Brand i förorten
En studie av etiken i journalistiken
A great fire seized a suburb in a small town in Sweden in the autumn of 2011. Parts of a shopping mall were burnt to the ground by youngsters. Due to the suburb's earlier problems, the event was a tough ethical dilemma for the town's journalists.The purpose of this thesis was to study and examine the local newspapers ethical treatment of this event. How do they motivate their decisions on what to publish and what not to publish? How do the articles treat ethical dilemmas? What do the journalists think about ethical journalism?This study is based on a survey of the articles published about the fire in the two local newspapers seven days after the fire. We chose 16 articles for a critical qualitative discourse analysis and we interviewed 4 of the journalists who wrote articles about the fire.The study shows that the newspapers in some ways may have contributed to a polarization of people, a so-called ?us and them? scenario.