New ethical guidelines at Dow Jones properties

Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires and Marketwatch, has issued new ethical guideliness for its business journalists.

The guidelines do not mention that they apply to Barron’s, another Dow Jones property.

The new guidelines include how business journalists should handle themselves using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Here are some examples:

These ground rules should guide all news employees’ actions online, whether on Dow Jones sites or in social-networking, e-mail, personal blogs, or other sites outside Dow Jones.

• Never misrepresent yourself using a false name when you’re acting on behalf of your Dow Jones publication or service. When soliciting information from readers and interview subjects you must identify yourself as a reporter for the Journal, Newswires or MarketWatch and be tonally neutral in your questions.
• Base all comments posted in your role as a Dow Jones employee in the facts, drawing from and citing your reporting when appropriate. Sharing your personal opinions, as well as expressing partisan political views, whether on Dow Jones sites or on the larger Web, could open us to criticism that we have biases and could make a reporter ineligible to cover topics in the future for Dow Jones.
• Don’t recruit friends or family to promote or defend your work.
• Consult your editor before “connecting” to or “friending” any reporting contacts who may need to be treated as confidential sources. Openly “friending” sources is akin to publicly publishing your Rolodex.

Read all of the new Dow Jones ethical guidelines here, courtesy of Kevin Roderick at LAObserved.