Comparison On Journalistic Codes Of Ethics Between China And America

Journalistic codes of ethics are for self-restraint, but also embody the concept of journalistic ethics. It was breeding in the process of news professionalization and growing along with the maturity of news ethics. Through the study of journalistic codes of ethics, we can extract the mainstream news ethics thought of certain period, detect the professional ethics atmosphere of that time, and also find out the shortcomings and advancements of existing codes, then summarize how to amend the existing codes and improve professional self-regulation.Although American journalism started over a hundred years earlier than China, the time of their news codes’first appearance are pretty close. American journalism ethics is accompanied by a slow and tortuous development process of journalism. After a lengthy preparation of journalistic ethics, has generated the first formal journalistic codes of ethics.Due to the colonization, China absorbed a large number of western technology and ideas in a short time, and hence journalism experienced a leapfrog development. Western news ethics and traditional news values integrated in this period, resulted in the news codes of ethics requesting press freedom, objective and impartial stand, as well as patriotism and integrity. Also, it reflects the arduous task of nation-building and the miserable life of the people. Later than that, for regime changing, socialist journalistic ethics come to the mainstream, numerous national and local news codes of ethics include not only the ethical requirements of journalistic professionalism, as well as support socialism, serve the people wholeheartedly, and other unique contents.China and US news ethical codes will press freedom and responsibility, true, independent, humane care, etc., as important contents. The two countries have many common values and specific provisions, but there are different ideas and practices. Compared with the U.S. norms, our Journalistic codes of ethics has two characteristics, namely valuing the importance of moral principles and ignoring the specific standards, and addressing itself as absolute command. Implementation mechanisms of the two countries have different norms. The United States can be said to rely entirely on media, industrial organizations has no actual binding; while in China, the implementation relies on both media agencies and industrial organizations, and governments also in accordance with relevant laws and regulations constrain the behavior of the media and practitioners. Both countries have their own valuable implement ways, but on wholesale, the lack of a comprehensive enforcement mechanisms and strong enforcement agencies impeded the effect of the two countries’codes.The purpose of the study is to clarify the idea of undergoing our news ethics construction. For American news ethics, the paper take a "their good qualities and from, its shortcomings are to be no" attitude. On one hand, it learnt advanced aspects from U.S. news codes of ethics, selecting those can be used for reference to optimizing the structure of the text, encouraging practitioners, and strengthening vocational education; on the other hand, aiming at co-existence problem in the two countries, it conceived solutions to end the situation of chaotic management and poor implementation.