Every major American media organization already maintains voluntary standards governing what it will and will not publish or broadcast. These standards take two complementary forms.

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The first is the professional code of ethics — most authoritatively embodied in the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics, which governs accuracy, fairness, sourcing, transparency, and minimizing harm. The SPJ Code is not law. It is a voluntary professional standard, adopted because the journalism profession understands that editorial choices carry moral weight and that credibility depends on consistency.

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The second is the internal standards and practices framework — maintained by every major publisher, television network, streaming platform, and digital media organization. Standards and practices departments make binding editorial determinations about content that, while legally protected, violates the organization's own values. They determine that certain language will not be used. They determine that certain individuals will not be identified in certain ways. They determine that certain allegations require a higher standard of corroboration before publication. They determine that certain sources require disclosure of their affiliations before they may be cited as authorities. These are not legal requirements. They are voluntary expressions of institutional integrity.

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Among other actions, these frameworks typically broadly prohibit, as a matter of professional ethics and institutional standards:

• The use of racial or ethnic slurs, regardless of newsworthiness

• The identification of individuals as LGBTQ without their consent

• The publication of unverified allegations of sexual assault without corroboration meeting the organization's own evidentiary standard

• The platforming of slurs or conspiracy theories about racial or ethnic groups without editorial challenge

• The citation of sources with undisclosed affiliations with hate groups or terrorist organizations as neutral authorities

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Few if any of these prohibitions are required by law. They are voluntarily maintained because they reflect basic levels of decency and tolerance, a rejection of bias and bigotry, an understanding of the enormously influential role media have on culture and society, and the importance of public trust. These organizations also understand that consistency is the measure of integrity — and that the same standard of decency, tolerance, and fairness must apply to all groups, or it applies to none.

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Nonetheless, many of these same organizations consistently fail to apply these standards when reporting on or depicting Jews, Jewish communities, or the Jewish State. Content that would not survive editorial review if directed at any other identity - ethnicity, faith, nation, or people — unreliable allegations of systematic atrocity, conspiracy theories dressed as geopolitical analysis, sources with undisclosed affiliations with antisemitic and even terrorist organizations presented as neutral authorities, standards applied to the Jewish state that are applied to no other — is published and broadcast regularly. This represents a failure of professionalism, ethics, and institutional standards — the very frameworks these organizations claim to uphold — bordering on the systemic.

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The Voluntary Code of Journalistic Ethics and The Model Media Standards and Practices set forth below require nothing new in principle. They asks only that media organizations apply to Jews the standards they already voluntarily apply to everyone else. These are is not legal instruments. They raise no First Amendment issues. They are an invitation to consistency — and an opportunity for media organizations to demonstrate publicly that their commitment to fairness and freedom from bigotry is universal, not selective.