Typical standards include references to honesty, avoiding journalistic bias, demonstrating responsibility, striking an appropriate balance between privacy and public interest, shunning financial or romantic[2] conflict of interest, and choosing ethical means to obtain information.
Journalistic scandals include: plagiarism, fabrication, and omission of information; activities that violate the law, or violate ethical rules; the altering or staging of an event being documented; or making substantial reporting or researching errors with the results leading to libelous or defamatory statements.
Because credibility is journalism's main currency, many news agencies and mass media outlets have strict codes of conduct and enforce them, and use several layers of editorial oversight to catch problems before stories are distributed.
In some cases, senior editors fail to catch bias, libel, or fabrication inserted into a story by a reporter.
In other cases, the checks and balances were omitted in the rush to get an important, 'breaking' news story to press (or on air).