Professional ethics, the university, and the journalist

Abstract

This paper was first presented as a plenary lecture to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in August, 1985. The author, who is the Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University, discusses the intellectual, moral, and organizational marks of the professional that led reformers at the beginning of the twentieth century to locate professional training in the university. That discussion is followed by consideration of the moral consequences of university education for professionals, and how journalists and all other professionals are, at base, teachers. The third part of the paper reflects upon the peculiarities of journalism as aprofession, and concludes with considerations of the special mission of journalism.