"Trust me, I'm a journalist": Ethics and journalism education

It is no secret that journalism today is in a state of crisis, and that popular perceptions of the ethical standards of the media in general and journalists in particular are an important contributor to this situation. In any serious consideration of contemporary journalism, journalism ethics is centre stage and, for this reason, ethics is also central to journalism education. Yet, while there has been extensive debate and reflection with regard to journalism education generally, there has been surprisingly little serious examination of what journalism students are taught about ethics. This paper argues that a fundamental re-examination of the whole project of teaching journalism ethics is necessary if journalism educators are to meet what Stuart Adam has described as their primary responsibility to build, through scholarship and reflection, the language “that captures and expresses the experience of making, knowing and judging journalistic work and reflects a sense of responsibility and stewardship for its quality and standards” (Adam, 2001: 318).