Article

News Industry and Journalism Ethics

Abstract

Journalists have always been the focus of an ethical debate. However, the codes by which journalists are evaluated emerged as a result of individual ethics. This understanding of ethics disregards the industrial conditions, and formal rules and procedures in which journalists produce and publish their news, and assumes that journalists are free. The individual responsibility assigned to the journalist does not make sense in this context. Furthermore, within the course of time ethical codes of journalism reduces journalist’s sensitivity towards the profession’s social context and connections to democracy. The individual journalist who is in the center of these ethical discussions is in fact far from the ethical responsibility he is assigned to. The main focus of the study is the political economic analysis of the rational organization of the journalism industry, and the relationship between the process of objective news writing and the existing codes of ethics.

Keywords

democracy ethics news industry news writing technique rational production