Active Networks prides itself on giving original, unbiased, factual, fair and accurate information and engaging articles and copy.

Active Networks’ members and freelancers engaged in journalism commit themselves to:

  • Honesty
  • Fairness
  • Independence
  • Respect for the rights of others

Accuracy and clarity

Active Networks takes care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.

We must adhere to the following:

Ensure that factual material in news reports and elsewhere is accurate and not misleading, and is distinguishable from other material, such as opinion.

Provide a correction or other adequate remedial action if published material is significantly inaccurate or misleading promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology.

Fairness and balance

Ensure that factual material is presented with reasonable fairness and balance, and that writers’ expressions of opinion are not based on significantly inaccurate factual material or omission of key facts.

Privacy and avoidance of harm

Avoid intruding on a person’s reasonable expectations of privacy, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest*.

Avoid causing or contributing materially to substantial offence, distress or prejudice, or a substantial risk to health or safety, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest*.

It is unacceptable to photograph individuals, without their consent, in public or private places where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Confidential sources

Journalists have a moral obligation to protect confidential sources of information.

Integrity and transparency

We must avoid publishing material which has been gathered by deceptive or unfair means, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest*.

Ensure that conflicts of interests are avoided or adequately disclosed, and that they do not influence published material.

Discrimination

We must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s, race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.

Details of an individual’s race, colour, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.

*The Public Interest

There may be exceptions to the clauses marked * where they can be demonstrated to be in the public interest. The public interest includes, but is not confined to:

  • Detecting or exposing crime, or the threat of crime, or serious impropriety.
  • Protecting public health or safety.
  • Protecting the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation.
  • Disclosing a person or organisation’s failure or likely failure to comply with any obligation to which they are subject.
  • Disclosing a miscarriage of justice.
  • Raising or contributing to a matter of public debate, including serious cases of impropriety, unethical conduct or incompetence concerning the public.
  • Disclosing concealment, or likely concealment, of any of the above.
  • There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself.

Source: Active Networks procedures, Independent Press Standards Organisation Editors’ Code of Practice 2018 and Australian Press Council