This mixed-methods study examines autonomy and shifts in the evolving digital news industry. Autonomous agency of news workers is an essential indicator of how journalism work is fulfilling its role as the Fourth Estate in American democracy. This work responds to calls in media ethics, media sociology and moral ecology to better understand how organizational structure and individual moral psychology factors influence the levels at which digital news workers exhibit autonomy within their digital news organizations. Using participant observation, a unique (...) survey and respondent interviewing, I worked for one year with a digitally native hyper-local news organization to examine how organizational structure, leadership, socialization, and individual factors influenced autonomy levels in the staff. Results found overall high levels of autonomy in the editorial staff, but with many constraints such as financial pressures, perceived lack of time, a high pressure to perform multiple jobs and duties outside of the scope of typical legacy journalism job descriptions. (shrink)

How do journalists sort out the tangle of legal rights and ethical responsibilities in their everyday news work? A survey of 1,037 journalists and in-depth interviews with 22 others, found substantial evidence for 3 models of the relation of law and ethics: a Separate Realms model, a Correspondence model, and a new "Responsibility Model" in which the law is considered in problematic situations but only as one of several considerations in what is essentially an ethical decision. The findings have implications (...) for the maintenance of generous levels of First Amendment freedom news media currently enjoy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFreelance journalists face many of the same ethical dilemmas as journalists working in newsrooms. Because they work independently for various organizations, however, they may develop different strategies for making ethical decisions. This study used in-depth interviews with freelance magazine journalists to explore how they define ethical dilemmas, the types of ethical questions they face, and the individual and organizational influences guiding their decision-making. The study sheds light on the normative frameworks guiding ethical deliberations among this group of journalists, particularly in (...) the context of magazine journalism. (shrink)

Against the background of media and social transformation, this study examines Chinese press journalists' ethical orientation and tolerance for ethically controversial practices. The former captures journalists' theoretical conception of ethics along a consequentialist versus absolutist spectrum; the latter speaks to journalists' ethical judgment in relation to concrete practices. Analysis of a survey of press journalists found that a substantial minority of the respondents were subscribing to ethical relativism. Different types of controversial reporting practices were tolerated to different extents. Multivariate analysis (...) shows that those working in online newsrooms, those who perceived substantial commercial influences on news work, and those who valued the advocacy role of the press exhibited a stronger relativistic orientation, whereas respondents who valued the information dissemination role of the press exhibited a stronger absolutist orientation. But there are mixed findings regarding the impact of other predictors, which hint at the complexities of the evolution of journalism ethics in China. (shrink)

In this research, we surveyed 214 college journalists to assess their attitudes toward a series of ethical dilemmas. Significant predictors of a nine-item index included years enrolled in college,...

In response to recent scholarship on the need for universal professional values, a call that has intensified in the post-9/11 world, this article reports how journalists in Asia and the Middle East conceptualize universal professional values and the possible impact of a universal ethics code. In general, the journalists interviewed for this study were suspicious of a Western-imposed set of values or a code. However, they agreed on a core set of values, ones that de-emphasized truth telling in relation to (...) respect and the need to maintain a community. They also emphasized that different political systems make the implementation of a universal code problematic. However, there was great agreement on the need for such discussion within the profession and on the commonalities such discussion reveals. (shrink)

In a Web-based survey of 740 investigative journalists, competition and medium emerge as the 2 most salient predictors of journalists' tolerance of deception. Journalists who view competition as an important consideration in ethical decision making are more tolerant of deception. Television journalists have a higher tolerance of deception than print journalists. Overall, organizational factors such as medium and organization size are better predictors of deception tolerance than individual-level variables such as age, education, work experience, journalism as a college major, or (...) media ethics instruction. (shrink)

The cyclical nature of presidential elections provides regular opportunities for journalists to reflect on patterns in election coverage. This study presents a textual analysis of press criticism o...

This article explores the pros and cons of teaching moral development and moral psychology theories and principles in media ethics courses. Five theorists are introduced: Kohlberg, Gilligan, Rest, Kierkegaard, and Perry. Debates over the descriptive-prescriptive nature of the models are discussed, and a number of suggestions about how to implement the models in the classroom are offered.

This study, based on terror management theory from social psychology, examines how the thought of death affects journalism students' views toward relativism, idealism, and unethical journalistic behavior. College journalism students participated in an experiment where half were primed to think about death and the other half, the control group, thought about dental pain. Then, all of them completed a questionnaire measuring their attitudes toward ethics. Results showed that although those in the death group were no more fearful, they were less (...) relativistic and more strongly opposed to socially undesirable behavior by journalists, such as lying, publishing the names of rape victims, and reporting a public official's sexual affair. Implications for ethics research and journalists are discussed. (shrink)