Content-Type: text/html
Social Dimensions of Ethics Decisions in Newswork:
A Comparison Across Ethical Situations
Dan Berkowitz
Associate Professor
School of Journalism & Mass Communication
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa 52242
(319) 335-5844
[log in to unmask]
Yehiel Limor
Senior Teacher
Dept. of Communication
Tel-Aviv University
Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv 69978
Israel
Phone: (+972) 2-567-0217
Fax: (+972) 3-6406031
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Paper submitted to the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication for the August 2001 Annual Convention, Washington, D.C.
Social Dimensions of Ethics Decisions in Newswork:
A Comparison Across Ethical Situations
Dan Berkowitz
Associate Professor
School of Journalism & Mass Communication
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa 52242
(319) 335-5844
[log in to unmask]
Yehiel Limor
Senior Teacher
Dept. of Communication
Tel-Aviv University
Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv 69978
Israel
Phone: (+972) 2-567-0217
Fax: (+972) 3-6406031
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Abstract
This paper studied decisions about ethical problems in newsgathering through five social dimensions: individual, small group, organizational, professional, and societal. Data were gathered through a mail survey of reporters in one Midwest state. Results found two broad response patterns, one basing decisions chiefly on professional autonomy and public interest, and another pattern that considered all five social dimensions more broadly. These patterns were most clearly distinguished by a reporter's degree of professional experience.
Social Dimensions of Ethics
Social Dimensions of Ethics Decisions in Newswork:
A Comparison Across Ethical Situations
From the normative perspective of a working journalist, ethics decisions related to news situations are the result of an experienced reporter or editor steeped in the professional traditions of the field. Ideally, these decisions should be consistent from journalist to journalist and from organization to organization. Throughout, consistent normative standards should be applied.
From a social research perspective, though, professional attitudes and practices - including ethics - are considered to be affected by journalists' working realities, such as interpersonal, organizational, and business considerations. This second framework contends that bottom-line imperatives are as important as professional ones, and that daily social life in a news organization presents a conflict with a more straightforward mode of decision-making based on codes of ethics or moral reasoning (Berkowitz, 1993, 1996; Borden, 2000; Christians, Fackler, Rotzoll, McKee, 2001; Limor, 1997; Voakes, 1997). In sum, journalists' ethics decisions are not made in a social vacuum. They are based on various imperatives and interpretations of their everyday work world milieu. As news organizations become more entrenched as profit centers for corporate conglomerates, the social dimension gains increased importance (Borden, 2000).
This study explores social dimensions of ethics decisions through a survey of newspaper reporters in one Midwest state. What is different here from other studies is that the research challenges the implicit assumption (i.e., Voakes, 1997) that journalists bring a relatively uniform, shared sense of ethics decision-making to each situation they confront while doing their job. Instead, this study considers the possibility that ethics decisions break into differing perspectives from case to case, and may stem from various factors such as journalistic experience, membership in a professional organization, or socialization into a specific news organization.
The analysis strategy here draws on cluster analysis to brings respondents into groups based on the commonalties of answers to a set of survey items. This allows detection of different orientations both within and across issues.
Literature Review
The work world of the journalist is complex. It is shaped by many of the same forces as workers who produce other sorts of products. Like those other workers, journalists are caught in a dialectic between journalism's professional ideals in society and the profit-motivated concerns that keep news organizations in business and financially viable (Berkowitz, 1993, 1996; McManus, 1994).
Although journalists are often depicted as independent, morally virtuous, and acting in the name of the public good (McManus, 1997; Voakes, 1997), social research suggests that much more is involved. A significant body of research has found that dynamics of small groups within an organization (Eliasoph, 1988; Ehrlich, 1996) bring common beliefs and motivations into working realties. Journalists learn how news "is supposed to go" in order to seem appropriate within an organization's cultural setting (Tuchman, 1978; Zelizer, 1993). News managers enforce behavioral ideals unofficially, because official policy in this direction would conflict explicitly with foundational beliefs of the profession (Berkowitz, 2000; Breed, 1955). These managers equate success of the organization with success of their own careers and tend to support the goals of non-news managers in the organization (Berkowitz, 2000; McManus, 1997).
Journalists also look beyond their organization to the social context where they work. They realize that social and economic values need to be considered in making news decisions, so they consider their community and its leaders for indications of potential conflict, and ultimately, the loss of revenue for their media organization (Berkowitz & TerKeurst, 1999). The profession of journalism thus provides a dualism for journalists, both setting out written and unwritten codes for ethical behavior while simultaneously constraining journalists as "decision takers" because of these very same codes (McManus, 1997). From a broader level of social aggregation, ideological dimensions of a society maintain the social status quo, subconsciously guiding journalists' decisions and acts (Hall, 1982).
Across all these levels of influence is the socializing factor of journalism education that instills an appreciation for the ideals of professional ideology, particularly those about journalistic independence (Altschull, 1995). Journalism courses and their texts develop a common sense of how news should be reported and how journalists should respond to a variety of situations in the everyday work of a journalist (Hackett, 1984; Hardt, 1998).
Applying a Social Approach to Ethics Decisions and Behavior
Traditionally, the approach to studying journalistic ethics centers on moral reasoning in a way that is isolated from the expediencies of the social world. For example, Christians, et al. (2001) offer a "Potter Box" model that considers values, loyalties and reasoning principles. From this perspective, ethics decisions rest chiefly on philosophical foundations. However, as business pressures of the news organization, interests of news sources, and concerns for the public interest come into play, this contextualization makes ethics decisions much more complex and relativistic. Journalists quickly realize that their long-term career success depends on this bigger picture, and that codes of ethics cannot alone provide their answers. Codes of ethics, have, in fact, been cited as a constraint on journalists' ethical behavior (McManus, 1997).
The range of social dimensions shaping journalists' ethics decision making has been explored from social perspectives that consider multiple levels of analysis (Voakes, 1997). Levels of analysis schemes look at influences on social processes from more-or-less hierarchical tiers of social aggregation (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). For example, journalists consider the ideas and actions of small groups of co-workers, of their organization overall, of the mass media as a social institution, of their larger professional beliefs, and even of the standards of the society within which they work. In all, higher social-professional levels of analysis are thought to bring greater influence than lower individualistic levels. Voakes (1997) studied how social forces from seven levels of analysis influenced journalists' ethical decision-making. To do so, he interviewed 118 Wisconsin journalists from both broadcast and print news operations, asking them to consider social determinants of ethics decisions in three hypothetical scenarios.
Voakes' analyses examined journalists' mean responses across 12 reasoning statements linked to different levels of analysis. He also applied multiple regression as a way of assessing relative influence of each social dimension. He found that all except the individual level of influence appeared as important factors, with no ethical dimension deemed "most powerful." He also pointed out that hierarchical effects might perform differently for ethical decisions than they do for content decisions, but that contingent conditions are also important components.
By drawing on multiple regression and comparison of means, Voakes implicitly suggested that journalists perform similarly from situation to situation, and that they bring with them a consistent decision-making framework. It is likely, though, that differences in organizational socialization and professional experience produce less than a uniform response among journalists, so that the factors Voakes examined may be both situationally variable, as well as variable within a group of journalists. In fact, Borden (2000) found that journalists adopt different strategies for ethics resistance to the same types of situations. She argued that journalists are indeed trapped in a dialectic between business and professional norms that makes decisions based mainly on professional codes and norms less feasible. Through five focus groups involving 25 journalists at one newspaper, Borden offered scenarios to unearth how different strategies were applied to navigate between professional standards
and organizational demands.
In all, Borden found four key resistance strategies in place. Two strategies were intended to subvert organizational goals, and incorporated elements of protest and sabotage. More diplomatic strategies gave weight to organizational goals, but tended to balance solutions with ethical ideals. These strategies allowed journalists choices in how they managed their professional-business dialectic. A strength of Borden's approach is that she considers ethical decision making as both situational by their context and variable among journalists with varied sets of loyalties and values.
Evidence from the existing literature does not provide clear direction about the nature of social influences on ethical decisions, though. There is also not adequate evidence about the consistency or variability of social influences across journalists or across different ethical problems. Research questions therefore are a more meaningful approach for this topic, with four research questions following from the preceding discussion:
RQ1: Which levels of social dimensions appear as most important in shaping journalists' ethics decisions?
RQ2: To what degree do journalists make their ethics decisions from a common frame of reference? (and what are the components of that frame?)
RQ3: What social dimensions differentiate journalists' ethics decisions from situation to situation?
RQ4: Are there common background elements (e.g. socio-demographic or professional) that are linked to differences in journalists' ethical decision making frameworks?
Method
This study adopted the general data collection strategy used by Voakes (1997), although survey items were modified and different scenarios were developed. The analysis strategy here took a completely different approach. These methodological differences came about because the data for this study were part of a larger project that also gathered data from a country outside the U.S. for comparative purposes (although that international data is not part of the present study). That necessitated, for example, removing the legal dimensions of social determinants, because of different legal systems that affect journalists' professional and ethical decisions. Scenarios were also modified so that they would be a fit to likely situations in both countries. A survey questionnaire with three ethical scenarios was drafted with nine items concerning social dimensions, plus two items related to judgment of ethical behavior. Items were rated on a 10-point scale, with 1 representing a social dimension would be "not at all" relevant to an ethics decision and 10 representing "very much" relevant. Respondents were also asked to provide some personal background characteristics (age, gender, experience, professional membership, and education). The questionnaire was pretested with a small group of journalists in both countries and necessary small modifications were made.
The nine items used to evaluate scenarios included the following social dimensions:
The individual level is where a journalist considers his or her own sense of values and standards. Voakes found minimal influence of this level. The following items were used to tap this dimension (item numbers are included to facilitate discussion of results):
9. I would consider my decision according to my logic and feelings.
10. I would base my decision on my personal professional values.
The small group level is where much of daily work is accomplished. It centers on how journalists view the actions and norms of coworkers they regularly interact with in their news organization. The following items were used:
2. I would try to remember if any of my colleagues had done something similar in the past.
3. I would consult with colleagues whose views I respect before agreeing to the deal.
The organizational level is a foundational dimension in the literature of social influences on news content. It considers factors such as organizational socialization, the role of management, official and unofficial policies, and the organization's business/economic considerations (e.g. staffing, resources, competition) that ultimately impact the news. The following items were used to represent this social dimension:
4. I would consider the need of my paper to be ahead of its competitors in publishing exclusive and important stories.
5. I would consider what would have been the reaction of my editor had he or she known how I behaved or acted.
The occupational/professional dimension considers norms and values of the journalistic profession at large, a dimension that goes beyond a specific newsroom. This dimension is shaped by professional journalism organizations, journalism education, and the cross-organizational culture that is built and shared during journalists' careers. The following items were used for this dimension:
6. I would consider if there would be anything relevant in a journalistic code of ethics.
7. I would consider my conduct according to my views on proper professional conduct.
At the societal level, where journalists consider the implications of their action in a context beyond their personal attitudes and beyond the news organization, the following item was used:
8. I would consider to what degree my decision would serve the public interest.
The first survey scenario presented the situation of being asked to abandon a story by a source:
A reporter gets a tip about improper conduct in a major department of a large city. The reporter meets with the top city official who is in charge of that department to check out the information. The official says that the issue would not be of any public interest. He proposes that the reporter should give up the story and in return he will provide him with interesting information relating to three other city officials. He gives the reporter enough hints to make it clear that the information would be valuable and reliable. The reporter agrees to the deal, stops following up the original story and starts working on the new stories. These turn out to be good stories, they are published, and they attract a lot of attention.
The second scenario presented a situation related to deception in order to gather story information:
A few people have contacted a reporter and have given information that their parents are badly treated at a private nursing home. At least in one case, a person died because of improper treatment. The reporter calls the director of the nursing home and asks to visit the place. The director refuses and says that he won't allow him to get into the building. A relative of a resident of the nursing home invites the reporter to join him on a visit there to see what's going on. At the entrance, the relative presents the reporter as a family member, while the reporter remains silent.
The final scenario presented a situation where a reporter is asked to falsely attribute information in order to report on an important story:
A senior police source gives a reporter information about improper conduct of a top public official. The information might lead to a major story. The condition of the police source is that the information would not be attributed to police sources, but instead to sources close to the top public official. The reporter, after becoming convinced of the importance of the story, agrees to this condition, receives the information, and publishes it attributed it to an unnamed source close to the public official.
Data were collected through a mail survey of reporters on the staff at the five largest daily newspapers in one Midwestern state, with daily circulation ranging from about 46,000 to 159,000 copies. Questionnaires were mailed to all reporters at each newspaper, with names gathered either from staff lists or by inspecting bylines during one week of newspapers. In all, 124 questionnaires were mailed using techniques for increasing response rate such as reminders, second questionnaire mailings, commemorative postage stamps and personalized, hand-signed mailings recommended by survey research texts (Dillman, 1978; Erdos, 1983). A total of 94 questionnaires were returned by respondents (75.8% response rate), but after excluding incomplete and late questionnaires, 88 questionnaires were used in the analysis.
The analysis strategy applied cluster analysis, an approach that groups survey respondents together based on the pattern of their responses to a set of questions. In this case, the nine questionnaire items were used for a clustering procedure that used Euclidean distances and Ward's Linkage Method of joining.[1] A separate clustering was produced for each of the scenarios, with a two cluster solution chosen in each case based on inspection of the cluster dendrogram and consideration of joining distances. This was also an effective number of clusters for efficient interpretation. The set of 88 questionnaires was deemed adequate for this study, because the purpose was to identify orientation patterns rather than to project proportions within a population.
After the clustering was completed, cluster means were calculated for each of the nine items in each cluster, and differences between clusters was calculated. The clustering items were then sorted from greatest to least difference between clusters. Information was added to the tables for background characteristics of each cluster (experience, gender, journalism degree, and professional membership).
Results and Discussion
In studies applying cluster analysis, a common analysis strategy is to begin with an overview of the clusters and their characteristics. The cluster results were used a little differently here, with a focus on the four research questions that were asked. An overview of clusters does emerge in this section, but it is not the central thrust of the analysis strategy here.
------------------------------------------------
TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
------------------------------------------------
The first research question asked about the levels of analysis that appear as most important in shaping journalists' ethics decisions. This question is addressed by Table 1, which presents rankings of the nine clustering items for each cluster and each scenario. It is based on the results of Tables 2, 3, and 4. Results here suggest that there is not a rigid ordering of social determinants across journalists, although some patterns are evident. In all except for one case, small group influence (items 2 and 3) and organizational competition (item 4) were ranked as lowest in influence across journalists and scenarios. The pattern was not quite as clear for the highest ranked items, although occupational influence (item 7), individual values (item 10), and societal level (item 8) were regularly at the top of the list. It is also possible that because of an oversight in the item wording that respondents saw item 10 as an occupational rather than an individual level influence. This observation is supported by the fact that the other measure of individual influence (item 9) tended to appear in the middle of rankings.
Regarding RQ1 then, occupational and societal levels appeared most important. Both of these were among the highest levels of analysis. Small group influence, the second lowest level of analysis, was conversely ranked toward the bottom, along with the organizational influence related to the business dimension. This suggests that, at least consciously, journalists tended to reject the business dimension of the journalism-business dialectic, as represented by concerns for competition at their newspaper.
------------------------------------------------
TABLES 2, 3 & 4 ABOUT HERE
------------------------------------------------
The second research question asked about the degree to which journalists make ethics decisions from a common frame of reference. The analyses in Tables 2, 3, and 4 address this question. The preceding discussion related to RQ1 suggested that a somewhat common frame of reference exists, centering around individual, occupational, and societal dimensions. However, another approach to this question is to look at where the largest differences lie between groups of journalists (the two clusters) from scenario to scenario. To address RQ2, it is useful to note that respondents did not end up in the same group together for each scenario, and that the magnitude of the difference between groups from scenario to scenario varied.
A calculation of Pearson correlation coefficients for cluster membership by scenario found only a moderate degree of correspondence from one scenario to the next. The correlation for cluster membership between scenario 1 (trading three stories for one) and scenario 2 (using deception) was .41, for 1 and 3 (false attribution) was -.50, and for 2 and 3 was -.26. The signs are not relevant here, because designation of each cluster as 1 or 2 is arbitrary, an artifact of the cluster analysis process. What is important to note is that a common frame of reference among respondents would find them with the same journalists in a cluster each time. Clearly, this is not the case based on the correlation coefficients. Adding to this, cluster sizes changed from scenario to scenario, mainly for scenario 3 (n=38 and n=48 for the two clusters), where the two groups were of more even sizes. Although this evidence addresses the question in a somewhat roundabout manner, it nonetheless suggests that
beyond the similarity of social influence ranking across scenarios, noticeable variability exists when taking a closer look.
Research Question 3 asked about the social dimensions that differentiate between journalists from situation to situation. Examining Tables 2, 3, and 4 shows that items 2, 3, 4, and 5 consistently bring the greatest differences between clusters. These concern small group values (items 2 and 3), and organizational concerns (items 4 and 5).
For the first scenario (Table 2), concerning trading three stories for one, the reporters in cluster 1 were more likely to consider small group and organizational concerns for making their decisions. They were also more likely to take codes of ethics into account.
For the second scenario (Table 3), about deceptive practices for reporting a nursing home story, cluster 1 was once again more concerned about small group and organizational dimensions, adding a stronger concern for the societal dimension as well. At first, this might suggest that people appear in the same cluster each time, but cluster membership with the first scenarios correlated at only .41, and the group sizes are almost exactly opposite between the two scenarios.
For the third scenario (Table 4), concerning false attribution of information, the differences between clusters appears smaller, although it is still shaped along the same dimensions of small group and organizational influences. In this case, members of cluster 2 were more likely to consider these dimensions of ethical decision making. It is helpful to mention here that the signs of the differences are not important, simply showing that larger values reside in the second cluster. In fact, cluster 2 people in the third scenario are likely a subset of cluster 1 people in the other two scenarios, because the correlations are negative in each case.
To summarize the results related to RQ3, social influences that differentiated journalists' ethics decisions from situation to situation were related to small group and organizational dimensions. These were not among the most important overall dimensions that were discussed in RQ1, but they are the dimensions providing strongest contrasts between decision-making frameworks.
The fourth research question asked about common background elements linked to ethical decision making. In the first scenario, clear differences appeared related to journalistic experience and gender, and to some degree, professional membership. Cluster 1 people, those more reliant on small group and organizational influences, were less experienced as a journalist and were more likely to be female. This finding is logical considering that the scenario centers on social power of the news source and the people in cluster 1 would have a lower sense of power, which has been found as an important factor in the interaction between journalists and news sources (Berkowitz & TerKeurst, 1999). In contrast, cluster 2 had group means showing greater self-reliance (items 7, 9, and 10). The dimension of professional membership leaned slightly toward the cluster 1 people, perhaps representing a different cohort of journalists that had stronger professional alliances. A final observation about the
cluster 1 people is that with their lesser experience and status as journalists they also have higher means in almost every dimension, that is, they are generally more reliant on their social world for ethics decisions.
Table 3 shows a different result for the second scenario, related to deception. Although the difference between clusters again relates to small group and organizational dimensions, each cluster represents about the same average age and the same gender balance, as well as the same proportion of membership in a professional organization. The difference in education, though, suggests that cluster 1 reporters (more responsive to social determinants) in this scenario have had a greater likelihood of socialization into the norms of the profession and their membership within it.
Table 4 shows the results for the third scenario about false attribution of information. The makeup of cluster 1 is much like that for cluster 2 in Table 2. Again, the defining factors are related to small group and organizational dimensions, and as before, these people in cluster 1 are more experienced as reporters, with a larger proportion of males making up the group. This group is also much less likely to be a member of a professional organization. Looking back at the cluster means for this scenario, cluster 1 people show more self reliance, much like the respondents in cluster 2 of the first scenario. It is likely here that cluster numbers were simply assigned differently by the computer analysis.
Summarizing the background information in relation to RQ4, background factors are not completely consistent from scenario to scenario, but four elements did emerge. Both experience and gender were most clearly linked to social determinants of ethics decisions, with less experienced, female reporters appearing more responsive to their social environment. Professional organization membership was also linked to greater responsiveness to social influences, as was journalism education in one of the scenarios. Most directly addressing this research question, the conclusion is that background elements are indeed related to differences in ethical decision making frameworks.
Conclusions
This study considered the nature of reporters' ethical decision making as responsive to five dimensions of their social environment (individual, small group, organizational, professional, and societal). It also portrayed the nature of ethics decisions as variable across journalists as well as across ethical problems. Survey data gathered for this study from reporters in one Midwest state provide support for these assertions: reporters did indeed vary in their ethical judgments from situation to situation, and this variation did not appear to be simply random. Instead, these reporters appeared to show a difference in their ethics decisions based on encounters with social dimensions of the work world. Further, the data presented here suggest that reporters' ethics decisions do indeed involve situation-specific contingencies, because journalists were grouped together in different ways by cluster analysis depending on the specific situation they were assessing.
This study also found that the journalism-business dialectic produces an everyday challenge for reporters, a challenge that reporters address in different ways. Most clearly, data analysis found a contrast between reporters who believe mainly in the professional ideals of autonomy and the public interest, and reporters who take into account the contingencies of their social world. As Borden (2000) suggests, differences in allegiance to the profession and the news organization lead reporters toward different behavioral strategies for resolving the dissonance of varying social situations. For journalists aligning most strongly to professional ideals, their strategies will likely be more directly confrontational toward their organization's expectations. From the vast body of studies about newsroom culture, this conflict is a regular element of daily life in the newsroom (Bantz, 1985), but implementation of behaviors subverting unofficial newsroom policy will likely be restricted to t
he most senior reporters on the staff. Those reporters have built a proven reputation as a journalist, and they are accorded more liberties in their behavior (Breed, 1955). Younger, less experienced reporters, in contrast, tend to be censured if their behavior strays too far from the "policy" into which they are being socialized.
The data here did suggest a difference in backgrounds between reporters who allied with professional beliefs and those who appeared more responsive to their social world. Overall, those responding to their professional beliefs tended to be male, more experienced as a reporter, and not as likely to be a member of a professional organization. In contrast, reporters who responded to a broader array of social dimensions tended to be less experienced in their vocation, were more likely to be female, more likely to have studied journalism in college, and to be a member of a professional organization.
But these findings could be interpreted in two ways. One argument could be made that greater professional experience builds stronger feelings of autonomy and the need for serving society above all. A second argument looks more longitudinally, suggesting that the difference in orientation and background is really related to a cohort difference among these reporters. That is, journalists entering the field more recently have been socialized differently and have grown up in a somewhat different world that more explicitly acknowledges the impact of the business-related dimensions of life in a profit-making organization. Which answer is a better fit cannot be determined by this study's data, however. This kind of insight would more likely come out in qualitative research based on field observation and interviews in several newsrooms.
One final observation is that of the three ethics problems assessed in this survey, two involved reporters' response to an ethical challenge from a news source. In the first scenario, an official asked the reporter to stop pursuing a story; in the third scenario, an official agreed to cooperate with a reporter only if information could not be traced back to the official's organization. The second scenario involved initiative by the reporter instead, where the reporter chose a deceptive behavior to get information for a story. Reporters were more clearly divided by background factors for the two source-dominated situations. For the journalist initiated situation, background differences did not stand out strongly between the two clusters. One interpretation here is that the first and third situations hinged on power differences between the reporter and the source (Berkowitz & TerKeurst, 1999). In that case, older, more experienced, male journalists would feel more comfortable taking
an assertive stance. Younger, female journalists, in contrast, would be more likely to worry about endangering an ongoing relationship between the source and their news organization that might threaten the short-term success of their organization.
In all, this paper has found links between social dimensions of reporters' worlds and their beliefs about appropriate responses to ethics problems. Rather than presenting a universal normative perspective among these dimensions, it has shown differences by the socializing experiences a reporter encounters during the course of a journalism career. Future research, then, should consider exploring more about the impact of differences in experience and socialization on reporters' actions in order to more fully explore the nature of social dimensions of ethics decision making.
References
Aldenderfer, M., & Blashfield, R. (1984). Cluster analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Altschull, J. H. (1995). Agents of power (2nd ed.). New York: Longman.
Bantz, C. (1985). News organizations: Conflict as crafted cultural norm. Communication, 8, 225-244.
Berkowitz, D. (2000). Doing double duty: Paradigm repair and the Princess Diana what-a-story. Journalism: Theory, Practice, & Criticism, 1(2), 125-143.
Berkowitz, D. (1996). Exploring newsroom views about consultants in local TV: The effect of work roles and socialization. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 40, 447-459.
Berkowitz, D. (1993). Work roles and news selection in local TV: Examining the business-journalism dialectic. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 37, 67-81.
Berkowitz, D., & TerKeurst, J. (1999). Community as interpretive community: Rethinking the journalist-source relationship. Journal of Communication, 49(3), 125-136.
Borden, S. (2000). A model for evaluating journalist resistance to business constraints. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 15(3), 159-166.
Breed, W. (1955). Social control in the newsroom: A functional analysis. Social Forces, 33, 326-335.
Christians, C., Fackler, M., Rotzoll, K., & McKee, K. (2001). Media ethics: Cases and moral reasoning (6th ed.). New York: Longman.
Dillman, D. (1978). Mail and telephone surveys: The total design method. New York: Wiley.
Ehrlich, M. (1996). Using "ritual" to study journalism. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 20(2), 3-17.
Eliasoph, N. (1988). Routines and making of oppositional news. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 5, 313-334.
Erdos, P. (1983). Professional mail surveys. Malabar, FL: Robert e. Krieger.
Hackett, R. (1984). Decline of a paradigm? Bias and objectivity in news media studies. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1, 91-114.
Hall, S. (1982). The rediscovery of "ideology": Return of the repressed in media studies. In M. Gurevitch, T. Bennett, J. Curran, & J. Woollacott (Eds.), Culture, society and the media (pp. 56-90). London: Methuen.
Hardt, H. (1998, August). Among the media: Journalism education in a commercial culture. Paper presented to the Qualitative Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Baltimore.
Limor, Y. (1997). The "Little Prince" and the "Big Brother": The Media industry in Israel in an Era of Changes. In D. Caspi (ed.), Communication and Democracy in Israel (pp. 29-46). Tel-Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad.
McManus, J. (1997). Who's responsible for journalism? Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 12, 5-17.
McManus, J. (1994). Market-driven journalism: Let the citizen beware? Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Shoemaker, P., & Reese, S. (1996). Mediating the message: Theories of influences on mass media content (2nd ed.). New York: Longman.
Tuchman, G. (1978). Making news: A study in the construction of reality. New York: Free Press.
Voakes, P. (1997). Social influences on journalists' decision making in ethical situations. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 12 (1), 18-35.
[1] Cluster analysis is similar to factor analysis, in that it creates groupings of variables or people from a set of data (see Aldenderfer & Blashfield, 1984 for a full discussion of the method). Here response patterns across the complete set of nine survey items were compared in order to detect overarching response patterns about ethical decision-making.
Table 2: Mean responses and reporters' background characteristics by cluster to ethical scenario 1 (trading 3 stories for 1).
Item
Cluster 1 (n=30)
Cluster 2 (n=58)
Difference
C1 - C2
3. Colleagues' views I respect
9.2
4.5
4.7*
4. Need of paper to compete
8.0
4.0
4.0*
2. Colleagues' actions in past
5.7
1.9
3.8*
5. Reaction of editor to behavior
9.0
6.2
2.8*
6. Codes of ethics
9.0
7.1
1.9*
8. How serves public interest
9.1
7.8
1.3
7. Views of professional conduct
9.5
8.9
0.6
9. Own logic and feelings
8.2
7.6
0.6
10. Personal professional values
8.9
9.1
-0.2
Years as journalist (mean)
8.4
17.3
Male (% of cluster)
43.3
63.2
Journalism degree (% of cluster)
90.0
89.7
Member of professional organization (% of cluster)
73.3
61.4
For clustering items, on a 10 pt. Scale, where 1=not at all and 10=very much
* Difference between means statistically significant differences by t-test at p _ .05
Table 3: Mean responses and reporters' background characteristics by cluster to ethical scenario 2 (deception in the nursing home).
Item
Cluster 1 (n=55)
Cluster 2 (n=33)
Difference
C1 - C2
5. Reaction of editor to behavior
8.6
4.5
4.1*
3. Colleagues' views I respect
7.6
3.7
3.9*
4. Need of paper to compete
6.2
2.4
3.8*
8. How serves public interest
9.2
6.6
2.6*
2. Colleagues' actions in past
5.0
2.5
2.5*
6. Codes of ethics
8.4
7.5
0.9
9. Own logic and feelings
8.2
7.7
0.5
7. Views of professional conduct
9.1
9.0
0.1
10. Personal professional values
8.9
8.9
0.0
Years as journalist (mean)
13.3
15.8
Male (% of cluster)
56.4
56.3
Journalism degree (% of cluster)
94.6
81.8
Member of professional organization (% of cluster)
67.3
62.5
For clustering items, on a 10 pt. Scale, where 1=not at all and 10=very much
* Difference between means statistically significant differences by t-test at p _ .05
Table 4: Mean responses and reporters' background characteristics by cluster to ethical scenario 3 (false attribution)
Item
Cluster 1 (n=38)
Cluster 2 (n=48)
Difference
C1 - C2
3. Colleagues' views I respect
5.1
7.2
-2.1*
5. Reaction of editor to behavior
6.4
8.2
-1.8*
2. Colleagues' actions in past
3.8
5.3
-1.5*
4. Need of paper to compete
4.7
6.0
-1.3*
6. Codes of ethics
7.4
8.4
-1.0
8. How serves public interest
7.8
8.4
-0.6
7. Views of professional conduct
8.8
9.2
-0.4
10. Personal professional values
9.0
8.8
0.2
9. Own logic and feelings
8.2
7.8
0.4
Years as journalist (mean)
19.0
10.8
Male (% of cluster)
64.9
50.0
Journalism degree (% of cluster)
86.8
91.7
Member of professional organization (% of cluster)
56.8
70.8
For clustering items, on a 10 pt. Scale, where 1=not at all and 10=very much
* Difference between means statistically significant differences by t-test at p _ .05
NOTE: Total responses to the third scenario was reduced by two because two respondents did not provide answers to items for this scenario.
Table 1: Comparison of social dimension rankings by scenario and cluster assignment
Item
Scenario 1
Cluster1 Cluster2
Scenario 2
Cluster1 Cluster2
Scenario 3
Cluster1 Cluster2
2. Colleagues' actions in past
9
9
9
8
9
9
3. Colleagues' views I respect
2
7
7
7
7
7
4. Needs of paper to compete
8
8
8
9
8
8
5. Reaction of editor to behavior
4
6
4
6
6
5
6. Codes of ethics
5
5
5
4
5
4
7. Views of proper professional conduct
1
2
2
1
2
1
8. How serves public interest
3
3
1
5
4
3
9. Own logic and feelings
7
4
6
3
3
6
10. Personal professional values
6
1
3
2
1
2
Numbers for each cluster represent the ranking of items, with 1 = highest ranking and 9 = lowest ranking. Items are sorted by order in questionnaire
NOTE: Scenario 1 involved a source offering to trade three stories about others for he was involved with. Scenario 2 involved deceptive practices to gather information at a nursing home. Scenario 3 involved a source offering information that would be falsely attributed.