Journalism Ethics, Theory Of Origin

With the conflict of social reality and disorder increased, as well as the tendency of media marketization, over-commercialization, media ethics has been not neglected by the media practitioners and researchers. Not only do we need to know the criteria for media ethics, but also need to know the origin of those criteria. For this purpose, this article identifies the origin of the current theory of media ethics on the grounds of history of Western and Eastern Philosophy. In this paper, it was arranged in the order of history stages.The first chapter identifies the origin of media ethics component from classical ethics theory. The chapter not only studies the classical ethics theory of oriental and traditional religions, including India, China, Japan, Arab countries, but also of Western classics such as Aristotle, medieval Christianity and the European Renaissance, analysing their value for media ethics.The second chapter identifies the origin of media ethics component from the modern media ethics. Ethics of this period, it returned to the rational and individualized way. The chapter analyses the value of those theories such as "moral sentiments", social contract theory, utilitarianism, Kant's categorical imperative, Marxist philosophy for the media ethics.The third chapter deals with the relation between the media ethics and contemporary ethics. This chapter discusses how Rawls'theory of Justice influenced the media ethics, Habermas's discourse ethics made what requests to the media, how the communitarianism impacted of public journalism, the existentialism gave what requirements for the journalists. All these indicate that Modern ethics has been nourishing the media ethics.Chapter IV makes an approach to the differences of ethics'origin between East and West, and explores the causes. There may be three causes such as different sources of Eastern and Western philosophy, different national character of various ethnic groups, and different social evolution of the East and West.The conclusion of the full text summarized research results. This article identifies the origins of core concepts of media ethics on the whole. For instance, the truth of news came from Chinese Confucian philosophy, which emphasized the importance of integrity and honesty. Journalists' compassion originate from Adam Smith's emotional morality, which accentuate the importance of compassion. Media sense of responsibility root in the Christian belief of "faith, hope, and love" and so on.