The Ethical Dilemmas Of Journalists

As the subject and spokesman of journalism and communication, journalists need to make choices among different moral codes or obligations requirements. When they have to make a choice, they are likely to meet ethical dilemmas. Therefore, it is very essential to solve ethical dilemmas to enhance their work. Studies on the forms, reasons and countermeasures can provide references and basis for the front-line journalists. On the other hand, it is helpful to supervise news media activities for the masses. It is hoped that the quality of journalism can be improved and journalism’s reputation among the masses can be enhanced.Journalisms’ ethical dilemmas mainly present roles conflicts, interests conflicts, right conflicts and value conflict. Roles conflicts are led by interview methods, interview emotions and sources of information. Interests conflicts include the conflicts among citizen’s right of being in know, personal reputation rights, privacy rights, news organizations’ interests and public relations. Right conflicts can be found between media supervision and judgment, journalists’ performance and public’s supervision, as well as news package. Values conflicts are usually caused by the conflicts between the guidance of entertainment to death and heroism and the guidance of lack of accountability, conformity and morality.The reasons lying behind the ethical dilemmas are complex. There are several reasons for ethical dilemmas in journalism. The fundamental reason is the goodness conflict in journalism. The imbalance between benefits and values, the deviation between sense and sensibility and the conflicts from internal and external environment are the common main reasons for ethical dilemmas in journalism. Based on the above reasons and case studies, this thesis puts forward strategies to reinforce the systems construction, optimize the external environment and improve the supervisory mechanism to improve journalists’ ability to solve the ethical dilemmas.