A journalistic ethics scale: Measuring constraints on journalistic decisions

A comprehensive literature review described and evaluated the methods and theories that have been used to study journalistic ethics. The body of literature's strengths and weaknesses are discussed. The literature lacks an emphasis in scale development and research delving into audience perception of journalistic ethics.;Journalists tended to make decisions similar to the press who work for the same type of news medium, but there were many cases where journalists tended to make similar decisions regardless of their news medium. Community newspaper journalists tended to select more acceptable ethical choices than did journalists working for other news media. When participants were asked to describe their most recent ethical dilemma, most mentioned an incident involving another individual outside of the newsroom. Participants typically mentioned multi-faceted issues, which suggested that their most recent ethical issues invoked several types of over-lapping journalistic constraints. While weekly newspaper journalists were treated as community journalists for the purposes of this study, most of the participants in this study suggested that they consider themselves to be community journalists.;Whereas the scale passed validity testing, there were some reliability weaknesses in the scale that warrant further testing. Some items may need to be eliminated from the instrument and additional dilemma development may be required.;The Medium Model was created to explain constraints on the ethical decisions of journalists. The model emphasized constraining forces that affect journalists working for different types of news media. The Cases for Journalists dilemma-based scale was designed to test the effects of journalistic constraints on ethical reasoning. Community newspaper journalists, daily newspaper journalists, local television journalists, and journalism students participated in the study.