Are Journalists Motivated By Mission to the Public?
USA Today columnist Peter Johnson writes about media ethics and recent surveys, he ends the piece with this:
Tom Rosenstiel of Columbia University’s Project for Excellence in Journalism says the findings echo what the Pew Research Center found in a survey of journalists in 1999. “Most of them got into the business out of a sense that journalism helps democracy work and that they are helping their fellow citizens,” he says.
“Journalists get in this business out of an overriding sense of wanting to serve the public interest. They work bad hours, are grossly underpaid, they are derided by other media in Hollywood and increasingly distrusted by the public.
“So if you’re not motivated by a sense of public mission, there’s not a lot of reason to do it.”
February 2nd, 2005 at 3:02 pm
I agree that journalists are, for the most part, ethical people. And it doesn’t come as a surprise that they’re more ethical that the general population. However, the question that came up today while discussing this article with my fellow students at the school where this study originated, was how ethical journalists are under the constant pressure of deadlines? There is a lot of pressure in journalism to get the scoop, to turn out a high volume of copy, etc., which can cause journalists, even ethical ones, to make bad decisions, which is what tarnishes the profession in the eyes of the public.