The Moral Judgment of Minority Journalists: Evidence From Asian American, Black, and Hispanic Professional Journalists

Abstract

This study used three controlled experiments to investigate the effects of a story subject's race on the moral judgment of Asian American, Hispanic, and Black professional journalists by changing only the race of the news subjects in photographs. Contrary to what in-group and identification theories would predict, minority journalists did not show preference to story subjects of their own race, nor did they show bias toward story subjects of other races; instead they treated all races as equals. Empathy was also found to be positively and significantly related to moral judgment in two of the three samples; as compassion, caring, and putting oneself in the role of the other increased, so did moral judgment scores. Expansions to theory and improvements to journalistic practice are discussed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was funded by grants from the Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the University of Texas-Austin Office of the Vice President for Research. I thank graduate students Siobhan Smith at the University of Missouri; Kate West, Teresa Correa, and Bryan Brah at the University of Texas (UT); and former UT undergraduate students Qianqian Liang and Shaun Stewart for their assistance on this project. I also thank the hundreds of professional journalists who took the time to participate in this study.

Notes

¹This article uses the terms “Hispanic,” “Asian American,” and “Black” to denote the three minority groups studied because those are the terms used by the professional associations whose members participated in this research.

²Moral judgment is defined as the process by which people decide that a course of action is ethically right or wrong (Rest, Edwards, & Thoma, 1997).

³Race was communicated via photographs in order to provide an unobtrusive and ecologically valid measure of racial attitudes (Fazio & Dunton, 1997).

⁴There were no significant differences in moral judgment between the four stories for any of the three samples.

⁵A high score on the DIT has been equated to higher moral development. The DIT has been given to thousands of individuals in its more than 30-year history and has been shown to be highly reliable and valid. The DIT has been tested for validity in more than 400 published studies.

⁶For a complete list of statements, wording of dilemmas, and photographs, contact the author.

⁷As has been shown in numerous studies (for a meta-analysis, see Thoma, 1986), there were no significant differences between men and women on moral judgment scores in any of these three samples: Asian (t = −.266, df = 56, p = .791; male M = 16.7, SD = 6.3, female M = 17.17, SD = 5.85), Black (t = −.048, df = 63, p = .962; male M = 13.22, SD = 7.67, female M = 13.12, SD = 6.92, and Hispanic (t = .483, df = 75, p = .631; male M = 4.37, SD = 1.65, female M = 4.17, SD = 1.9).

Note. Total Moral Judgment Score is based on four dilemmas; the in-group and out-group scores are based on two dilemmas. Pearson's r is not related to the in-group and out-group means, only to the total means. None of the differences between in- and out-groups reached significance.

*p < .05.

⁸In addition to empathy, this study originally considered the possibility that cultural differences as defined by collectivism and individualism might affect the moral judgment of minority journalists. Numerous studies have shown that Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans have a more collectivist cultural orientation, whereas Whites of European ancestry anchor the scale at the individualist end (Marin & Triandis, 1985; Triandis, 1994; Triandis et al., 1986; Vandello & Cohen, 1999). Although this construct has not specifically been applied to ethics, this study explored a possible relationship with indexes of collectivism comprising questions from previous studies (Marin & Triandis, 1985; Triandis, 1994; Triandis, McCusker, & Hui, 1990; Vandello & Cohen, 1999). However, when used as covariates, the collectivism indexes (Asian Cronbach's α = .70; Black Cronbach's α = .60; Hispanic Cronbach's α = .60) had neither significant effect on p scores nor any effect when used as a control in partial correlations between empathy and p scores for any of the three ethnic groups.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Renita Coleman

Renita Coleman (Ph.D., University of Missouri, 2001) is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism at University of Texas–Austin. Her research interests include ethics and visual communication.