Principles of Professional Ethics in Journalism and Mass Media in Crisis Management (Earthquake)

The present article gives a brief introduction to the state of a crisis situation and its underlying indicators, shedding lights on the role and functions of mass media in managing a crisis situation, in the best possible way, at its three stages: pre-incident stage, crisis stage and post-incident stage. Since the main focus of the article is to address the principles of professional ethics to be observed by mass media in a crisis situation, it will first put forward different definitions of ethics and its principles to demonstrate the necessity to codify the principles of professional ethics, then it will address the media ethics as well as the key international principles of professional ethics in journalism. Given the similarity between journalism and news reporting, their principles of professional ethics and other key issues in a crisis situation (inside the crisis-hit area and its outside) could be generalized to other media, including radio. Due to the specific role of radio in managing natural crises, such as earthquake, this communication means has been introduced as the better medium in crisis management.