The code of ethics has been around for a good number of years. It really reaches back to the origins of the U.S. RTNDA. Over time, because of technological change and so on, there has been a need to update the code—or, because of experiences that have led to great ethical questions, there were more discussions that led to changes to the code.
Over the last couple of years, our association was hearing from its members that there was a need to update it, because many of the things we were saying were very applicable to radio and television and the tools that radio and television use, but the reality is that practically any journalist anywhere now is really a digital journalist. Certainly, radio and television use digital equipment now. A print journalist is using digital equipment now and very often posting video to the newspaper site, so really, where is that differentiation?
The real differentiation comes back to the terms of the code. Anybody today can pick up a camera. We all have cameras. There are probably 30 cameras in this room right now, with our iPhones and so on. We can shoot video and it could land on tonight's newscast easily enough. The technology is there. It's the ethical filter that isn't necessarily there in all cases of people picking up the camera.
We went through the code over the past year and updated it in such a way that it would be platform-agnostic, so that no matter what equipment you are using, whether you work in digital in any form, the rules would be applicable. Being accurate is the same anywhere.