Journalism Standards: Concept, Genesis, Content, Practice

For the first time, the author considers journalism standards as a cascading set of criteria, principles, and rules addressed to professional journalists and media involved in generally accepted international, national, regional, and editorial codes (manuals, guidelines, recommendations), other legal or ethical documents.

The author sees the origins of standards for pen workers at the beginning of the world manuscript and the first document – “Commandments of the ancient Talmudists for the creators of manuscripts”. The author found this document in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem during a research internship in Israel.

The main documents on the journalists’ professional conduct analyzed in the article are the International Journalists’ Code of Ethics, the Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists, and the Code of Ethics for Ukrainian Journalists. Journalists’ Code of Ethics of the Czech Republic is taken for comparison with the Ukrainian national one.

Separately, we talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the “Code of Ethics for Ukrainian Journalists”. There are several reasons for violating professional standards. Among them are journalists’ dependence on the founding oligarchs, the government’s corruption and its influence on content, low authority of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine among the media community.

The main tendencies of journalism standards violation by the Ukrainian mass media are named. Among them are serving the interests of the government or the founders, not society; ignoring the requirement to refute the published inaccurate information; plagiarism prevalence and impunity; the prevalence of media founders’ interference in the content; illegal receipt by a journalist of material remuneration for the ordered material; inconspicuous and ineffective activities of the Commission on Journalistic Ethics for Ethical and Professional Conflict Management.

The imbalance of approaches to the implementation of journalistic standards outlined above has exposed several problems that have accumulated both in the journalistic community and in the theory and practice of Ukrainian journalism. This includes the content of such concepts as “freedom of speech”, “objectivity of fact”, and “ fake factory”. It is also the quality journalists’ training at the relevant faculties of universities and the presence (or absence) in their curricula of such basic concepts that formulate a kind of professional profile of Ukrainian journalists – professionalism, decency, patriotism.