A Study On Ethical Dilemmas Confronting Chinese Journalists And The Choices Made Accordingly During The Social Transformation

For the uniqueness of their work and social status, the profession of journalists is generally acknowledged as extraordinary since on one hand they can appeal to the most powerful and on the other hand they attend to the underprivileged. In the modern society, none of the other professions can aspire for the width and depth in which journalists explore the society by connecting all vocations and social classes like a "knight-errant". The call for justice and the "hero" is incarnated in the title "Uncrowned King" bestowed upon journalists, which in turn demands a keen sense of duty from them. At the same time, however, journalists may have received more denunciations and accusations than other professionals. The title "Presstitute" embodies such stinging satire on the wicked image of journalists.In transitional China, the increasingly market-driven journalism is becoming a more and more complicated and contradicted entity. The professional spirit of journalists often runs counter to the benefit-pursuit of the market, which exerts unprecedented pressure on the journalist group and hence brings about the downturn of their work ethics. The journalists who are more conscious of their professional ethics fall deeper under that pressure, and hence come across more trouble in work than others. And the trouble is usually related to the ethical dilemma.As the fluctuation of journalists’professional ethics can serve as a mirror reflecting the various social realities of contemporary China, the dissertation takes ethical dilemmas confronting Chinese journalists and the choices made accordingly in the period of transformation as the subject for research. Endeavoring to present a specific description of the work ethics of contemporary Chinese journalists, the dissertation examines the following questions:How do Chinese journalists think about the ethical dilemmas that they come across in work and how do they solve the problems? What norms and principles do they follow in getting out of the dilemmas? Is it simply the personal, interior sense of right and wrong of the individual journalist? Or is it certain tradition of "what is proper and not proper to report" each editorial board has acquiesced in? Or is it certain ethical guidelines drawn up by a professional association? The research does not aim to offer a single answer of either-this-or-that to the questions above. Instead, it attempts to illustrate how these factors work together to influence the practice of Chinese journalists.The dissertation is divided into six parts. The first part is Introduction, which sets forth the background, the core issues, the methodology and the significance of the research, based on a literature review of the previous scholarship; The second part analyzes comprehensively the ethical dilemmas varying with the specific journalistic posts during the whole work procedure (Gathering, Writing, Editing and Commenting); Applying the theory of ethics, the third part discusses the feasibility and necessity of the solution to the ethical dilemmas and analyzes the issues of "truthfulness, loyalty, objectivity and justice" that a journalist cannot evade before making an ethical decision accordingly. The fourth part is a case study on three representative ethical dilemmas:that of the end and the means, of right of privacy and right to know, and of interests and responsibilities. The fifth part investigates new dilemmas brought by the new media, such as digital news photography, blog, network news, citizen journalism and micro-blog, etc. and the new modes of making an ethical choice by journalists. The sixth part concludes the whole dissertation by summarizing the survey and description of work ethics of contemporary Chinese journalists with the pattern of Kohl-berg’s moral development. Working out the stages of moral development of Chinese journalists, the author points out the complexity of the pattern’s specific distribution among them. The dissertation finally calls for the conscience and self-discipline of journalistic professionalism and proposes the establishment of a journalism community to provide professional, spiritual and methodological guidelines for ethical choices of journalists.