---
watermark: ORIRO
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name: comm-journalism
provider: ORIRO.ai
copyright: Copyright (c) 2026 ORIRO.ai
description: >



  Journalism — news writing, investigation, verification, interviewing, and media ethics.

  Sources: Toastmasters, Strunk & White, Purdue OWL, IFJ journalism ethics.
---

# Journalism

## Core journalistic values

**Truth:** Report accurate facts. Verify before publishing.
**Independence:** Report without fear or favor. Resist pressure from advertisers, political actors, and even sources.
**Fairness:** Give voice to all relevant sides. Not "both sides" of factual matters (false equivalence), but fairness when reasonable perspectives exist.
**Accountability:** Hold power to account. The press as the fourth estate.
**Minimize harm:** Consider impact on vulnerable people, crime victims, families of accused.

## News writing fundamentals

### Inverted pyramid

Lead → Details → Background → Other information

**Lead paragraph:** Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? — not necessarily all six, but the most newsworthy elements.
"The City Council voted Tuesday to ban gas-powered leaf blowers in residential areas beginning next spring, citing noise and air pollution concerns."

### News values (what makes something newsworthy)

**Timeliness:** Recent or currently relevant.
**Proximity:** Local impact on audience.
**Prominence:** Famous or powerful people.
**Consequence/Impact:** How many people affected? How significantly?
**Human interest:** Emotional connection, unusual, surprising.
**Conflict:** Disagreement, controversy, struggle.

## Verification

**Three-source rule (minimum for key facts):** Verify important facts with at least three independent sources.
**Primary vs. secondary sources:** Original documents and direct witnesses > summaries and second-hand accounts.
**Document-based reporting:** Court records, corporate filings, government databases, contracts. Documents don't lie (though they can be wrong or forged — verify).
**Trust but verify:** Even credible sources can be wrong. Check claims.

**Social media verification:**
Reverse image search (Google Images, TinEye) to verify photo authenticity.
Video verification: YouTube DataViewer (Amnesty), Google Maps to verify location.
Account age, follower patterns, posting history to assess credibility.

## Source relationships

**On the record:** Everything can be quoted with attribution.
**Background:** Information can be used but not attributed directly. "A senior official said..."
**Deep background:** Information can be used to guide reporting but cannot be published.
**Off the record:** Cannot be used at all (clarify this explicitly with source).
**Confidential sources:** Protect source identity. Only promise this if you will defend it.

## Interview techniques

Prepare: Know the subject before the interview. Don't waste time on easily researched facts.
Open-ended questions: "Describe what you saw" not "Did you see the car?"
Follow-up: "Can you say more about that?" "You mentioned X earlier — what did you mean?"
The pregnant pause: Stay silent after an answer. People fill silences.
Get the document: Ask for supporting records, data, emails.
Ask the hard question. "Some critics say you..." — give them a chance to respond.

## Media ethics

**Conflict of interest:** Disclose financial interests; recuse from covering companies/people with personal connections.
**Corrections:** Publish corrections prominently and promptly. The credibility is in the correction, not in never being wrong.
**Privacy:** Intersects with public interest. Crime victims, children, medical information warrant special care.
**Diversity:** Seek diverse sources, voices, perspectives.

Sources: SPJ Code of Ethics (spj.org/ethicscode.asp — free), Reuters Handbook of Journalism (free),
AP Stylebook (principles), Poynter Institute (poynter.org — free journalism education), IFJ (ifj.org — free)