Ecuador: Journalistic Ethics and Freedom of Expression at a crossroads

Abstract

This work is a current diagnostic study of journalistic ethics, involving three hundred journalists from Ecuador.They described the environment in which they perform their activities and the ethical difficulties these conditions provoke.Compliance with ethical principles based on their self-regulations was also evaluated, and alternatives for improving journalism quality understood as a key element for democracy, were discussed.Methodologically, a mixed method was used: participant observation, focus groups, content analysis, and interviews.The work concludes with some recommendations that could be implemented by organizations linked to the press, the government, and academia.Violence, low wages, political polarization, and misinformation form the backdrop where Ecuadorian journalists practice their profession.This environment leads to information characterized by immediacy, superficiality, lack of context, and verification.This quality issue, linked to ethics, comes with additional problems such as selfcensorship and payments for activities like image promotion for politicians or support for disinformation campaigns.