Your newsroom may not have a standards editor. It still needs someone doing the job.

Even small newsrooms need someone with the time, training and authority to help journalists make difficult ethical calls

In February 2022, Russia’s army crossed into Ukraine and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that continues today. In the first days following the invasion, I had just started my job as a member of the national standards team at NBC News, and I was working with reporters, editors and producers across the company. Every day, journalists brought us stories they were wrestling with and tough questions about their coverage. We’d go through the reporting together: Are we being accurate? Are we being fair? Are we being transparent? A lot of the time, there wasn’t a rule that settled it. We had to talk it through and make a judgment call.

During those first days of the Russian invasion, my standards colleagues and I were faced with a big decision: What do we call this event? Is it still an “invasion?” A “conflict?” Or do we characterize it in a way that would have the most serious ramifications and perhaps even begin to shape the national conversation around it: a war?