The Indonesian Press Council earlier this month released a guideline or a code of conduct for online media outlets which had been in discussion for several months. Called the Cyber Media News Coverage Guidelines, it aims to drive online media outlets to perform within an agreed specific set of rules to ensure journalistic integrity and values are upheld.

Online news outlets had been driven primarily by breaking news so much that often verification efforts no longer seem to matter. It’s not a rarity that we would see a handful of stories covering a single subject with only a single source and a single paragraph being the only differentiating factor between the stories.

The set of guidelines released by the Press Council hopes to address issues such as these which had been plaguing online news portals for quite some time. It wants each story to be verified with multiple sources whenever possible and to note that an effort had been made to do so when a source is not forthcoming. A secondary source is not deemed necessary when the primary source is considered credible and competent.

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