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Media And Journalism Ethics By Bill Kovach And Tom Rosensteil

Good Essays

Serving the public’s interest has always been an objective for the media. The ethic codes emphasize that journalists serve the public and that that they are dedicated to ‘truth and fairness.’ (Foreman 2010 P.25) This has been adopted by journalism organizations within this nation.
Distasteful content is an ethical dilemma for the press, it is a difficult issue what is acceptable to one person may not be acceptable to another. As well as this newspapers and commercial television are under a great amount of pressure to deliver quality news that stands out from their competitors, this can have an impact on the material that they decide to use.
Journalists, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil’s were guided by these beliefs and formed a definition of journalisms primary purpose which is “to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing.” (Foreman 2010 p.25)
In his book Media and Journalism Ethics S.P. Phadke has stated that journalists are the formulators and disseminators of news they have a great responsibility both morally and pragmatically. As it is through them that citizen’s view the world, and they set the agenda for social concern and debate. (Phadke 2008)
In their book ‘The Elements of Journalism’ Kovach and Rosensteil highlight this point ‘The news media help us to define our communities and help us create a common language and common knowledge rooted in reality. Journalism also helps identify a community’s goals, heroes and villains.”
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