ABSTRACTThis article examines the relationship between emphases on ethics within journalism programs in the developing world and the subsequent work practices and conceptualisations of journalists who participated in them. It hypothesises that particular normative emphases within such programs, whose bases are contested adversely, affects the preparedness for participants to work ethically in those environments. An analysis of the experiences of journalism trainers and students in Cambodia highlights several tendencies supporting the hypothesis, including that a vocational Western-oriented approach to program implementation (...) correlated with poor understanding of critical ethical ideals among practitioners, which contributed to low occupational confidence, poor ethical practices and the development of a two-tiered press system. (shrink)

Moral reasoning among media professionals varies. Historically, advertising professionals score lower on the Defining Issues Test than their media colleagues in journalism and public relations. However, the extent to which professional identity impacts media professionals’ moral reasoning has yet to be examined. To understand how professional identity influences moral reasoning, if at all, and guided by theories of moral psychology and social identity, 134 advertising practitioners working in the USA participated in an online experiment. While professional identity was not a (...) significant predictor of moral reasoning, an interaction effect between gender and identity priming occurred. This finding suggests that we reconsider moral psychology theory’s explanatory power for media practitioners and consider how the complexity of professional identities in concert with gender and professional training, among other variables, interact to affect moral reasoning. In addition, advertising practitioners participating in this experiment scored higher on the DIT than those tested previously. (shrink)