Study On The Cognition Of Journalists’ Professional Ethics During The Period Of Beiyang Government

Time during the period of Beiyang Government was special for China, it’s the period for the traditional Chinese society to step into the modern one, which also plays an important role for the transition in the history. During this period, though the country seems unified in surface, whereas it’s inner military blocs were in the state of separation and the country was in the state of chaos for the war. Political instability, authoritarian domination crumbling and rapid development of industrial capitalism objectively provide a relatively loose and free environment for the burgeon of the news media. The propagation of western ideology and culture, especially the innovation of social ideology and culture brought by the new culture movement also created the environment for bettering the professional ethic of journalist in that timeIn that period, With the prosperity and development of journalism--studies and works emerged at the right moment, ethic thought in journalism had also got further development under the ruling of the Beiyang Government. Some scholars like Xu Baohuang and Shao Piaoping had studied and discussed the moral cultivation and code of professional moralities in journalism in that time. Further more,some essential requirements for the journalists under the background had put forward on their works. This article generalized those requirements into four professional moralities that should be possessed by journalists during the period Beiyang Government, which contains the concept of personality cultivation, principle of objectivity and authenticity, be responsibility and press freedom.In the practical process of the journalistic practice, many journalists who harbors with lofty aspirations were all view the journalism as one of a launching pad for saving the country, they stick to their own occupation post with a highly professional accomplishment and moralities. The moralities embodied in the behaviors like scrupulously abide by the journalism ideals, in a high degree sense on the social responsibilities, reporting the news with an authentic and objective attitude and yearning for the independence of the newspaper and stuff. The formalism of those professional moralities processed with a distinctive characteristic of the times. After series of tracing back and discovering, man can easily realize that the production of the professional moralities in journalism in the period of Beiyang Government, is promoted by the ancient traditional moral culture (especially the spirit of historians), ethic thought in journalism in the early modern and the news theoretical ideas in Western.Though the good professional moralities are possessed by the most of the journalists during that time, some unfavorable phenomena like the appearance of flooding of receiving allowances, false advertisement, inconsistent news becomes normal, and romantic fiction and pornographic articles showed up in the public still exists. By analyzing the primary cause of the deviation of the professional moralities one can find out low income and allowance for the reporters, lacking of morality, allured by the external forces, deterrence by the powerful people, deficient in the funds and loosing of values are main reasons that conducted to the situation. Concurrently, the press circles had also made great efforts on the construction of the professional moralities. To enhance the professional moralities, some scholars such as Ren Baitao, Xu Baohuang began to drew their attention on seeking for self-rescue, they called on the meaningful actions to be taken to rekindle the newspaper industry, making punishment to the reporters with poor professional moralities, making progress on the journalism education etc. In addition, journalism cooperation had emerged and developed, they began to take their responsibilities on the supervision, and followed the code of conduct on the professional moralities of journalism.Every people is responsible for the rise and fall of the country, the strong concern for the fate of the nation and sense of the social responsibility, the emphasis on the cultivation of personal character and the respect for objective facts are all good qualities for the professional moralities during the period of Beiyang Government. Nevertheless, there were still some limitations on the professional moralities, for example, the definition on the freedom of the press during that period was over absolute.Combining with the the general situation and social background, this article analysed the professional moralities of the scholars and some typical representative of the journalists in the period of Beiyang Government. Accordingly, Fully demonstrates the development appearance and the historical status of professional moralities of journalism in Chinese history.