Coronavirus is a huge story, so journalists must apply the highest ethical standards in how they tell it
- Written by Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne
Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
From an ethical perspective, covering the coronavirus story is really hard to do well.
The reason for this lies in an inherent conflict between two ethical obligations: the obligation to truth-telling and the obligation not to add unjustifiably to public anxiety.
From the earliest days, when the virus spread...