN, MATTHEW (1997) Media Ethics: A Philosophical Approach, Westport, Ct: Praeger KOSTINSKY, SPENCER & BIXLER, EDWARD & KETTL, PAUL (2001) “Threats of School Violence in Pennyslvania after Media Coverage of the Columbine High School Massacre: Examining the Role of Imitation”, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 155(9) pp. 994-1001 MUSCHERT, GLENN W. (2007) “Research in School Shootings”, Sociology Compass 1(1) pp. 60-80 NEWMAN, KATHERINE (2004) (eds) The Social Roots of School Shootings. New York: Basic Books RAITTILA, PENTTI & JOHANSSON, KATJA & JUNTUNEN, LAURA & KANGASLUOMA, LAURA & KOLJONEN, KARI & KUMPU, VILLE & PERNU, ILKKA & VÄLIVERRONEN, JARI (2008) Jokelan koulusurmat mediassa. [The School Shootings of Jokela in the Media] Tampere: University of Tampere RIEGERT, KRISTINA & OLSSON, EVA- KARIN (2007) “The Importance of Ritual in Crisis Journalism”, Journalism Practice 1(2) pp. 143-58 SANDERS, KAREN (2003) Ethics & Journalism, London: Sage. EKSTRÖM, MATS

Laura Juntunen, Department of Communication, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 54, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland. E-mail: [email protected]

Laura Juntunen is a PhD student at the University of Helsinki and a former journalist. Her main research interests include journalism ethics and journalistic practices in the digital age. She is currently part of two research projects (‘The Commodification of Facts’ and ‘Media, Citizenship and Circuits of Power’) financed by the Academy of Finland.

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Figure 1: Explaining the “need for speed” in journalistic culture.

Figure 2: Taxonomy of ethical ideologies according to Forsyth (1980: 176).