Research On The Ethical Supervision Of U.S.Government To News Media

Theoretically, the news media in the United States are thought to be independent of the three rights:executive, legislative and judicial, acted as "the fourth power". The first amendment of America does give news media free and unfettered rights in law. In real life, the relationship between the government and the news media in the United States is not completely independent, on the one hand, the U.S. government gives the news media the freedom of press, on the other hand, enforces the legal constraints and ethical supervision on the news media. The news media experience a process from the completely independent initially to the news supervision and control in wartime then the broader ethical supervision from government now.Meanwhile, the American news media on the one hand have the right to supervise the actions of government, on the other hand, due to various reasons, such as politics and economic, they’re controlled by the government functional departments. The ethical supervision of U.S. Government on news media actually is the consequence of a conflict of interests; Government’s ethics supervision on news media not only exists in the soft administrative supervision, but also appears in the rigid methods like binding laws and regulations. Since1930’s the U.S. government has began to game with the news media and supervised them, from setting up oversight authority to enacting laws periodically, then perfecting the supervision mechanism, the government applies ethics supervision over the conduct of the news media.This article analyzed the ethical supervision of American government from five parts as following:The first part of introduction elaborated the theoretical background of government ethics supervision on news media. The part used the subjects background of journalism ethics, administrative ethics, analyzed the research status of the U.S. government ethics supervision on news media about international scholars; and describes the two aspects of ethical supervision of United States government on news media in detail.The second part described the present situation of American government’s ethical supervision on news media, such as:the history, characteristics and main contents. From the three aspects, this part clarified the structure of the U.S. government ethical supervision of news mediaThe third part analyzed the positive and negative two kinds of cases about American government’s ethical supervision on the news media, emphasized the necessity of government ethical supervision on news media.The fourth part introduced the current problems existing in ethical supervision of U.S. government on news media. Such as:hidden false to true makes the lower the news authenticity; lack of legitimacy; lack of ethical oversight leaded by conflicts of interests.The fifth part put forward some advices to optimize the ethical supervision of the U.S. Government to the news media. This part described systematically in four aspects:the standardization of ethical supervision; the optimization of the supervision system; strengthen the self-discipline of media and attracting the public to participate in ethical supervision.In general, the American government and the news media can’t be completely independent of each other, the government should enforce the ethical supervision to the news media. The author hope this research can supply a reference to improve the work of the government’s ethics supervision in China on news media in a certain extent.