Rewriting the Rules? European Media Councils’ Responses to Digital Journalism’s Ethical Challenges

As ethical self-regulating bodies and institutionalized intermediaries between journalism and the public, media councils translate journalistic norms into concrete standards. This study explores how these institutions adapt their workings and standards to digital journalism’s challenges. We conducted a multi-method study of nine European media councils (Belgium’s Dutch-speaking and French-speaking councils, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Ireland, North Macedonia, and Slovenia), combining qualitative content analysis of 152 complaints decisions in 2022 with nine in-depth interviews with council functionaries. Drawing on boundary work theory, we identify normative adaptation strategies across four domains: privacy concerns, corrections and rectifications, journalistic use of AI, and delineating journalistic actors. Both the nature and pace of adaptation vary across these domains, reflecting different perceived threats to journalistic authority. Most adaptation occurs reactively and pragmatically, although almost all councils are proactively outlining ethical use of AI – potentially because of its threat to journalism’s epistemic authority. The Danish enforcement of the right to be forgotten represents the most significant adaptive capacity, though it exists in tension with the advisory nature of most councils. Adaptation has largely occurred for online journalism in the traditional sense, with councils converging on explicit correction requirements, while remaining absent for social media corrections.