Code of Conduct

Planning Watch UK – Code of Conduct

All members share a common interest in protecting the integrity of our community. By creating an account, you agree to abide by the Terms of Service which outline the nature and terms of our services to you and our “Code of Conduct” which outline generally the ethical conduct of our members. While our code is in fact a set of guidelines, any deliberate violation of these guidelines – especially those that harm other members – will result in loss of site privileges and membership.

Members will strive to avoid:

1. Stories or comments that deliberately obscure your vested interests.
By being transparent and acknowledging a financial interest, or by disclosing a bias in your views, you help others to understand where you care coming from.

2. Plagiarizing the work of others, failing to acknowledge source material, or using images that belong to others without their permission.
It’s a fundamental aspect of integrity that we all understand. It’s not very complicated.

3. Deliberately posting stuff that one knows is untrue, false, or misleading.
This really goes against everything that Planning Watch UK stands for.

4. Threaten to harm someone through a story in order to extort a benefit or gain co-operation.
It sounds extremely unlikely, but we’ll do our best to spot them and remove them to protect you.

5. Breaking the law in pursuit of, or during the composition or capture, of a story, photo or video.

6. Make false representations about yourself to a news source.
It’s difficult to produce an honest news story when you lie to do it.

Members will strive to:

7. Be accountable – take responsibility for your stories and follow up if necessary.
Admit mistakes as soon as you know it and correct them. Sometimes stories change so that things that were once thought to be true become something else.
Try to remember to do the housekeeping.

8. Be fair.
We all have things that we believe in so strongly that it’s easy sometimes to fall into the “crush the opponent” mentality without meaning to do so. Fairness is the issue and we all want to be treated fairly.

9. Respect the community.
Every day new members join Planning Watch UK, let’s not disappoint them with rudeness or hostility.

Code of Conduct Reference Points

This code of conduct was created by consulting a wide range of material available online and some of the main sources we used are as follows:

Poynter Online – A vast online resource

A Blogger’s Code of Ethics – CyberJournalist.net

The New York Times Code of Ethics. – It is impressive.

News Trust Ratings – This is a list of criteria used by reviewers at News Trust.

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