AKEED, Aya Khawaldeh

Electronic sites sometimes violate professional press standards on their pages on social media sites, mainly Facebook, while adhering to these principles on their official websites in covering the same story, thus confusing the public.

A Jordanian news site published a story on its Facebook page on sentencing a pilot who was about to fly a plane while being drunk. The site included a picture of a Royal Jordanian (RJ) plane despite the fact that the story on the website is related to a Canadian airline company.

Publishing a picture of an RJ plane within a context that has to do with sentencing a pilot at a Canadian airline company to eight months in prison for flying a plane while being drunk has provoked many users of social media sites, who expressed displeasure over the offense to a national company, like RJ, and providing wrong information about it.

The said news site published a picture of the RJ plane on its Facebook page; however, it published the picture of a plane of a Canadian airline company on its official website. Since the headline of the story did not indicate that the incident occurred in Canada, this gave the impression that the penalized pilot works for RJ.

Other electronic sites that ran the story acted properly and explained both in the headline and body of the story that the news pertains to a Canadian airline company. They also included illustrative pictures of planes of Canadian or other airline companies.

Thus, the news site violated the mission of journalism, which requires accuracy and objectivity and not publishing misleading or distorted information, including pictures, articles, and commentaries, as stated in Article 9 of the Press Code of Honor.

According to the same article, media establishments must use headlines that accurately and faithfully represent the published press material. They must also state the place and source of the incident, whether it is inside or outside the Kingdom.