The Catalan Journalists' Association, the Information Council of Catalonia (CIC) and the eleven Catalan universities that offer journalism studies organised a one-day conference on journalistic ethics at the Barcelona Catalan Journalists' Association headquarters on 25 November. During the event, different papers were presented on professional practice, misinformation and coverage of COVID-19. As one of the universities that set up the event, UIC Barcelona contributed two papers, one from the Dean of the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Rebeca Pardo, and one from Faculty lecturer, Laia Castro.

The title of the one-day conference was “Qüestions ètiques en les imatges de la Covid-19: del fotoperiodisme professional a les xarxes socials” (Ethical issues in images of COVID-19: from professional photojournalism to social networks). During the event, Rebeca Pardo presented the results of a research project funded by a bioethics grant from the Victor Grifols Foundation in which she worked alongside University of Barcelona lecturer Montse Morcate on the ethics of images of disease, death and grief during the pandemic. The Dean of the Faculty also reflected on “photodemia”, a concept that emerged after the avalanche of images published during the first stage of the health crisis that led to the “infantilisation” of society. Real pain and suffering were not shown because professionals were unable to access the hospitals and morgues to document reality. It therefore highlighted the conflict between the right to information and the right to privacy and had an impact on the problem of a narrative that leads to a mismatch between the reality of what happened and the photographs that were published. Finally, she talked about the problem of unqualified practice and the fact the sector has become more precarious and asked for trust to be placed in trained photojournalists who follow the guidelines set out in the professional Code of Ethics.

Laia Castro presented the results of a research project on the consumption of political news and their informative quality based on a survey of 28.000 people in different European countries. The title of her talk was “Les dietes informatives més saludables: consum de notícies i coneixement polític en 17 països europeus” (The Healthiest Information Diets: the Consumption of News and Political Knowledge in 17 European Countries). Castro described the five news consumer profiles that exist in our European context: Minimalists, occasional consumers of news and political information; consumers of news via social networks; traditionalists, people who access traditional media and public television to remain informed; online news search engine users, users who actively search for news both on networks and directly in online media selectively, and “superconsumers” of news, people who are exposed to all types of media very often. Finally, she concluded that consumers who tend to consume traditional media not only have more political knowledge, but also more interest in politics, more education, and more trust in the media than those who are primarily informed through social media.

The event highlighted the importance of the current monitoring of the Code of Ethics and led to some conclusions such as the generation of synergies within research; the work that must be carried out in universities to promote ethical content, bearing in mind that is where future professionals are being trained; the fight against mistrust of the media and the importance of media literacy among young people and adults.

You can watch the conference by clicking on this link.