research title on journalism

Research Topics & Ideas: Journalism

50 Topic Ideas To Kickstart Your Research Project

Research topics and ideas about journalism

If you’re just starting out exploring journalism-related topics for your dissertation, thesis or research project, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll help kickstart your research by providing a hearty list of journalism-related research ideas , including examples from recent studies.

PS – This is just the start…

We know it’s exciting to run through a list of research topics, but please keep in mind that this list is just a starting point . These topic ideas provided here are intentionally broad and generic , so keep in mind that you will need to develop them further. Nevertheless, they should inspire some ideas for your project.

To develop a suitable research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan to fill that gap. If this sounds foreign to you, check out our free research topic webinar that explores how to find and refine a high-quality research topic, from scratch. Alternatively, consider our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Journalism-Related Research Topics

Analyzing the impact of social media on news consumption patterns among millennials.
Investigating the role of investigative journalism in combating political corruption.
The impact of digital transformation on traditional print media business models.
Examining the ethical challenges of undercover reporting in investigative journalism.
The role of citizen journalism in shaping public opinion during major political events.
Analyzing the effectiveness of fact-checking platforms in combating fake news.
The impact of smartphone journalism on the quality of news reporting.
Investigating the representation of minority groups in mainstream media.
The role of photojournalism in humanizing the impacts of climate change.
Analyzing the challenges of maintaining journalistic objectivity in conflict zones.
The impact of artificial intelligence on newsroom operations and reporting.
Investigating the influence of media ownership on editorial independence.
The role of journalism in shaping public policy on environmental issues.
Analyzing the portrayal of mental health issues in news media.
The impact of live streaming technology on broadcast journalism.
Investigating the challenges faced by freelance journalists in the digital era.
The role of journalism in promoting government accountability in emerging democracies.
Analyzing the effects of sensationalism in news reporting on public trust.
The impact of virtual reality technology on immersive journalism.
Investigating the role of press freedom in protecting human rights.
The challenges of reporting on science and technology in mainstream media.
Analyzing gender representation in sports journalism.
The impact of media consolidation on diversity of perspectives in news.
Investigating the ethical implications of drone journalism.
The role of independent media in fostering democratic processes.

Journalism-Related Research Ideas (Continued)

Analyzing the portrayal of immigration in national news outlets.
The impact of censorship and media regulation on journalistic practices.
Investigating the role of podcasts in the future of journalism.
The challenges and opportunities of bilingual reporting in multicultural societies.
Analyzing the dynamics of news reporting in authoritarian regimes.
The impact of audience analytics on news content and presentation.
Investigating the implications of deepfake technology for journalistic integrity.
The role of local journalism in community engagement and development.
Analyzing the effects of journalism on public health awareness campaigns.
The impact of economic pressures on investigative journalism.
Investigating the challenges of reporting in a polarized political climate.
The role of media literacy in fostering critical thinking among audiences.
Analyzing the influence of celebrity journalism on cultural values.
The impact of cross-platform journalism on audience reach and engagement.
Investigating the effects of social media algorithms on news distribution.
The role of data journalism in enhancing transparency and public understanding.
Analyzing the impact of crowd-sourced journalism on news authenticity.
The challenges of balancing speed and accuracy in digital news reporting.
Investigating the role of international correspondents in the digital age.
The impact of public relations practices on journalistic independence.
Analyzing the representation of LGBTQ+ issues in mainstream journalism.
The role of journalism in addressing societal issues like homelessness and poverty.
Investigating the effects of editorial bias in shaping public perception.
The impact of journalism on political activism and social movements.
Analyzing the challenges of maintaining journalistic standards in entertainment reporting.

Recent Journalism-Related Studies

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual studies in the journalism space to see how this all comes together in practice.

Below, we’ve included a selection of recent studies to help refine your thinking. These are actual studies, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

Imagination, Algorithms and News: Developing AI Literacy for Journalism (Deuze & Beckett, 2022)
Evaluation of the Effect of a Live Interview in Journalism Students on Salivary Stress Biomarkers and Conventional Stress Scales (Roca et al., 2022)
Professional and Personal Identity, Precarity and Discrimination in Global Arts Journalism (Sharp & Vodanovic, 2022)
The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Journalism in the Digital Ara A Descriptive and Critical Approach (Chettah et al., 2022)
Women in Mass Communication (Creedon & Wackwitz, 2022)
Newsgames: Experiential Reality, Ludenic News Reading, Conflict of Purposes and Norms (Cengi̇z & Kaya, 2022)
Deep Journalism and DeepJournal V1.0: A Data-Driven Deep Learning Approach to Discover Parameters for Transportation (Ahmad et al., 2022)
A View From the Trenches: Interviews With Journalists About Reporting Science News (Anderson & Dudo, 2023)
Understanding Journalisms: From Information to Entertainment by Persuasion and Promotion (Bernier, 2022)
Role of educational institutions in promoting medical research and publications in Pakistan (Aslam, 2022)
Ethics for Journalists (Keeble, 2022)
“I Felt I Got to Know Everyone”: How News on Stage Combines Theatre and Journalism for a Live Audience (Adams & Cooper, 2022)
Newsafety: Infrastructures, Practices and Consequences (Westlund et al., 2022)
The Golden Age of American Journalism (Alent’eva et al., 2022)
Advancing a Radical Audience Turn in Journalism. Fundamental Dilemmas for Journalism Studies (Swart et al., 2022)
Mcluhan’s Theories and Convergence of Online and Papers’ Newsrooms (Barceló-Sánchez et al., 2022)
Scientific communication after the COVID-19 crisis: TikTok publishing strategies on the transmedia board (Neira et al., 2023)

As you can see, these research topics are a lot more focused than the generic topic ideas we presented earlier. So, for you to develop a high-quality research topic, you’ll need to get specific and laser-focused on a specific context with specific variables of interest. In the video below, we explore some other important things you’ll need to consider when crafting your research topic.

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Research in Journalism, Media and Culture

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Faculty in Journalism, Culture and Communication analyze emerging and enduring forms of public communication and the institutional and economic conditions that sustain them. They employ a range of research methods, including ethnography, textual and historical analysis, and political economic approaches to media industries. As digital technologies have transformed mediated practices, the faculty has opened a series of new areas of inquiry, including computational journalism, the study of algorithms in institutions, and the cultural history of Silicon Valley.

Angèle Christin is an associate professor. She is interested in fields and organizations where algorithms and ‘big data’ analytics transform professional values, expertise, and work practices. In her dissertation, she analyzed the growing importance of audience metrics in web journalism in the United States and France. Drawing on ethnographic methods, she examined how American and French journalists make sense of traffic numbers in different ways, which in turn has distinct effects on the production of news in the two countries. In a new project, she studies the construction, institutionalization, and reception of analytics and predictive algorithms in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Ted Glasser is an emeritus professor. His teaching and research focus on media practices and performance, with emphasis on questions of press responsibility and accountability. His books include Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies, written with Clifford Christians, Denis McQuail, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Robert White, which in 2010 won the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha award for best research-based book on journalism/mass communication and was one of three finalists for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Tankard Book Award; The Idea of Public Journalism , an edited collection of essays, recently translated into Chinese; Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and Public Virtue , written with James S. Ettema, which won the Society of Professional Journalists’ award for best research on journalism, the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, and the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha award for the best research-based book on journalism/mass communication; Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent , edited with Charles T. Salmon; and Media Freedom and Accountability , edited with Everette E. Dennis and Donald M. Gillmor. His research, commentaries and book reviews have appeared in a variety of publications, including the Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Journalism Studies, Policy Sciences, Journal of American History, Quill, Nieman Reports and The New York Times Book Review .

James T. Hamilton is a professor and the director of the Journalism Program. His work on the economics of news focuses on the market failures involved in the production of public affairs coverage and the generation of investigative reporting. Through research in the emerging area of computational journalism, he is exploring how to lower the cost of discovering stories about the operation of political institutions.

Xiaochang Li is an assistant professor. She is broadly interested in the history of informatics, computation, and related data practices. Drawing upon media history, history of science, and STS, her work is concerned with how information technologies shape the production and circulation of knowledge and the relationship between technical practices and social worlds. Her current research examines the history of speech recognition and natural language processing and how the pursuit of language influenced the development of AI, Machine Learning, and contemporary algorithmic culture. Her work also touches on sound studies and the history of acoustics and she has previously worked on topics concerning transnational media audiences and digital content circulation.

Fred Turner is a professor and cultural historian of media and media technologies. Trained in both Communication and Science and Technology Studies, he has long been interested in how media and American culture have shaped one another over time. His most recent work has focused on the rise of American technocracy since World War II and on the aesthetic and ideological manifestations of that rise in the digital era. Before earning his Ph.D., Turner worked as a journalist for ten years. He continues to write for newspapers and magazines and strongly supports researchers who seek to have a public impact with their work.

Like all Communication faculty, the members of the Journalism, Communication and Culture group routinely collaborate with colleagues from around the campus. The group enjoys particularly strong collaborations with sociologists, historians, art historians, and computer scientists.

Faculty — Journalism, Media and Culture

Doctoral Students — Journalism, Media and Culture

Selected Graduates

Sanna Ali, Ph.D. 2023. AI Policy Analyst, Stanford Cyber Policy Center and RegLab
Jeff Nagy, Ph.D. 2023. Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies, York University
Anna Gibson, Ph.D. 2022. Postdoctoral Fellow, MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Jihye Lee , Ph.D. 2022. Assistant Professor, School of Advertising and Public Relations, UT Austin
Andreas Katsanevas, Ph.D. 2020. Technology Policy Researcher, Meta
Sheng Zou, Ph.D. 2020. Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
Christine Larson , Ph.D. 2017. Assistant Professor, Journalism, University of Colorado, Boulder
Yeon Joo , Ph.D. 2014. Associate Professor, Department of Digital Media, Myongji University, Seoul
Morgan G. Ames , Ph.D. 2013. Assistant Adjunct Professor, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley
Seeta Pena Gangdaharan , Ph.D. 2012. Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics
Mike Ananny , Ph.D. 2011, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California
Daniel Kreiss , Ph.D. 2010, Associate Professor, School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
John Kim , Ph.D. 2009, Associate Professor, Media and Cultural Studies, Macalaster College
Erica Robles-Anderson , Ph.D. 2009, Associate Professor, Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
Isabel Awad , Ph.D. 2007, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University (Netherlands)
Cherian George , Ph.D. 2003, Professor, Associate Dean, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
Francis Lapfung Lee , Ph.D. 2003, Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, City University of Hong Kong

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EBSCO Discovery Service This link opens in a new window Highly recommended as the place to start! EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) searches multiple databases at once, across many disciplines. Users can locate peer reviewed articles, videos, audio files, images, and more from a range of subjects.
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IBISWorld This link opens in a new window IBIS World is a comprehensive collection of industry market research. More information less... Requires NetID and password on and off-campus.
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eMarketer This link opens in a new window eMarketer monitors, aggregates, and analyzes data in the form of analyst reports from resources supplied by research firms, consultancies, government agencies, and universities. eMarketer focuses on worldwide Internet usage and e-business. The reports, articles, and in this database charts cover broadband and dial-up, consumers and e-commerce, e-business and IT, marketing and advertising; media and entertainment, demographics and usage; and mobile markets. eMarketer includes access to analyst reports, all downloadable in PDF, JPG, and Excel formats. More information less... A valid NYU NetId and password is required to access this resource
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Mintel GNPD This link opens in a new window Mintel GNPD (Global New Products Database) monitors worldwide product innovation and new product activity in consumer packaged goods markets. It covers food, drink, household, beauty & personal care, healthcare, and pets. GNPD allows you to screen hundreds of thousands of products by country, category, packaging, price, and other features. GNPD's analytical tools are helpful for analyzing trends in product claims, ingredients, and packaging, in addition to identifying competing products. More information less... Requires Net ID and password on and off-campus.
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85 Journalism Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on journalism, ✍️ journalism essay topics for college, 👍 good journalism research topics & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting journalism research titles.

Impacts of Internet on Print Media and Journalism
The Media Monopoly: An Overview
The Libertarian and Social Responsibility Theories of the Press
Writing in Sports: Perception, Role of Journalism in Sports
Bloggers and Journalists Comparison
Fake News and Unethical Journalism
Newspapers and Their Role in the 21st Century
Media Exposure: Personal Experience On average most of my media consumption is derived primarily from the internet or from television: news channels such as CNN, BBC, etc. and online sources of information.
History and Background of “Essence” Magazine “Essence”, a lifestyle magazine specializing in beauty, culture, entertainment, and fashion, is a monthly magazine first published in 1970 for African American women.
Media Bias and its Influence on Journalism in Ireland This paper covers incidences of media bias, reasons for media bias, consequences of media bias and why some factors are beyond media control.
Sex Scandals in Digital Media News The digital media offers a platform for speedy dissemination of news. News access on the digital platform is real-time and can be very interactive.
Use of Anonymous Sources in Journalism: Positive and Negative Outcomes Discussion of the correctness and ethics of using anonymous sources in journalism to obtain truly reliable information.
Music Journalism in the Future Internet Age The advent of the Internet has affected the role of the traditional print music journalist to the extent of raising concerns over the prospects of the field.
Internet’ Effects on Journalism The research compares traditional journalism (journalism during the internet blackout era), and modern journalism commonly referred to as citizen journalism.
Journalism: Impact of the Internet and Technology The internet paved the way for citizen journalism which eradicated censorship and significantly played a part in democratizing power.
Framing in Media and Reporting A media frame can be defined as any graphical, written, visual, or oral message with which the communicator contextualizes the topic.
The Analysis of Issues of Cosmopolitan Magazines The analysis of issues of Cosmopolitan magazines from different periods, the 1950s and the 2000s, shows that there has been a considerable cultural shift.
Journalist Profession, Its Pros and Cons If you want to become a journalist, in this article you will find out enough positives and negatives about these professions to make the necessary decision.
Internet Impacts on Print Media and Journalism This essay seeks to elaborate on the impacts of internet on print media and journalism while in the process stating the advantages and disadvantages of both internet and print media.
“Don’t Misrepresent Africa” TED Talk by Leslie Dodson In this TED talk, Leslie Dodson explores the complexity encountered by journalists and researchers in presenting their narratives to the public.
How to Write an Op-Ed for the New York Times by Friedman As op-eds are written to cause a reaction in readers, they differ from other forms of journalism by high subjectivity and strong author’s voice.
Interview Approaches, Limitations and Challenges for an Interviewer This paper discusses the concerns that an interviewer should be aware of regarding the child as a reporter, the limitations that police encounter when interviewing the elderly.
Journalism in the Digital Age This observation leads to the logical question as to whether journalism in its classic sense is dead or approaching its downfall.
Local Newspapers Decline and Its Danger Using the projects of Newseum and other sources, this essay argues that the decline of local newspapers jeopardizes people’s right to information.
Vogue Magazine’s Covers Discussion The main goal of this paper is to discuss the social, political, and cultural contexts of two Vogue covers considering style or trends, possible customers, and the overall message of the images.
Journalism Future After Technology Change This paper integrates a case study to argue that, despite technological changes that influenced the death of newspapers, the future of journalism is still bright.
News and Feature Articles as Writing Genres The paper reviews a news article and a feature article by using an analytical framework based on the understanding of writing genres and used tone.
Fake News in Modern Era of Communication The paper discusses the definition of fake news and suggests two ways to combat unchecked information – through data mining, and automatic detection.
“Our Blind Spot About Guns” and “Don’t Make English Official” This paper aims to compare Nicholas Kristof’s essay “Our Blind Spot about Guns” and Dennis Baron’s essay “Don’t Make English Official – Ban It Instead”.
Article Analysis: Compare and Contrast The paper focuses on the two articles, which are “Why I Quit Street Racing, and Why Some People Won’t” and “Do Motorcycles Really Make You Stronger AND Smarter?”.
News and Victims: Journalistic Mistreatment This paper aims to describe journalistic mistreatment of crime victims, their relatives, and witnesses, in the context of news reports issued by CNN, FOX News, and MSN.
Muckraking: Sinclair and Riis Impact Muckraking – investigative journalism leaning towards exposing corruption in government and public-trust institutions, also associated with radical ideas and reform concerns.
Talese’s and Capote’s New Journalism Articles New Journalism is a term that refers to the phenomenon that took place in the 1970s. Truman Capote and Gay Talese contributed greatly to the development of New Journalism.
New Experiences for a Future International Journalist Studying abroad is an eye opening and life changing experience that will help a person achieve numerous goals.
“Citizen Kane” Relevance for 21st-Century Journalism Although “Citizen Kane” depicts a century-old black-and-white journalism, it is relevant for viewing by journalism students in the 21st century because it has crucial lessons.
Fashion Magazine Analysis. Race and Ethnicity Cosmopolitan’s target audience includes females aged between 18 and 35. At the same time, the general target audience that Vogue reaches is females aged from 20 to 40.
Media and Crime: Shaping of Public Opinion The essay emphasizes how the media exaggerates and portrays false images of a victim and the consequences of crime for a common citizen.
An Analysis of Galeano’s Writing The article “Upside down: A primer for the looking-glass world” by Galeano represents an immensely honest and even, to some extent, brutal overview of the present world.
Journalism in the UAE The government of UAE has over the years employed fear crusades against mass communication organizations. The current media law is ambiguous and overtaken by events.
Oprah Winfrey’s Interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle This essay will describe Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, which aired on CBS on March 8, 2021.
Journalism Practice in a Digital Age Study by Pantic & Cvetkovic The study “Journalism practice in a digital age” investigated social media usage by news websites in the United States. The researchers used a sample of news posts.
Linguistic Structures in the News Article The news article uses several linguistic structures that can impact its affectivity, such as certain emotions and the possibility of predicted situations.
“The British Columbia Imposes Travel and Fuel Restrictions” by CBC News The adverse effects called the British Columbia government to enforce restricted gas purchases control the negative impacts of the flooding, as reported by various news releases.
“How to Make Hard Facts Easy to Read” by Roy Peter Clark “How To Make Hard Facts Easy to Read” explores simple techniques that journalists should exploit to prepare easy-to-understand and straightforward work and presentations.
Newspaper Articles from Columbia, Missouri: Comparative Analysis The two articles from Columbia, Missouri separated by 103 years of history demonstrate significant stylistic and lexical differences despite being written on similar topics.
The Work of a Journalist During Investigation The work of a journalist is challenging, but they have to develop resilient strategies to be successful in their information-gathering missions.
Scientific Evidence: Reporting in News Article and Journals Information shared across mass media by journalists end up in news desks, newspapers, popular magazines, and social networks.
Hiding Humanity in Accident Reports The article Hiding Humanity: Verbal and Visual Ethics in Accident Reports by Sam Dragga and Dan Voss, proposes adding a touch of “humanity” to accident reports.
Interview: Additions to Five Journalistic “W”s As a means of communication and learning about a specific person or issue, an interview incorporates both ample opportunities and significant challenges.
Credible and Fake News The first article under consideration is the story about North Korea opening its doors to Christianity. The second source is quite the opposite of the first publication.
North Korea’s and China’s Media Regulations North Korea and China share the same adherence to the strict control of information in order to prevent public unrest.
Sarcasm and Irony in the Article of the Washington Post This paper uses Allyson Chiu’s article on Trump’s proposal to postpone the election as an example of using irony and sarcasm in journalism.
Accounting Terminology in Modern Media In an article published in the New York Times, major accounting fraud is discussed with a mentioning of a range of terms, which, though used appropriately, still lack certain detailing.
Interview With Chief of Police Mr. William Evans I had a rare chance of interviewing the Chief of Police for Hinds Community College Mr. William Evans in his office on Wednesday 19 November, 2014 at 5 p.m.
Fake News, the First Amendment, and Fighting Propaganda False or unconfirmed information presented as news by unknown journalists and authors is becoming more common.
South Korea’s New Coronavirus Outbreak in News The purpose of this paper is to compare the two articles in terms of coverage of a case where several individuals contracted the virus at clubs in a gay neighborhood.
Incorrect Interpretation: Everyone Is Gay on Tiktok The article’s main idea is that becoming pseudo gay — when close bodily contact, kisses, and hugs are shown only on video — is hugely beneficial to increase own popularity.
Understanding the Purpose of Sources Journalists work on complex and essential topics that can`t be discussed without emotions; though they write serious papers, they sometimes tend to succumb to biases.
China-Philippines Conflict: Differences in News Broadcast As of late the Philippines and China have been involved in a series of conflicts involving the Scarborough shoal located in the South China Sea.
Psychology and Media Interconnections When it comes to contributing towards positive social change, one of the best ways in which the media can contribute is through the promotion of varying types of ethos.
Syrian Civil War in Media Coverage One way in which the media coverage has influenced the behavior of viewers towards the Syrian conflict has been through its portrayal of the deaths of children.
Portrayal of a Hispanic Social Group in the Media As of late, Hispanics have been portrayed in the media as leeches on the American public system wherein they take but do not give.
Citizen Journalism vs. Journalism and Technologies With the rapid development of modern technologies and shifts in categories and roles, a new term, ‘citizen journalism,’ has appeared.
ABC Employees’ and Employers’ Perspectives Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) is one of the main news deliverers on the continent. ABC cares greatly about its employees and employers.
Danger to Be a Journalist Blogger journalists have the ability to influence what people see, think, and feel in a way that no reputable journalists of the past have ever had the privelege to.
Technology and Its Impact on Contemporary Communication Blogging has been around a decade but has achieved tremendous growth, influence as well as credibility. It has developed into a respected medium of sharing information.
Media Bias in Articles on Drought in Africa Review of two articles from The New York Times and The Telegraph to identify media bias in their reporting of the research findings of the drought-related issues in Africa.
Interviews With L.A. Residents Most of today’s L.A. residents are being divided along racial and cultural lines. People’s racial affiliation defines their worldview more than any purely environmental factor.
Crevecoeur’s “Immersion Journalism” and Humes’ “What Is an American” This essay will analyze the article by J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, “Immersion Journalism,” and the article by Edward Humes, “What is an American.”
Right to a Free Press in the Australian Constitution The negative connotations of the Bill of Rights are: The rights of Australians are already well protected; high courts are already protecting rights by interpreting the constitution and the common law.
Autism Universal Screening: Response to Media Article The paper provides discussion of the article “Why There’s Disagreement over Screening Every Child for Autism?” published in The New York Times.
Interview Report: Anthony’s Case Communication between individuals who are very different from each other may yield positive results of these people’s understanding of cultures and occupations.
Traditional and a New Media in the United States Journalism is a critical field that plays a positive role in determining events. This paper presents a case study of news coverage of the same issue by a traditional and a new media organization.
Labor Movement Highlighted in Newspaper Articles The article “Age of the Workingman,” published in The Kansas City Journal on September 2, 1895, depicts the labor problem as reflected in the speech given by Rev. Charles L. Kloss.
Ten Things to Reinvent Journalism I suggest the following ten things to reinvent journalism. First of all, it is to empower the readers by continuously engaging them in various posts and writings.
Website Critique: International Federation of Journalists The International Federation of Journalists website promotes the rights of journalists and defends their trade unions without being critical of the conduct of journalists.
Media: Mirror on the Wall and Professionalization The essay is a critical review of two articles written by Fakhreddine, J. and Merrill, J. titled “Mirror on the Wall” and “Professionalization”.
“Welcome to the United States of Ambien” by Sheffield By organizing his ideas clearly and getting his point across in an efficient manner, Sheffield tackles a very controversial issue of the abuse of Ambien rather successfully.
The Beginning of the Year 2016 in Germany The beginning of the year 2016 was darkened by the sad events that took place in German cities that accepted large groups of refugees from the Middle East countries.
Logical Fallacy in Braun’s “Tougher Sanctions Now” The paper analyzes the article “Tougher sanctions now: Putin’s delusional quest for empire” by Aurel Braun to find flaws in its argument and explains how to fix them.
Rolling Stone’s “A Rape Case on Campus” The Rolling Stone’s version of the story, “A Rape Case on Campus”, is a story of journalistic failure that could be avoided.
Journalistic Ethics: The Guardian and Edward Snowden’s Case The paper discusses the case study of Edward Snowden and the series of allegations printed by Guardian, against the mass surveillance system established in the US.
John Heilpern’ Journalism Techniques Using the participative approach in his feature stories, John Heilpern managed to involve his readers into the atmosphere of interviews The importance of being Oscar and The offending champion.
New Journalism and Its Peculiarities New Journalism became very popular in the 1960-70s. It was seen as something revolutionary as journalists had not employed techniques that came into existence at that period.
New Journalism in Capote’s and Tom Wolfe’s Works In this paper, the researcher will discuss the elements of New Journalism found in Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and Tom Wolfe’s “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers”.

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These essay examples and topics on Journalism were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on December 27, 2023 .

180 Powerful Journalism Research Topics To Focus On

Table of Contents

Finding a unique journalism research topic is one of the tricky tasks that require a lot of innovation. If you are a student who is pursuing a degree in communication or media studies, then you will often be asked to write essays or research papers on interesting journalism topics. Right now, do you want to write an informative journalism research paper? Are you searching for the best journalism research topics? Go through this blog post and get the top powerful journalism research topics and ideas that will help you boost your grades.

Tips for Selecting a Good Journalism Research Topic

Journalism is a broad field of study that mainly deals with the gathering and distribution of information to various media channels such as radio, TV, newspaper, and social media. In order to complete graduation, mainly, as a part of the final year academic project, the students who are pursuing media studies must submit a research paper or thesis on journalism topics.

When you are assigned a task to prepare a journalism research paper, topic selection is the first step that you can’t skip. Remember, you can impress your professor and score high grades only if you have a unique topic.

In general, there are endless unique journalism research topics and ideas available, but the real challenge lies in identifying one specific journalism topic out of them all. Hence, to help you all, here we have shared a few important tips that you can follow during the topic selection.

The topic you choose should match your interest.
The topic should be exciting and informative for the readers.
Avoid choosing too broad topics because they may require a lot of time to complete.
If your topic is too broad, narrow it down to a specific research question that is easy to write about before the deadline.
Instead of picking the frequently discussed research topics, go with the topic that focuses on unique issues that are fresh for the readers to learn and understand.
The research topic you choose should support extensive research and contain relevant sources for reference.

Additionally, check whether the research topic you have selected stands in line with your professor’s instructions. Also, before finalizing the journalism research topic you have selected, make sure it satisfies all the above-mentioned tips. The journalism research topic is said to be good only if it meets the requirements shared above.

List of Journalism Research Paper Topics and Ideas

When it comes to writing a journalism research paper, you need to invest a lot of effort and time to search and find the best journalism research topic. Hence, to make your topic selection process easier, here, we have composed a list of exclusive journalism research topics and ideas.

Explore the complete list of ideas and pick a powerful journalism research topic of your preference.

Best Journalism Research Topics

How can journalists help the masses understand topical issues better?
What is the role of the media in reducing crime?
Discuss the negative implications of media in influencing violence.
What is the link between media and the growth of the fashion industry?
What is the subsequent impact of media on the growth of an economy?
Discuss the likely implications of partisan advertisement outlets.
What are your thoughts on denying an operational license to partisan media outlets?
Examine how media has impacted your living over the last ten years.
Elaborate on the potential beneficiaries of media versus society-influenced violence.
Investigate how the media industry has evolved because of technological advancement.
How has journalism contributed to political turmoil in Kenya?

Read more: Excellent Communication Research Topics To Consider

Excellent Journalism Research Paper Topics

How significant is the media in the war against crimes?
Use of mainstream media in strategic communication
How the media influence political patterns
Media use by kids and adolescents
How society benefits from a free media
Scare strategies that the media use to accomplish goals
How do the media influence immorality?
Do video games form a part of the media?
Media censorship and propaganda
How the media portrays popular culture and identity

Research Paper Topics in Mass Communication and Journalism

What are the benefits of international journalism ?
How effective are social media marketing campaigns
Explain how journalists altered the coverage of news relating to World War II.
Define media downshifting and discuss why people are reverting to newspapers again.
Discuss mass communication laws in the U.S.
Define journalism ethics and highlight its importance in news coverage.
Investigate why radio still commands a huge following.
Explain different types of media and differ according to the audience.
Investigate terrorism in media and highlight examples in the world today.
Highlight some relevant media disasters and explain how to prevent them.

Journalism Thesis Topics

How media houses benefit from advertising
Explain why video blogs are the new diaries.
How effective are media companies as compared to single bloggers with regard to news coverage?
Define fan fiction and fandom in the media.
Explain the critical attributes of communication.
Discuss the peculiarities of children’s media.
How do the media affect the political class in a country?
Key stakeholders of modern media
How the media influences the articulation of major social matters
How the media preempt situations

Unique Journalism Research Topics

Investigate how the government regulates the media.
What is the role of mass media in spreading awareness?
Explain how readers can confirm the truth and credibility of news articles.
Discuss the relevance of media in the growth of a steadfast country.
Explain how social media has impacted the reporting of police brutality cases.
What was the impact of mass media on the scope of the Vietnam War
Determine whether governments should have exclusive power to censor news reporters and journalists.
Elaborate on the main drawbacks facing journalism.
Discuss whether media outlets are responsible for the spread of unverified stories.
Analyze why media agencies should cease using metaphors in headlines.
Media psychology- How it applies to communication.
Explain the role of media in the growth of the music industry.
Analyze the influence of media on innovations.
Explain the implications of a one-sided media and why it might be dangerous to society.
Analyze the media violations of a person’s freedom and rights.
Investigate the Black Lives Matter movement and analyze the role of media in advancing it.
Examine how media affects the diminishing of traditions and culture.
Why is the press essential in spreading political rivalry among the political subject and class?
What role does mass media play in promoting learning activities?
Examine the role of mass media on the political class of America in the 18th century.

Investigative Journalism Research Topics

What is the role of transculturation in media translation
Discuss the objectification of women and its adverse psychological impacts.
Discuss whether politicians depend on media to retain their power.
Explain why mass media is more of a propaganda tool for the government.
Explain why the media should not include graphic images depicting violence or war brutality.
What are the historical development and cultural impact of media in the U.S.?
How some governments silence investigative journalists
An investigation into the key stakeholders of modern media houses.
How magazine covers are used to get more sales
How journalists can maintain high-quality reporting without necessarily spending more
What are the negative impacts of television advertisements on children?
How the media is helping call centers to create jobs and help the unemployed members of society.
Examine how the image of the Arab woman appears in Arab media.
How the media makes the USA look like the ultimate ruler
Conduct a comparative analysis of news reports between FOX and BBC News.
How mainstream media is promoting the upsurge of public misinformation and fake news
How influential politicians make key decisions for some media houses
What are the moral lines that separate investigative journalism from the violation of people’s privacy?
How the media is helping rebrand some countries- Case study of Nigeria.

Read more: Best Visual Analysis Essay Topics and Writing Guidelines for Students to Focus On

Interesting Journalism Thesis Topics

Examine some of the most significant anticipated changes to journalism in days to come
Is it true that the internet makes people read less about current events?
Elaborate on different ways by which mass media outlets benefit from advertisements and product promotions.
Discuss why it is not appropriate for celebrities and superstars to undergo trials by the media.
Define stylized writing and elaborate on whether it is acceptable in today’s internet-reliant world.
Discuss the critical negative influence mass media may have on students.
Elaborate why televisions need to stop showing sexual content.
Examine media and its influence in the articulation of social matters like racism.
Investigate the impact of new media on digital learning budgets.
Examine if journalism can seek the truth without breaking the journalism code.
What are the causes and impacts of media addiction
Discuss the effect of mass media on one’s emotional and psychological wellbeing.
Highlight how disabled people are represented by the media today
Discuss why we should trust the media to deliver accurate news.

Engaging Journalism Dissertation Topics

Discuss the representation of women journalists in the media fraternity.
Describe ways to regulate mass media to guarantee that students are only minimally exposed to inappropriate content
Discuss the reasons that make the United States of America considered a global superpower from media perspectives
The imperativeness of journalism for disadvantaged social groups
A Critical review of the methodological trends and controversies surrounding the Use of opinion poll
Critically analyze how the British journalists try to win over the royals
Homophobia in modern sports and the role of media channels in increasing such negativism Homophobia
Discuss the role of media in promoting same-sex marriage
Evaluate the role played by media in helping GenZ athletes to seek their ‘authentic voice’
Describe the impact of replacing sports journalism with mindless gossip columnists
What were the restrictions on journalists for covering the FIFA World Cup 2022?

Great Journalism Research Paper Topics

What is the effect of media on diplomacy
A case study of pollution as a social issue and the media’s role in combating it.
Investigate the impact of fear created by media reporting crimes.
Hidden messages are passed through the media.
Discuss the role of media as an agenda-setting tool.
Elaborate on the flaws representation of black women in media.
Discuss the use of women and their sexuality in mass media advertisements.
How media images represent different entities
Could virtual reality be the future of modern media?
Do the media create or react to events?
What moral distinctions exist between the invasion of privacy and investigative journalism?
Are journalists nowadays more focused on attractiveness than on delivering more accurate news?
Discuss the main issues that journalists face when performing their responsibilities.
What impact have advances in science and technology had on journalism?
What can journalists do to combat the idea that women are materialistic?

Captivating Journalism Research Ideas

Is it possible for the media to serve society’s underprivileged groups?
Describe how the American media presents adversaries and rivals from throughout the world
Does the internet really cause individuals to read less about current events?
Why has the internet changed the way news is reported?
Examine some of the key upcoming developments in journalism that are most anticipated.
Can journalists continue to report on high-quality stories without spending more?
Nigeria is a case study of how the media is assisting in the rebranding of some nations
How powerful politicians affect some media outlets’ ability to make important judgments
A description of the difficulties emerging nations face when it comes to information freedom
How sexual material is used on the front pages of health publications to draw readers
Does the media influence events or just report on them?
What impact does the internet have on how the media evolves?
Why is radio still a vital type of media in the twenty-first century?
Describe ways to control the media to limit the exposure of pupils to inappropriate information
Do powerful and influential big media firms have too much sway?
Do they have to be broken up into smaller pieces?

Latest Journalism Research Topics

Describe the Part of the Media in the Russia-Ukraine Crisis.
Discuss the popular media tactics of political parties in the United States
Consider the necessity for real-life tales in the media of today.
Write about literary journalism in recent times.
Investigative reporting on the Brazilian drug trade
Mass media censorship in North Korea
FIFA world cup 2022: restrictions on journalists for covering the event
Critical analysis of how the British journalists try to win over the royals
Describe the effects of media misdirection and misinformation.

The Bottom Line

From the list of outstanding journalism research topics and ideas suggested above, you can use any idea as an inspiration for writing a research paper. If you are not sure what topic to choose or how to write a journalism research paper, then take Public policy assignment help from us. We have a team of professional academic writers who have good knowledge of mass media and communication to craft a research paper on the best journalism topics.

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Palgrave Handbook of Science and Health Journalism

© 2024
Kim Walsh-Childers 0 ,
Merryn McKinnon 1

College of Journalism & Communications, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA

You can also search for this editor in PubMed Google Scholar

Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Focuses exclusively on science and health journalism, providing unique, in-depth exploration of issues
Each chapter provides an agenda for future research, identified from comprehensive reviews of the literature
Provides a global overview of science and health journalism, drawing on research from all parts of the world

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Table of contents (23 chapters)

Front matter, why science and health journalism matters.

Kim Walsh-Childers, Merryn McKinnon

Core Issues in Science and Health Journalism

Journalistic conceptualisation of science and health: an overview.

Amanda Hinnant

Who Speaks for/on Science and Health? Use of Sources by Science and Health Reporters

Verônica Soares da Costa

Who Are Science and Health Journalists?

Merryn McKinnon

Numeracy in Science and Health Journalism

Steve Harrison

Uncertainty in the Process of Risk Communication for Public Health: An Integrative Theory-Based Approach

Soo Jung Hong

Muzzling Misinformation: Drawing from Other Disciplines and Engaging Health and Science Journalists as Research Collaborators

Czerne M. Reid

Understanding Complexity in Science/Health: The Challenges for Two Cultures

Hepeng Jia, Yeheng Pan

Reporting Formats and Audiences

Inclusion and exclusion in science and health journalism.

Bernardo H. Motta, Merryn McKinnon

The Politics and Economics of Health and Science Journalism on TV

Yulia S. Medvedeva

Telling Science/Health Stories in Audio

Ana Sanchez, António Granado

Social Media and Science/Health Reporting

Michelle Riedlinger, Silvia Montaña-Niño

Innovative Journalism Practices: Insights for Reporting Science and Health Issues

Nagwa Fahmy, Mahia Abdulmajeed Attia

Key Science and Health Topics in the Media: Now and in the Future

Journalism for the climate and biodiversity crises.

Gabi Mocatta

Media Coverage of Space Science and Exploration

Mikayla Mace Kelley, Carol B. Schwalbe

Covering Major Epidemics/Pandemics

Carol Perelman, Sandra Lopez-Leon, Talia Wegman-Ostrosky
science news
health news
science reporting
climate change news
pandemic news
covid-19 news
coronavirus news
risk communication
misinformation
disinformation
technology journalism
journalism ethics

About this book

Editors and affiliations, college of journalism & communications, university of florida, gainesville, usa.

Kim Walsh-Childers

About the editors

Kim Walsh-Childers is Professor of Journalism at University of Florida, USA. Her research focuses on news coverage of health issues and mass media effects on individual health beliefs and behaviors and on health policy development.

Merryn McKinnon is an Associate Professor at the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University. Merryn’s research draws from her background in science, science communication and journalism to explore the factors influencing relationships between science, media and publics.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Palgrave Handbook of Science and Health Journalism

Editors : Kim Walsh-Childers, Merryn McKinnon

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49084-2

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Literature, Cultural and Media Studies , Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-031-49083-5 Published: 02 April 2024

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-031-49086-6 Due: 07 May 2024

eBook ISBN : 978-3-031-49084-2 Published: 01 April 2024

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXI, 512

Number of Illustrations : 6 b/w illustrations

Topics : Journalism , Science and Technology Studies , Media and Communication , Environmental Communication , Political Communication

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Fresh and Unique Journalism Topics

Do you want to spend your time researching and writing about something unique in the journalism field? If yes, work with one of the ideas presented by these journalism topics for students.

A journalist should be well-versed in different topics about local and international news- Explain
Explain how the role of professional is seen in the media
Are modern journalists more inclined towards glamour instead of providing better authentic news?
How has COVID-19 revealed about the role of journalists at a global level?
Have journalists played any role in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic?
How does the media facilitate the stereotypical representations of females by portraying them as materialistic objects?
Discuss how influential people control the freedom of journalists and the media
Discuss the major problems that are experienced by journalists as they discharge their duties
How have technological and scientific developments affected journalism?
How has social media affected modern journalism?
Are social media websites making third-persons journalists?
What are the duties and roles of a professional journalist?
How can journalists change the perception of women as being materialistic?
Can journalism be used to help improve marginalized sections in society?
How can journalists help the masses understand topical issues better?
How are electronic media channels shaping modern-day journalism?
Is social media making print media obsolete?
How has technology affected the mediums that journalists used to reach people?
How do high-profile personalities interfere with the freedom of journalists and the media?
Explain the challenges that journalists in varying topographical situations face every day.

This category has some of the best literary journalism topics to research and then write about. However, students should be ready to conduct in-depth research before they start writing. They should introduce new information that readers will find interesting.

Investigative Journalism Topics

This category comprises journalism research paper topics that allow the author to investigate an issue deeply. When writing a paper or essay on these ideas, students must identify visual arguments, research about the issues or problems, and then draw conclusions based on their findings. Here are examples of investigative research topics in mass communication and journalism.

How politicians in developing countries continue to lure the masses with vague promises about the education systems and job creation.
How the media is helping call centers to create jobs and help the unemployed members of society.
Politicians no longer have the ideological drive- A keen look into how political parties market their ideas
Can the negative global image of Pakistan/Iraq/Afghanistan be improved? How the mass media fosters stereotypes and establish images
How the media makes the USA look like the ultimate ruler
How corruption has become synonymous with modern politics
A critical analysis of how the UPA government functions
The Italian roots of Sonia Gandhi
How mainstream media is promoting the upsurge of public misinformation and fake news
How journalists can maintain high-quality reporting without necessarily spending more
How the media is helping rebrand some countries- Case study of Nigeria
How influential politicians make key decisions for some media houses
An assessment of the challenges facing information freedom in developing countries
How the front covers for health magazines use sexual content to attract readers
How magazine covers are used to get more sales
What are moral lines that separate investigative journalism from the violation of people’s privacy?
An investigation into the key stakeholders of modern media houses
How the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to affect the Chinese economy
How the government continues to censor the media
How some governments silence investigative journalists

Some of these topics are also great for debates and speeches. However, extensive research is required to come up with quality and relevant content that readers will find interesting.

Interesting Journalism Thesis Topics

Journalism studies require learners to choose considerate topics that allow them an easy time to research and write quality papers. Essentially, students should enjoy working on their topics. Here are some of the most interesting thesis topics for journalism students.

How significant is the media in the war against crimes?
A look into democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression
Media use by kids and adolescents
Technology versus modern media
How the media influence political patterns
Use of media and subsequent effects
How the media portrays popular culture and identity
Use of mainstream media in strategic communication
Media censorship and propaganda
Media psychology- How it applies to communication
Mainstream media versus art-house
How the media affects a country’s socio-economic dimension
Do video games form a part of the media?
How the media influences violence
Influence of the media on socio-economic sanity
Scare strategies that the media use to accomplish goals
A qualitative evaluation of modern media outlets
Mass media implications to the ethical well-being of a society
How the media influences immorality
How society benefits from a free media

These topics to consider when writing a journalism thesis. That’s because most students will enjoy researching and writing about them. What’s more, most people will enjoy reading papers on these topics.

Great Journalism Essay Topics

Many students struggle to choose topics when it comes to journalistic essay writing. But, this shouldn’t be the case because there are many ideas that learners can explore. Here are some of the ideas that you can explore when asked to write a journalism essay.

The role of mass media in society
Who is a good mass media personality?
What is the effect of mass media on the economy?
How media houses benefit from advertising
Modern society can’t do without mass media
Influence of mass media on technological advancements
How the media influences rivalry in politics
How the media affects the political class in a country
How important are reliable advertisements to the media
How does the media spread awareness?
What makes reliable media?
How does partisan media affect society?
What makes a non-partisan media?
How media violence can lead to social violence
Key stakeholders of modern media
How does a society benefit from the media
How the media has evolved over the years
How the media influences the articulation of major social matters
How media addiction affects the economy
How the media pre-empt situations

Good Journalism Topics for Students in High School

High school students and those joining colleges are sometimes asked to write essays on their preferred topics. Those interested in mass media studies can opt to write about journalism. Here are great journalism topics for high school to consider.

How media can foster education
Hidden messages that are passed through the media
How media images represent different entities
Why radio remains popular
The Disney phenomenon- New mythology or the media?
Types and styles of media
How politics and media are intertwined
Could virtual reality be the future of modern media?
Does the media create or react to events?
How does the internet influence the development of the media?
Media regulation and policy in different countries
What is a media campaign?
What is an international journalism
Role of the media during wartime
Does the media enhance or prevent panic during disasters?
Does the media censor or promote controversial topics?
Origin of the media
How speech freedom impacts the media
What are the main aspects of the media?
How the media use the hype phenomenon

Students have many journalism thesis ideas to consider. However, every learner should be keen to pick a narrow and interesting idea to explore when researching and writing an essay or dissertation on journalism. If you need assistance, hire our paper writer and get assistance today.

The Study Blog : Research topics

Journalism and mass media research topics for your dissertation.

Journalism is basically getting information and distributing it to various media channels such as TV, Radio, newspaper, and social media. This is the reason why journalism is quite a wide field. This means that when you are looking for a journalism research topic for your undergraduate projects, master’s thesis or a dissertation, you have access to a limitless list. However, it is important not to choose a very broad subject as it may lead to confusion. When considering a dissertation topic, narrow it down to a specific question. This will give you more focus and an easier time when carrying out the research. Ensure your research topic is also not very narrow as that would give you a hard time looking for relevant information.

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Unlike other fields, a dissertation in journalism is considered to be of good quality if the information received from the interviewee is of good quality. A dissertation in journalism is more than an expression of theoretical knowledge, it has to be more practical and real. Here are just some subjects that one may choose to focus on when working on a journalism dissertation:

Research topics in journalism/news

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News is the most common aspect of journalism. This is basically the most straight-forward aspect of journalism. News journalists basically have to distribute facts just the way they are. There are several research topics that can be very appropriate for this journalism aspect:

1. The future of journalism. Is true journalism dead? Is social media, paparazzi, blogging the future of journalism?

2. Propaganda models. Which propaganda models do the media houses follow? How do different countries differ in how they practice journalism?

3. Privacy and journalism. A look at the relationship between British journalism and royal family. How has journalism contributed to Henry and Meghan’s change of lifestyle?

4. Journalism and business. Where do media people draw the line? Is the main goal to inform the public or to make money? How do different media houses compromise (in terms of quality) in a bid to attract and keep investors (advertisers).

5. Political instability in African countries. How has journalism contributed to political turmoil in Kenya?

6. Women journalists in media. How are women journalists treated in the world? What are the limitations faced by women journalists? Are there places that women journalists shouldn’t be sent to?

Dissertation topics on political and investigative reporting

Investigative journalism is an aspect of journalism that aims at uncovering the truth concerning an issue, an event, or even a person. For investigative and political journalism to be effective, information distributed must be factual.

1. Media and image. How does media help establish a country’s image? How can media help change Afghanistan’s negative image in the eyes of the world?

2. Media and power hungry politicians. What role does the media play in ensuring that such politicians are kept in check?

3. Dangers of investigative journalism. A look at several journalists who have suffered while doing investigative journalism. What steps can media houses take to keep their investigative journalists safe?

4. Media in the developing countries. How have politics shaped the developing countries? Why do politicians in developing countries keep giving empty promises that are never fulfilled?

5. What has made USA to be the superpower that it is? The competition between USA and China for the top seat, what role does the media play in this?

6. Corruption and politics. A look at Kenyan government and corruption. Why do the two co-exist so efficiently? How has corruption wounded Kenyan economy?

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Dissertation topics on film and animation

Film and animation involves concepts such as film making, screen writing, editing, and camera work. Film and animation is very broad and often studied separate from journalism. Here are several topics you can choose from:

1. Role of race and religion in Hollywood. How are Arabic men depicted in Hollywood cinema?

2. Hollywood and Bollywood. How can the two be compared? How have they affected the world economy? How have they changed cultures in the world?

3. Place of Nollywood on the film market. How can Nollywood filmmakers improve their industry?

4. Bollywood. How has Bollywood grown over time? How has its growth affected Indian economy?

5. Hollywood and violence. Has Hollywood led to increased cases of violence especially among the youths?

6. Television or cinema? Is television becoming more popular than cinema?

Dissertation topics on advertising/corporate communication

Corporate communication is an important aspect of mass media. Every organization needs a communication department to help in managing all communications in and out of the organization. Corporate communication helps make efficient communication between an organization with its suppliers, investors, customers, employees among others.

Advertising on the other hand involves promoting a product or a service using the known media channels. It is very popular with big corporations since it is one way you’re assured that your message will reach your audience.

So what can you cover on your dissertation?

7. What is the importance of advertising on the media? Can media exist without advertising?

8. Media is highly dependent on advertising as a means of earning an income. Does this compromise its standards?

9. Can large corporations that are doing perfectly well stay without advertising?

Research topics on business reporting

Business reporting helps analyze and report commercial activities that affect the economy. Business reporting is usually more detailed than some other aspects. It is also very factual, and requires the business reporters to make complex business reports simple for everyone to understand. There are lots of topics you can choose from when it comes to business reporting. They include:

1. Pandemics and economy. A look at different pandemics that have happened worldwide and their effect on the economy. What is the impact of Coronavirus on economy? How is it likely to cause the greatest recession to have ever been experienced?

2. Chinese economy. How has Chinese economy risen so steadily over the years? Will Covid-19 cause a halt on this steady rise?

3. Economy and social networking. How has social networking changed the way business is done? Is ecommerce the future of business?

Research topics on developmental journalism

Development is an essential part of our world. Development journalism deals with ideologies, policies, or events that help improve life. Development journalism is quite wide since it covers almost everything and anything that is meant to improve human life. Here are some topics you can choose from if you want to do a dissertation of developmental journalism:

1. Education still a distant dream for most children in poor countries. How can media handle the rising cases of illiteracy in undeveloped and developing countries?

2. FGM, rape and defilement, and domestic violence cases are still on the rise in many countries. How can media help in reducing these cases?

3. Poverty levels still alarming in developing countries. How can the media help in coming up with solutions for this?

Writing a dissertation on a journalism subject can be quite interesting. However, it is important to understand the nature of journalistic writing. Journalistic writing requires a more practical approach as compared to other fields. It is therefore important to use interviews, surveys, and other practical methods to collect data.

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Journalism ethics.

Patrick Lee Plaisance Patrick Lee Plaisance Department of Journalism & Media Communication, Colorado State University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.89
Published online: 09 June 2016

News workers—writers, editors, videographers, bloggers, photographers, designers—regularly confront questions of potential harms and conflicting values in the course of their work, and the field of journalism ethics concerns itself with standards of behavior and the quality of justifications used to defend controversial journalistic decisions. While journalism ethics, as with the philosophy of ethics in general, is less concerned with pronouncements of the “rightness” or “wrongness” of certain acts, it relies on longstanding notions of the public-service mission of journalism. However, informing the public and serving a “watchdog” function regularly require journalists to negotiate questions of privacy, autonomy, community engagement, and the potentially damaging consequences of providing information that individuals and governments would rather withhold.

As news organizations continue to search for successful business models to support journalistic work, ethics questions over conflicts of interest and content transparency (e.g., native advertising) have gained prominence. Media technology platforms that have served to democratize and decentralize the dissemination of news have underscored the debate about who, or what type of content, should be subjected to journalism ethics standards. Media ethics scholars, most of whom are from Western democracies, also are struggling to articulate the features of a “global” journalism ethics framework that emphasizes broad internationalist ideals yet accommodates cultural pluralism. This is particularly challenging given that the very idea of “press freedom” remains an alien one in many countries of the world, and the notion is explicitly included in the constitutions of only a few of the world’s democratic societies. The global trend toward recognizing and promoting press freedom is clear, but it is occurring at different rates in different countries. Other work in the field explores the factors on the individual, organizational, and societal levels that help or hinder journalists seeking to ensure that their work is defined by widely accepted virtues and ethical principles.

minimizing harm
public service
global ethics
newsgathering standards
framing effects
journalism culture
media technology

Introduction

Potential harm posed by news accounts, the use of deceptive tactics to secure stories, and the increasing prevalence of infotainment content are all examples of journalism ethics issues. In addition to specific practices, the field of journalism ethics also addresses broader theoretical issues such as what roles the news media should play in society, whether the idea of patriotism poses a conflict of interest for journalists, and what might constitute a set of universal or global values to define good journalism across cultures. As a field, journalism ethics spans a wide range of issues from examination of specific case studies that raise questions of privacy and editorial independence, to abstract, normative arguments about how concepts from moral philosophy such as realism, relativism, and the Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia , or flourishing, should inform the work of journalism.

As the idea of journalism has evolved over the centuries, economic imperatives and the desire to be seen as performing “professionalized” work have motivated news publishers and journalists to embrace various standards of behavior. Depending on its cultural context, the idea of journalism emerged from commercial or political “hack” work, where newspapers were entertainment or party organs, to its role in most developed countries as an autonomous broker of information and “watchdog” of power centers on behalf of citizens. As a result, publishers, editors, and writers recognized the value of embracing standards of conduct to build integrity and commercial viability. Journalism ethics scholars and researchers have explored the philosophical underpinnings of these standards, the recurrent failures of news workers to meet them, and the moral obligations of journalism on a societal level.

Ethics and the Journalistic Mission

While ethics is conventionally understood as the work involved to discern “right” actions from wrong, it is more precisely a field of inquiry focused on examining the quality of our deliberations when dealing with moral dilemmas. It is about asking the “right” questions to best illuminate our duties and potential impacts on others. As such, ethics rarely provides clear answers about the best way to handle quandaries. Rather, ethics serves to help us highlight morally relevant issues and come up with optimal defensible decisions. This also describes the field of journalism ethics: while there are some clear rules and standards about how journalists should operate, more common are abstract statements of value that are intended to inform good behavior. Journalism ethics is a distinct subfield of media ethics in that it addresses behavior and dilemmas unique to the practices of gathering and presenting news content. It works within the context of journalism culture that assumes a critical public-service function of the work in a professional or semi-professional setting distinct from marketing or promotional media content. While journalism ethics scholarship draws from moral philosophy in its use of concepts such as autonomy, harm, and justice, it also represents an applied ethics approach, focusing as it often does on case studies and analyses of situations that pose dilemmas involving protection of journalistic credibility or potential harm to story subjects. Ethicists in media often call for a deontological approach in journalism practice—for journalists to be more mindful of these broad duties and less concerned about the consequences of providing the news to the public. True public service, they argue, requires journalists to report the news, as explosive, discomforting, or controversial as it may be, and let the chips fall where they may. The public must decide how that information will be utilized. These ethicists insist that journalists should resist paternalistic impulses and pressure to “sanitize” the news. Despite this general tendency, many journalism ethics codes and standards also include explicitly utilitarian concerns—a recognition that journalists must, of course, be mindful of the consequences of their work, particularly when it comes to potential harmful effects of some information. The tensions created by these two approaches often constitute the heart of many journalism ethics controversies, just as they do in other areas of applied ethics. A look at codes of ethics embraced by various journalistic organizations around the world illustrates how both approaches are invoked. These codes most often avoid clear declarations of prohibitions or required actions, and instead provide aspirational calls for journalists to report the news courageously, to be accountable to the public, and to minimize harm as much as possible. All of these imply a special covenant with the public and an obligation to act in ways that serve more than the commercial interests of individual journalists or news organizations. This includes, as one of the first publishers of the New York Times famously said, to report the news “without fear or favor”—in other words, without being cowed or intimidated by powerful people or institutions who might want to shape the news for their own interests, and also without any agenda to promote any single individual, cause, or policy in the course of reporting. In commercial media systems, the specter of corporate conflict of interest is a recurring journalism ethics issue: corporate media conglomerates use their journalism divisions to promote, in the guise of news content, products or services (such as a film or musical artist) produced by another division. Similarly, nationalized or party-owned news outlets subject to government or political control are typically perceived as lacking sufficient editorial autonomy to report news that may adversely impact those in power. Accountability in journalism most often refers to fulfilling a public-service role in the dissemination of news. It calls for journalists to respond quickly to questions about accuracy, and to acknowledge and correct mistakes. It also implies the notion that journalists wield considerable power in their ability to spotlight and scrutinize the behavior of others, and that they must use that power judiciously. Journalists, consequently, are expected to acknowledge their own ethical lapses, and to apply the same standards of behavior to themselves that they hold for news subjects. Most journalistic ethics codes also call for minimizing harm in the course of news work. Note that the call to minimize harm is distinct from imperatives to “prevent” or “avoid” harm, which are virtually non-existent in journalism. This semantic distinction is deliberate and reflects an acknowledgement that harmful effects are occasionally inevitable in the course of good journalism. Journalistic harm is most conventionally understood as materially “setting back” an important and legitimate “interest” of someone or some group that is the focus of news. Some such harms might be easily defended, such as the economic harm caused by an investigative report on the questionable or illegal practices of a company. Other such harms are more difficult to justify, such as the damage created to someone’s reputation by the disclosure of personal facts not considered very newsworthy. But harm can take many other forms. Ill-considered behavior might result in harm to the individual journalist’s reputation or that of his or her news organization. As with most other lines of work, the ethically questionable behavior of individual actors can easily reflect on—and harm—the profession or field as a whole, reducing trust. The public also can be harmed with misinformation and sensationalistic coverage or content that leaves people with an inaccurate understanding of a topic or issue. In most cases, journalists minimize potential harms by articulating the public value of published information and by considering withholding information that might be less important or relevant for a story. Journalists also consider story “play”—how images and graphics are used as well as story placement and prominence. More recently, journalism ethics discussions and scholarship have emphasized additional values. One is transparency, or being aboveboard in explaining news decisions. For example, recent efforts to revise the code of ethics of the Society for Professional Journalists in the United States resulted in adding the imperative that journalists “be transparent.” In some cases, this has meant inviting the public to observe, either personally or via streaming video, editorial meetings of news organizations. In others, it has meant allowing digital access to databases and other files that are used in building news stories. Another value that has gained in prominence in journalism ethics is community engagement. More journalistic organizations, particularly digital-only news sites, have expressed an obligation to move beyond mere reporting of the news and to make efforts to foster civic participation. At its most basic, this manifests itself through active story comment lines and forums to discuss stories and issues. But it also can include the sponsorship by news organizations of public meetings to address specific issues of concern as well as inviting audience members to “sponsor” an investigative effort, which a news organization, once receiving sufficient financial support, “pledges” to publish.

Journalism and Ethics Frameworks

Much work in journalism ethics is rooted in two predominant strains found in the philosophy of ethics. One is consequentialism , in which much of the moral weight of decisions is placed on the goodness of the outcome. In journalism, this is most clearly illustrated by the focus on possible harms resulting from newsgathering and publishing. The other predominant strain is deontology , or duty-based ethics. Many news outlets and journalism associations have embraced ethics codes that itemize the various duties that responsible journalists must carry out: duty to serve the public, duty to scrutinize centers of power, duty to be as transparent and accountable as possible. But the “third way” in ethics, virtue theory, has recently been gathering prominence in journalism practice as well. Rooted in the work of Aristotle, this approach focuses instead on identifying “virtues”—what it means to be courageous, charitable, honest, and so forth—and articulating how such virtues ought to be manifested in our lives if we are serious about the promotion of human “flourishing.” Insisting that journalists should “be virtuous” may sound like a less-than-useful platitude, but recognizing and living by virtues is far from simple. We would not still be discussing them thousands of years after Aristotle if it were. And as we have seen, ethics is rarely black and white. We must juggle competing claims, weigh various possible harms, articulate often multiple duties—all in the course of just one ethical question. In moral psychology (discussed later in this article), the idea of “moral commitment” is an important one—the degree to which individuals internalize moral principles, or virtues, into their very self-identities, so that those principles almost reflexively inform daily behavior. Moral “exemplars” are those among us who not only internalize these principles, but whose moral development has given them what might be called a highly developed skill of discrimination: the ability to make fine-grained distinctions among similar situations and to thoughtfully respond with just the right mix of appraisals, beliefs, and behavior that still reflect one’s broader moral commitments. This is the more character-driven approach that preoccupies virtue ethicists. One of them, Rosalind Hursthouse ( 1999 , p. 154), argued that the virtues “are not excellences of character, not traits that, by their very nature, make their possessors good and result in good conduct.” Rather, she said we must remember the “Aristotelian idea that each of the virtues involves practical wisdom, the ability to reason correctly about practical matters.” It is more of a “ground-up” approach, rather than the “top-down” approach of duty ethics or the “ends-focused” approach of consequentialism. And for a growing chorus of journalism ethics scholars, it may be the most useful one. “By building from our appreciation of ‘particular facts’ about how the media operate in the contemporary world, we have a more useful starting point for the tangled problems of media ethics than by relying on supposedly consensual norms, rights or obligations,” wrote media ethicist Nick Couldry ( 2013 , p. 42).

A notable example of virtue ethics applied to journalism is offered by media ethicist Sandra Borden. Borden draws on the work of philosopher Alistair MacIntyre, who argues that the ancient Greeks understood the notion of virtues as qualities that were critical to have if one were to perform well in his or her social roles. Aristotle described virtues not as ends in themselves, but as tools to achieve what he said should be our broader aim: “the good life,” or eudaimonia . As individuals, we not only contribute to our own well-being but help bring about such flourishing for all through specialized work that is often referred to as professional behavior. In his landmark book, After Virtue , MacIntyre ( 2007 , p. 187) called this type of work a practice :

By ‘practice’ I . . . mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the end and good involved, are systematically extended.

Such practices, he argued, involve “standards of excellence and obedience to rules” that are aimed at attaining internal goods, or things that contribute to the common good regardless of who actually receives them. Media professionals, when deliberately informing their work with the “standards of excellence” that are attached to their “practices,” are able to deliver public goods such as providing information and analysis that enables the public to participate in a vigorous democratic life. As Borden ( 2007 , p. 16) summarized, “an occupation’s purpose provides it with moral justification, from a virtue perspective, if it can be integrated into a broader conception of what is good for humans.” In her book, Journalism as Practice , she made the compelling case that journalism should indeed be treated as a MacIntyrean practice . Another media ethicist, Victor Pickard ( 2011 , p. 76), eloquently described the “practice” of journalism having internal goods as its aim:

[Journalism] is an essential public service with social benefits that transcend its revenue stream. In its ideal form, journalism creates tremendous positive externalities. It serves as a watchdog over the powerful, covers crucial social issues, and provides a forum for diverse voices and viewpoints. As such, journalism functions as democracy’s critical infrastructure.

Implications of Specific Practices

Due to the ongoing nature and recurring tensions inherent in news work, several specific types of questions and controversies regularly surface. Yet it should be clear that ethics provides no clear-cut solution to cases of the same type; indeed, ethicists often argue for very different resolutions or optimal decisions among similar cases, depending on context and factors that may have more or less importance in different situations. It nonetheless is valuable to note several broad types of journalism ethics questions:

Conflict of interest. As noted previously, corporate and political conflicts of interest commonly raise questions of journalistic autonomy and adherence to ideals of public service. Conflict of interest can also occur at the individual level, where the interests or values of a single journalist might tempt him or her to compromise his or her news judgements. Most journalistic policies require news workers to treat potential appearances of conflict of interest as just as much a threat to credibility as actual conflicts, and, in cases of the latter, to take explicit steps to acknowledge the conflict and to either minimize or eliminate it. In most cases, journalists are expected to recuse themselves from activities that might pose a journalistic conflict. This includes policies that prohibit reporters covering politics from featuring political bumper stickers on their private vehicles.

Minimizing harm. Also as noted, the concept of harm can take many forms, and journalists are regularly called upon to justify their decisions that arguably cause harm to individuals or groups. Photojournalists in war zones and those covering sites of humanitarian tragedy have been challenged, for example, for their decisions to maintain their role as dispassionate witnesses to scenes of human suffering, rather than setting down their cameras and helping those in need. News organizations also have drawn criticism when disclosing secret or classified information that, in the course of informing the public, may arguably harm or undermine national interests.

Balancing privacy interests. Generally, theorists agree that everyone requires a degree of privacy to allow for self-development and to enable individuals to manage their multiple social roles. But with the value of privacy regularly being contested, journalists confront the dilemma of the extent to which respect for individual privacy should determine news coverage. While some scholars have argued that protecting privacy should never be considered the job of the journalist because of myriad and shifting definitions, others emphasize that journalism that respects privacy can encourage civic participation and engagement. Ethics arguments frequently flare over when disclosure of personal information is merited as well as when story subjects arguably seek to dodge accountability by invoking questionable or ill-informed privacy claims.

News frame effects. News content that may have negative effects on society frequently raises ethics questions. For example, psychologists have long warned of the “contagion” effect of coverage of suicide that focuses on the method of death and emotional state of the subject, which may prompt others in a similar emotional state to “copy” the story. Journalists have embraced media guidelines for responsible coverage of suicide as a social-health issue rather than as spectacle. The way an issue in the news is “framed” by story narratives, using factors such as sourcing, point of view, emphasis, and description, can leave audiences with a particular understanding of that issue. Framing of hot-button topics such as gun violence, gender roles, or obesity can serve to emphasize or favor one perspective over another and thus raise ethical questions.

Stereotypes. Relying on or perpetuating gender, racial, or ethnic stereotypes in news stories also can be considered a framing issue, and journalists must be mindful of inadvertent stereotyping. Expediency, narrative brevity, and the press of deadlines often discourage thoughtful considerations of the descriptions used for story subjects, be they local celebrities or police suspects. Research has suggested a consistent gender bias in news descriptions of physicality, emphasizing clothing items for women but not men, for example. Also, consistent focus on race often leaves skewed perceptions of crime patterns in the mind of the public.

Newsgathering techniques. What methods are justifiable in the collection of information valuable to the public? Classic what-ends-justify-the-means questions regularly confront journalists. While absolutist policies are rare, many news organizations refuse to pay for news or interviews, though tabloid outlets commonly do so. The concern is that sources with a financial incentive may be tempted to embellish, alter, or even fabricate facts and events, thereby undermining the journalistic enterprise. In some developing countries, such as Kenya, China, and India, money is regularly passed to individual journalists to curry favor and secure positive treatment. With celebrity periodicals, where exposure has created its own competitive market among a finite pool of public figures, payment for attention has become more removed from objective newsworthiness standards. The use of deceptive tactics, such as hidden cameras, also raises ethical questions. Several journalistic organizations have adopted policies stating that hidden cameras should be used only as a last resort and only when the information sought has high potential value for the public. Similar policies apply to journalists misrepresenting themselves to access information.

Graphic images. The publication of photos that depict gore, violence, and suffering regularly raises ethical questions for news journalists. Such questions become particularly heated during times of war or conflict, and when patriotic sentiments may bring added pressure to bear on journalists to depict the “right” story and avoid using images that audiences might perceive to be demoralizing. Claims that graphic images can be offensive, harmful, or unnecessary clash with concerns that avoiding such images risks sanitizing or propagandizing the news, which can easily undermine journalistic credibility. As with other journalistic ethics issues, the controversies over the publication of graphic images reflect diametric approaches within ethics itself: A utilitarian concern focused on minimizing harmful consequences of a decision versus a deontological ethos that calls for depicting the news with courage and relying on audiences to make their own decisions about the value of such images.

Ethics and Journalism Sociology

A variety of factors influences and even determines the behavior of journalists. The professional, cultural, and organizational environments in which journalists work have been referred to as their “moral ecology,” a recognition that news workers, like everyone else, do not operate in a self-defined vacuum, and that individual beliefs and predispositions are routinely subsumed by broader processes of socialization that can both help and hinder the exercise of ethical reasoning skills and moral autonomy. Thus, normative claims about what journalists should or should not do in the course of their work must rest not on assumptions that journalists are guided solely by personal beliefs but on an appreciation of these socialization processes. For example, journalists are criticized for advancing a “news agenda” reflecting their personal biases, but such claims often ignore how the broader constraints of the news decision-making process (e.g., the requirements of video production on deadline), organizational structure (e.g., the allocation of resources intended to produce one type of news content over another), or professional culture (e.g., the internal system of sanctions and rewards from editors based on impartiality of work) function as much greater influences. That moral ecology, of course, varies widely around the globe. Journalism sociology research over the years has identified broad “levels” or categories of factors that influence the production of news, generally distinguishing among individual-, organizational-, and societal-level spheres. For example, the ongoing “Worlds of Journalism” project examining news work across cultures has identified six levels of influence:

The individual level includes personal opinions, values, and demographic data as well as information on specific roles and occupational characteristics within a news organization.

The media routines level includes deadlines, production procedures, and standards and other constraints posed by newsgathering practices.

The organizational level includes technological imperatives, advertising or revenue considerations, and editorial decision-making.

The media structures level includes the economic model of news that entails profitability and resource allocation as realities in the relatively high costs of news production.

The systemic level includes national-level data such as regulatory policies, ideological assumptions, and degree of press freedoms.

Reference groups constitute a dimension that spans professional and personal domains to include competing news organizations, audiences, colleagues, friends, and family members.

In much research on journalism culture since the late 20th century, organizational- and societal-level factors have been found to be stronger influences on news content than individual-level factors, suggesting a hierarchical structure of influences in which the higher the level, the stronger the influence. However, no definitive model of influence has emerged.

Media Technology

The proliferation of online media has resulted in a host of new complications for journalists and news organizations. While traditional ethical concepts do not fundamentally change when information is delivered online, the ease and ubiquity of digital media provide new ways of interacting with audience members and story subjects. And everyone is tempted to do things he or she may not otherwise contemplate without the speed and ease of media technology. As one media ethics scholar noted, “Deceptive behavior in cyberspace is . . . not a new moral issue though it raises the problem of ‘moral distance’ with extra urgency . . . The speed of digital communication does not create new forms of immorality, but makes it possible to commit immoral acts so fast one hardly notices” ( 2000 , pp. 34–35). For example, the issue of corrections and retractions in digital journalism has received considerable attention.

Generally, many journalistic organizations, such as the Canadian Association of Journalists, have adopted policies against “unpublishing” erroneous reports from their archives and instead amending corrections to them. News organizations also have felt increasing pressure from story subjects who are embarrassed by content and argue that it is unfair for the news organizations to archive material long after it is no longer relevant. But allowing individuals to “scrub” the public record for their own interests raises deeper questions about the value of independently curated public information, and it also can threaten a key aspect of the journalistic mission, which is to document history. As one journalism educator has said, “Source remorse is not a reason to unpublish.” Unpublishing material also does little to eliminate the “echoes” that likely exist all over the Web on search engines, blogs, and other news sites. Better to correct or amend the existing archived material, which both preserves the integrity of the journalistic process and also fosters credibility through transparent action. For instance, editors at the Boston Globe cited the latter for their decision to correct, but not remove, a live blog post erroneously stating that an arrest had been made shortly after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 . In rare cases, a news organization may consider unpublishing a story that is judged to be unethical or even be questionable legally, or when continued accessibility of an archived story may pose a real threat to someone’s well-being. In such cases, many policies urge journalists to look for evidence of concrete harm, such a doctor’s opinion, and for any such decisions to unpublish to be made by consensus, never leaving them to a single person.

The immediacy provided by media technology has enabled journalists to increase their relevance and value and to foster new forms of interaction with audiences. It also can encourage broad collaborative efforts with non-journalists whose perspectives and information can augment journalistic efforts. But that very immediacy can threaten to become deterministic —the value of now can displace ethical concerns of credibility, verification, and care. In the rush to be a part of the conversation and buzz on breaking stories, many news organizations have fallen victim to all stripes of hoaxes. “The development of social networks for real-time news and information, and the integration of social media content in the news media, creates tensions for a profession based on a discipline of verification,” said journalism technology scholar Alfred Hermida. News sites around the world, for example, circulated what turned out to be a fake photo of Osama Bin Laden’s body soon after his death in May 2011 . The immediacy of digital technology tempts journalists to post, share, and verify later—often at the cost of their long-term credibility. This risk of compromised integrity or even partiality is a serious concern reflected in the social media policies of most news organizations. The notion of technological determinism—that values emphasized by technology such as convenience tempt us to set aside other values such as respect, conscientiousness, and even safety—has resulted in abetting the perilous impulse in a competitive media system of getting it first rather than getting it right. Critic Evgeny Morozov ( 2011 , p. xvi) calls this “cyber-centrism,” or our tendency to “prioritize the tool over the environment.” The integration of social media also has required journalists to resist the temptation for informality. Several news organizations have adopted explicit policies that reinforce how traditional concerns of ethics as well as etiquette apply to social media. For example, the Associated Press cautions its writers about the peril residing in too-informal use of Twitter:

Twitter, in particular, can present some challenges—with a tight character count and no way to modulate your body language or the volume and tone of your voice, requests that are intended to be sensitive can come across as cold or even demanding. Think about how your tweet would come across if spoken with an angry voice, because that’s just how the recipient may hear it in his head.

Media technology has collapsed time and space in the exchange of information, but it also has arguably initiated a reformation of communication structures. No longer is the news media system a “closed” one in which journalists serve a central gatekeeping function; now we have an “open” system in which the sourcing and distribution of information has been radically democratized and globalized. As many theorists have said, we now have a networked society. Journalists and journalistic brands are now just single nodes among a constellation of voices and sources, all moving in a “shared” information space. This, writes scholar Ansgard Heinrich, “sketches the evolution of an interactive sphere that, at least in theory, fosters a greater level of interaction and exchange. Connection, interaction, and collaboration are the markers of this shift.” This transformation, however, poses many questions for journalism as it has been conventionally understood, in the form of print newspapers and broadcast networks. Who do you link to? How do you distinguish between activist bloggers and more dispassionate collaborators? Do these distinctions matter anymore? And in this new “network journalism,” how are journalists to act responsibly in what is now a global sphere? Scholars have begun insisting that journalists have a responsibility to be more cosmopolitan in their outlook and their framing of news, and to work harder to transcend the “nationalistic” lenses that have traditionally dominated news narratives. As Heinrich argues, “This nationally inward looking focus of news reporting, however, does not do justice to a world (1) where events in one corner of the world might affect the other; (2) where news stories produced by one outlet are not restricted in access to ‘local,’ i.e., national audiences; and (3) in which many voices roam through the spheres of a digitally connected world that might provide an alternative take on a news story.” Globally responsible journalists, then, must break out of the tradition of foreign correspondent narratives that focus almost exclusively on elite or official sources and on how events impact a particular nation, instead engaging in the multitude of activist and “unofficial” sources that provide often competing narratives.

Global Journalism Ethics Theorizing

Much journalism ethics theorizing since the end of the 20th century has been preoccupied with the desire to establish viable ethical norms that transcend cultural boundaries and reflect what one researcher referred to as an empirical trend toward “ever-increasing globalization of journalism standards.” Some of this work calls for a media system that relies on a framework of international human rights, or a general veneration of human life, to guide news work regardless of culture. Others have called for a “modified contractualist” approach that would respect differing cultural manifestations of broad principles. Still others insist that any such global framework reject Enlightenment assumptions of the primacy of individual rights and rationality. Too often, claims of journalism standards of behavior remain rooted in Western cultural assumptions and are imperialistically imposed onto non-Western cultures in which the values of social stability and collective well-being replace individualistic models. As one scholar observed, “It is a global reality that the common concerns we have as human beings coexist with differences of ethical thinking and priorities in different cultures. This coexistence of common ground and different places plays out in the work of journalists across the world.” Notwithstanding the rarity with which the value of press freedom is enshrined in Western media systems, American and European scholars and journalistic organizations continue to dominate journalism ethics discourse. As a result, that discourse is focused on protecting journalistic functions with the rule of law and insulating them from power and identity politics. The European Federation of Journalists, for example, released a report in 2015 examining the effects of chronic corruption in 18 countries, noting how “media managers are doing ‘deals’ with advertisers to carry paid-for material disguised as news, how editors are being bribed by politicians or corporate managers and how this whole process makes it increasingly difficult to separate journalism from propaganda from public relations.” But voices from other parts of the world are joining the discourse on press freedom and journalism ethics. Many sociology and philosophy scholars on the African continent have offered critiques of postcolonial systems to promote journalism institutions (e.g., Kasoma, 1996 ; Wasserman, 2006 ). In 2015 , the Journal of Media Ethics published a special issue devoted to the notion of ubuntu as a guiding framework for media practice—the idea common among several south African cultures that individual flourishing is possible only through community belonging and social identity. The widespread practice of journalists accepting gifts and cash in exchange for favorable treatment—called “brown-envelope” journalism in Nigeria and “red-envelope” journalism in China—is receiving an increased amount of attention by journalism sociology scholars around the world (Xu, 2016 ). The practice in China was an intrinsic part of the commercialization of the media system in China beginning in the 1980s, and was actually initiated by foreign companies to entice journalists to attend press conferences (Zhao, 1998 ).

Cultural diversity notwithstanding, research worldwide has identified several key areas and concepts that concern journalists across cultures. These include truth-telling, accuracy, factualness, objectivity, credibility, balance, verification, independence, fairness, accountability, honesty, and respect. Of course, many of these overlap, and they can apply to one or more of the influence levels referred to previously. But many journalism ethics scholars agree that these are not enough. It is shared moral principles, rather than agreed-upon practices, that can bind responsible journalists around the world in ethical solidarity. As scholar Clifford Christians ( 2010 , p. 6) argues:

Without a defensible conception of the good, our practices are arbitrary. How can we condemn violent practices such as suicide bombings in the name of jihad except through widely accepted principles? We are stunned at the blatant greed and plundering of the earth, but without norms we are only elitists and hot-tempered moralists. Conflicts among people, communities, and nations need principles other than their own for their resolution. A credible ethics, as a minimum, must be transnational in character.

Christians and others argue that such a global media ethic cannot start with conventional morality that assumes a superior rationality, such as that of Kant. Instead, it must begin with a much more “naturalistic” principle: universal human solidarity, which prioritizes human dignity, truth, and nonviolence, all of which are grounded in the notion of the sacredness of life. In addition to this notion, scholars point to the fundamentally social reality of human existence—that despite the predominance of Western individualism, our realities and even our identities are arguably rooted in interaction and community belonging. In this reality, communication is central, as it is through exchange that we understand ourselves and we see the importance of “the Other”—individuals we encounter who may not share our culture or perspective, but whose existence requires respect and validation. Again, Christians, drawing on a long line of earlier philosophers, explains: “Communication is not the transference of knowledge but a dialogic encounter of subjects creating it together.” This leads us to a framework of “anthropological realism” that provides a hopeful basis for a global media ethic. It is anthropological in nature because it is rooted in the realities of human existence rather than claims about any rationalistic ideals. It is realist in that it insists morality has an explicit character that exists independently of our perceptions and judgements. For the moral realist, moral claims of rightness or wrongness are true regardless of any beliefs an individual might have about them. The casual observer, however, might see an immediate problem with such a framework, a problem wrestled with by philosophers since antiquity: what exactly is the nature of the “good” and how do we apprehend it? Is there more to a moral claim than a sort of intuition that we just know right from wrong? And how might journalists articulate this framework of moral realism in the judgements they make about news, about ethnic conflict, about graphic images? In journalism ethics scholarship, these debates continue.

Moral Psychology Research

Broad-brushed, deductive theorizing such as that discussed previously is one active area of journalism ethics research. But other researchers are increasingly acknowledging the need for more empirical work that seeks to better understand ethical reasoning processes on the ground by bringing long-established psychology measurements to bear. This moral psychology research draws on important philosophical concepts as well as instruments that assess beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions to explore possible patterns and relationships among factors in ethical decision-making. Recent cross-cultural research involving interviewing journalists around the globe, led by German researcher Thomas Hanitzsch, suggests that they perceive notions of objectivity, accuracy, and truth-telling as “core elements” of a widely accepted ethic for journalism practice. Journalists, of course, have been socialized into these norms through formal journalism education as well as through immersion in the newsroom culture, with its internal system of sanctions and rewards by peers and superiors based on the perceived quality of one’s work. Other researchers emphasize that social psychological processes resulting in bias perceptions, such as social validation and attitude stabilization, also must be recognized as evident in the work of journalists.

Moral development theory provides several models to help explain how individuals’ moral agency and sense of morality evolve over the course of a lifetime. The most widely cited moral development theory is that of Lawrence Kohlberg, who has argued that our moral development is tied largely to two factors. One is the degree to which we internalize moral principles that apply to all and move away from relativistic thinking—the notion that moral decisions regarding what is “right” are strictly “relative” to one’s own personal values rather than any broader moral principles. The other, closely related to the first, is the sophistication and scope of our understanding of the concept of justice. Our moral development, Kohlberg argues, can be assessed as existing in one of six stages. Based on Kohlberg’s theory, researchers have refined and widely used a survey instrument that measures one’s moral reasoning skills based on these two factors. By assessing the frequency with which respondents draw on higher-order justifications when presented with a moral dilemma, the Defining Issues Test (DIT) has enabled researchers to assess the moral-reasoning skills of various populations such as professional groups. Media researchers Lee Wilkins and Renita Coleman pioneered the application of the DIT to journalists and other media workers, concluding that, because journalists routinely encountered ethical questions in the course of their work, their moral reasoning skills were relatively high compared with workers in other professions.

Another moral psychology instrument that has proven useful in journalism ethics research is the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) developed by Donelson Forsyth. Because people’s responses to ethical dilemmas are influenced by their worldviews, understanding the basic elements of their outlooks can illuminate the thrust of their ethical judgements. Two such basic elements are key to individuals’ “ethical ideologies.” One is how idealistic they are—that is, to what extent are they optimistic about the actions of others, and to what extent are they concerned about minimizing harm or are more accepting of harmful effects if positive consequences are believed to outweigh them. Another basic element is how relativistic they are—whether they tend to make judgements based primarily on their own interests and perceptions of “rightness” that are relative to their own standing or views, or whether they tend to draw on broader, universal principles to decide what’s ethically justifiable. Using some key items from the Forsyth instrument, the “Worlds of Journalism” project found that most journalists in the 20 countries surveyed tend to embrace universal principles that should be followed regardless of situation and context. They also agreed on the importance of avoiding questionable methods of reporting, even if this means not getting the story. Much less approval—although the extent of it varied between countries—could be found regarding how much personal latitude journalists should have in solving these problems. This desire for flexibility reflects the longstanding tension in ethics between desirable ends and questionable means, as discussed. Many journalists think that in certain situations, some harm to others would be justified if the result supports a greater public good. News workers in Western countries are more likely to disapprove of a contextual and situational ethics. This attitude, however, also exists in non-Western contexts, though less strongly. Chinese, Pakistani, and Russian journalists, on the other hand, tend to be most open to situational ethical practices. Consistent with this result, interviewees in Western contexts showed little support for the idea that journalists should be allowed to set their own individual ethical standards. Similarities between journalists from Western countries also exist with regard to idealism. Although journalists in all countries agreed on the view that questionable methods of reporting should be avoided, those working in Western contexts appreciate this idea more than their colleagues in a developmental and transitional environment. Regarding the acceptance of harmful consequences of reporting for the sake of a greater public good, journalists in most Western countries—but also their colleagues in Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Uganda—tend to keep all options on the table. Journalists in Bulgaria, Chile, China, Egypt, Romania, and Russia, on the other hand, exhibit a greater willingness to accept harmful consequences in the course of newsgathering and reporting.

In a study of journalism “exemplars” in the United States—reporters and editors widely respected for their accomplishments and ethical leadership—media ethicist Patrick Plaisance used both the Defining Issues Test and the Ethics Position Questionnaire, along with several other moral psychology instruments. Regarding the journalism exemplars’ moral reasoning, Plaisance found their DIT scores were indeed higher than that of journalists on average. Regarding the EPQ, the journalism exemplars uniformly rejected relativistic thinking as well. There was also a negative relationship between the journalism exemplars’ DIT scores and their degree of idealistic thinking. That is, the higher the exemplars score on the Defining Issues Test, the less they appear to embrace idealistic thinking. This may first appear counterintuitive; it might stand to reason that people with higher DIT scores, associated as they are with greater application of universal principles in moral judgements, also would be rather idealistic in their outlooks. However, it is important to remember that all of the exemplars scored low in relativistic thinking; so the issue is not that the exemplars would be more or less Machiavellian depending on their DIT scores, but to what degree their belief in universal moral standards, and perhaps primarily their concern for harming others, could be applied rigidly or not. The negative correlation with moral-reasoning scores, then, arguably reinforces the suggestion of comparatively greater moral development in that exemplars with the higher DIT scores exhibit a greater ability to adapt their principles to best fit the often complex range of contingencies in which they find themselves having to work. In other words, they are too wise to believe they can insist on a rigid application of moral rules that can fit all circumstances and have become more adept at making the kind of carefully considered, fine-grained distinctions frequently found among moral exemplars of all walks of life.

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Journalism on the Web
Privacy Rights
Journalism, Culture, and Society
Cybervetting
Theories of Journalism
Gender and Journalism
Policy Issues Surrounding Journalism
Drone Journalism, Privacy Law, and Journalism Ethics
Journalism and Explaining News Content
Behavioral Journalism in Health and Risk Messaging
Journalism's Social Contract
News, Economic Governance, and Anti-Corruption
Objectivity and Bias in Journalism
Accountability in Journalism
Crowdsourcing in Journalism
Comparative Journalism Research
Journalistic Organizations: Arenas for Professional and Symbolic Struggles
Global Media Ethics

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Journalism Research That Matters

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Despite the looming crisis in journalism, a research–practice gap plagues the news industry. This volume seeks to change the research–practice gap, with timely scholarly research on the most pressing problems facing the news industry today, translated for a non-specialist audience. Contributions from academics and journalists are brought together in order to push a conversation about how to do the kind of journalism research that matters, meaning research that changes journalism for the better for the public and helps make journalism more financially sustainable. The book covers important concerns such as the financial survival of quality news and information, how news audiences consume (or don’t consume) journalism, and how issues such as race, inequality, and diversity must be addressed by journalists and researchers alike. The book addresses needed interventions in policy research and provides a guide to understanding buzzwords like “news literacy,” “data literacy,” and “data scraping” that are more complicated than they might initially seem. Practitioners provide suggestions for working together with scholars—from focusing on product and human-centered design to understanding the different priorities that media professionals and scholars can have, even when approaching collaborative projects. This book provides valuable insights for media professionals and scholars about news business models, audience research, misinformation, diversity and inclusivity, and news philanthropy. It offers journalists a guide on what they need to know, and a call to action for what kind of research journalism scholars can do to best help the news industry reckon with disruption.

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Journalism : Research methods

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Research-based ideas for college campus reporting: Potential stories

Roundup of useful studies that can enhance campus-based stories and provide material for practicing knowledge-based reporting.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by John Wihbey, The Journalist's Resource August 4, 2014

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/education/research-based-ideas-college-campus-reporting-10-potential-stories/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

As journalism students look for deeper approaches to reporting on their campuses, they might consider the world of academic research, which can provide both fresh ideas and important perspectives. Sometimes studies are used directly by journalists in their stories; in other cases, they’re a way for reporters to educate themselves about issues and to locate and tap into networks of experts.

The habit of doing a “literature review” on issues is an increasingly important skill, but it takes time to master. The ability to do a successful literature review requires knowing which key databases to use and the basics of how to read statistics; learning how to do this on deadline can give journalists an important competitive advantage in the information and media marketplace.

Below are studies that can help facilitate deeper campus stories as well as enable journalists to practice engaging with primary research literature. If the full study is not immediately available online, ask a librarian for help with access and get familiar with your institution’s available databases. Also be sure to look at the citations in studies, as they will provide a road map to other important research in the field. To the extent you can, ask university officials for school-wide background data to help support your story and localize a given issue.

Finally, remember that this is just a representative batch of studies. Whether you’re writing about tuition increases, sexual assault policy, binge drinking, Greek life or flu outbreaks, there’s a wealth of deeper research just waiting for you at places such as Google Scholar and PubMed .

Sexual assault and rape on campus: In light of recent revelations across the country — and a major push by the federal government to address the issue — it is well worth seeing how a given institution is addressing these issues and putting into place preventative measures and support systems. Students can review the latest research and data for context.
Multitasking and learning: A 2012 study published in Computers & Education , “No A 4 U: The Relationship between Multitasking and Academic Performance,” examines how the use of Facebook — and engagement in other forms of digital activity — while trying to complete schoolwork was related to college students’ grade point averages. Is multitasking prevalent around your campus? Do students see downsides or upsides? How much do they reflect on their own study habits and use of time? How do faculty members feel about its role in the classroom?
Jobs and their effects: Many researchers have studied the negative relationship between student work — both on and off campus — and the typical effects on learning. However, student work may have some under-appreciated, positive effects. A 2012 study in the Journal of College Student Development , “The Effects of Work on Leadership Development Among First-Year College Students,” looks at the lives of students earning their way through school. What percentage of students on your campus has jobs? How do they perceive the tension between work and learning? Do they believe there are hidden benefits?
Diversity experiences: A 2011 study in the Review of Educational Research , “Promoting Participation in a Diverse Democracy: A Meta-Analysis of College Diversity Experiences and Civic Engagement,” examines earlier research to understand the relationship between diversity experiences and civic engagement in later life. The study provides insights into the kinds of diversity experiences that have the most meaningful impact in terms of lifetime development. How does your campus do on these issues? What is the breakdown between structured and unstructured diversity experiences, as the study defines them?
Student debt: How students feel about rising debt levels has been a significant media topic in recent years. But how do students on campus feel that it’s influencing choices of majors and classes — and career choices? Two studies can help inform this reporting: a 2012 study from Harvard University and the University of Virginia, “Student Loans: Do College Students Borrow Too Much — or Not Enough?” ; and a 2011 study from the University of California-Berkeley and Princeton University, “Constrained After College: Student Loans and Early-Career Occupational Choices.”
Exam habits: Students have many time-honored techniques for studying, but some methods are much more effective than others, according to the latest research. A 2012 study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest , “Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology,” rated the utility of 10 specific methods based on cognitive and educational psychology research. How do students on your campus study for exams? Who taught them the techniques they use — high school teachers, peers, parents? Is the campus faculty doing enough to teach effective learning?
Research and online skills: A 2012 report from Project Information Literacy, “Learning Curve: How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace,” seeks to better understand the needs of professional employers and the research skills and habits young people use on the job. The study finds that students often lack certain skills, and rely too much on the Internet. How do students on your campus find information? What do the faculty and librarians think about the information-seeking skills of the students they see? Is your institution doing enough to prepare students for the needs of the workplace in an information-based economy?
LGBT student views: A 2012 study published in the Journal of School Violence , “The Effect of Negative School Climate on Academic Outcomes for LGBT Youth and the Role of In-School Supports,” analyzes survey data relating to a sample of 5,730 LGBT students between the ages of 13 and 21 who had attended secondary schools in the United States. How do LGBT students compare their high school and college experiences? How do the academic climates compare? How do LGBT students feel their secondary school experiences inform their current lives and views?
Women and campus politics: According to survey data, American women consistently score lower on questions of political knowledge than do men. This difference makes women less likely to vote, run for office or communicate with their elected representatives. A study published in the journal Political Behavior , “Gender Differences in Political Knowledge: Distinguishing Characteristics-Based and Returns-Based Differences,” analyzes data in the United States from 1992 to 2004 to try to isolate the underlying causes of this male-female split. How are women faring in campus politics and student government? Are there enough outlets for political discussion? How many women would consider running for political office? How many female majors are there in the political science and government departments? Is the campus doing enough to educate and encourage women leaders?
Rural and non-rural students: One often-hidden dimension of campus diversity is the rural/urban/suburban split among students. A 2012 study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Rural-Nonrural Disparities in Postsecondary Educational Attainment Revisited,” examined data on approximately 9,000 students and found some notable differences. How comfortable do students from rural backgrounds feel on your campus? What has their experience been like and how do they believe it is different? Do they feel sufficiently supported?
Taking time off: A 2010 study published in the American Educational Research Journal , “Male and Female Pathways through Four-Year Colleges: Disruption and Sex Stratification in Higher Education,” tracked academic performance, financial aid support, prior high school experiences and life choices to determine why students choose nontraditional education pathways. How many students take semesters off? Why do they do this? Do they see drawbacks or benefits? Is there a gender, socio-economic or racial dimension evident in the patterns on your campus?

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There are many possible reasons for the public’s declining trust in journalism — it’s falling for pretty much everyone — but it’s plausible that one of them is the difference in that way journalists and audiences think of “objectivity.”

Objectivity is a tricky concept. Ultimately, we’re with the skeptics who say it never really made sense. And yet! For a long time “objectivity” packaged together many important ideas about truth and trust. American journalism has disowned that brand without offering a replacement. At the end this post, I’ll point to some starting points for figuring out what values a new generation of journalists could promote instead.

What do journalists think of “objectivity”?

To find out, we read every article mentioning the word from 2020 to 2022 in three publications where journalists talk to each other: Columbia Journalism Review , Nieman Journalism Lab , and Poynter . We coded each of these 195 articles on a five-point scale from “very negative” to “very positive,” and found that when American journalists speak about objectivity, they are three times more likely to speak negatively of it than positively (our count is 111 to 38).

Sentiment of “objectivity” in 195 articles from Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Journalism Lab, and Poynter, January 2020 to February 2023.

Looking through the spreadsheet we compiled, the two most common criticisms of objectivity were that this word has been used to exclude minority voices and that false balance risks distorting the truth by legitimizing falsehoods. For example:

The notion that one can be completely without bias in their reporting is a nice idea until you realize what’s “objective” is actually determined by what doesn’t rock a white, male, upper-class sensibility and worldview. [ source ]

Institutionalizing such a model puts gatekeepers in the position of legitimizing falsity by presenting it alongside truth. It creates a system where demands of fairness and balance neuter journalists’ and other gatekeepers’ abilities (and responsibility) to differentiate fact from fiction. [ source ]

We agree that journalism has a responsibility to say when something just isn’t true, and it’s hard to argue against accurately and empathetically portraying the struggles of people long excluded. But objectivity meant many other things besides “both sides” and “white and male” — it covered a range of virtues that still ring true.

Audiences still want objectivity

RELATED ARTICLE Readers expect news orgs to be impartial, but don’t reward them for it Laura Hazard Owen September 15, 2022 We couldn’t find any surveys that directly asked news consumers what they thought of “objectivity,” but there are good surveys that ask about something like it, such as “ reflecting a range of different views ,” or “ giving every side equal coverage .” These surveys show a consistent pattern: Audiences strongly prefer impartiality .

Source: Reuters Institute survey , 2021.

Conversely, the percentage of Americans who see “a great deal” of “political bias” in the news is increasing . From the Knight/Gallup American Views 2020 report:

Americans feel the media’s critical roles of informing and holding those in power accountable are compromised by increasing bias. As such, Americans have not only lost confidence in the ideal of an objective media, they believe news organizations actively support the partisan divide.

Of course, audiences may say they want objectivity while actually being happier with reporting that validates their views. Research generally finds that perceptions of bias depend mostly on whether audiences think the publication supports their politics, not what was actually written, and we have previously discussed audience capture . But this doesn’t let journalism off the hook — if audiences say they want X, then repeatedly disavowing X is still a losing proposition.

There’s no going back

In 19th-century America, most news publications were very partisan , with many directly funded by political parties. Objectivity was in part an attempt to free the news from political influence, although the motive was also economic : as publications turned from benefactors to readers for their revenue, it made sense to try to appeal to everyone regardless of their politics.

But as the industry professionalized, it also adopted better standards and big aspirations. Objectivity wasn’t just about impartiality; it also meant that journalism could claim something of the rigor and authority of science. The point of objectivity was to remove the individual reporter from the equation, so that you would get the same information regardless of who was there.

If the basic role of journalism is “ I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it ,” then this makes a lot of sense. In the classic view, the reporter is supposed to be a neutral proxy for the audience, an essentially interchangeable professional. In all the criticisms of objectivity, it’s important to remember that it’s a bulwark against the opposite: pure opinion, devolving into fiction. Steering in the other direction, a 1949 treatise for CIA analysts defined the “objective situation” as “the situation as it exists in the understanding of some hypothetical omniscient Being.”

Alas, this is not only impossible but nonsensical. It’s a view from nowhere .

The problem is not one of discipline or character; it’s important for journalists to cultivate intellectual honesty, but the challenge is more fundamental. Stories are not found in nature, but are carefully assembled by picking out only some of the facts and observations available to the reporter. Even if the facts are fixed, their meaning is not, and the same set of facts can power two very different stories . Meanwhile, there has been a century-long shift from “event-centered” to “analytical” or “contextual” journalism, where framing and background are even more relevant.

The dilemma of objectivity is this: if the journalist doesn’t apply some set of values, how do they know what’s worth including in the story? Rooting for a cause can give you both a conflict of interest and greater insight. The very question of what to cover becomes incoherent without a value system, and indeed, Red and Blue have different opinions of what deserves attention. This is why the Trusting News project recommends that newsrooms routinely explain their coverage choices.

If not objectivity, then what?

In the end, we agree with the criticisms: objectivity is a deeply flawed concept, for reasons that go far beyond diversity and false balance. But journalism is lost without standards for truth. If objectivity has failed, the challenge now is saying what should replace it.

There is much to learn from other fields that deal in truth, many of which have had their own reckoning with objectivity. For example, this is what the intelligence community thinks of it today:

Even if analysts try to be “objective” in a procedural sense, they will not be able to achieve absolute objectivity because biases consisting of cognitive frameworks are necessary in order to infer meaning from incomplete data. Conceptual frameworks provide each analyst with a different kind of filter, for both understanding and interpretation, and a corresponding set of biases.

This kind of thinking leads to a “ transparency is the new objectivity ” approach. Or journalism could borrow from science once again. In contemporary statistics there are calls for more precise language:

We argue that the words “objective” and “subjective” in statistics discourse are used in a mostly unhelpful way, and we propose to replace each of them with broader collections of attributes, with objectivity replaced by transparency , consensus , impartiality , correspondence to observable reality , and subjectivity replaced by awareness of multiple perspectives and context dependence .

These statistical virtues would apply pretty well to journalism, too.

Happily, there are signs that journalism itself is beginning to offer up replacements for objectivity. New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger recently argued for a strong notion of “ independence ,” noting particularly the duty of a journalist in times of conflict:

When the stakes feel highest — from the world wars to the red scare to the aftermath of 9/11 — people often make the most forceful arguments against journalistic independence. Pick a side. Join the righteous. Declare that you’re with us or against us. But history shows that the better course is when journalists challenge and complicate consensus with smart questions and new information.

This is sage advice, very much the sort of “complicating the narrative” approach favored by conflict professionals, which we have discussed several times . But it doesn’t say much about all the other reasons we might believe journalism has any resemblance to truth — things like accuracy, transparency, and comprehensiveness. Perhaps “independence” can grow to cover these ideas, but it will likely never be as expansive as “objectivity” was.

As much as anything else, “objectivity” was a symbol that represented a package of values that audiences trusted. It was a brand, now tarnished, that has no modern equivalent. Perhaps objectivity is an incoherent ideal. Perhaps the journalistic orthodoxy that grew up around it is no longer tenable. But if journalists publicly abandon it without articulating a convincing replacement, audiences will only hear that the profession has given up on truth.

Jonathan Stray is a senior scientist at the Center for Human-compatible AI at UC Berkeley, where he studies how algorithmic media drives political conflict. He runs the newsletter and podcast Better Conflict Bulletin , where this post was first published . Sana Pandey coded all the articles mentioned here.

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Cite this article Hide citations

Stray, Jonathan. "“Objectivity” in journalism is a tricky concept. What could replace it?." Nieman Journalism Lab . Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, 25 Apr. 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024.

Stray, J. (2024, Apr. 25). “Objectivity” in journalism is a tricky concept. What could replace it?. Nieman Journalism Lab . Retrieved April 26, 2024, from https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/04/objectivity-in-journalism-is-a-tricky-concept-what-could-replace-it/

Stray, Jonathan. "“Objectivity” in journalism is a tricky concept. What could replace it?." Nieman Journalism Lab . Last modified April 25, 2024. Accessed April 26, 2024. https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/04/objectivity-in-journalism-is-a-tricky-concept-what-could-replace-it/.

{{cite web | url = https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/04/objectivity-in-journalism-is-a-tricky-concept-what-could-replace-it/ | title = “Objectivity” in journalism is a tricky concept. What could replace it? | last = Stray | first = Jonathan | work = [[Nieman Journalism Lab]] | date = 25 April 2024 | accessdate = 26 April 2024 | ref = {{harvid|Stray|2024}} }}

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Local Newspapers Fact Sheet

The transition to digital news consumption has hit the newspaper industry hard in recent years. Some national publications have managed to weather the storm in part by attracting digital subscribers, but many local newspapers have been forced to shutter their doors permanently, especially during the coronavirus pandemic .

To gain a clearer picture of how locally focused U.S. newspapers have fared in the digital age, Pew Research Center researchers reexamined data included in the Center’s State of the News Media newspapers fact sheet, excluding four publications that reach a large national audience. (Three of these four newspapers reach national audiences in addition to their respective local audiences.) These four publications – The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today – account for a large share of circulation in the newspaper industry and as such overshadow their locally focused counterparts in the data. Specifically, this analysis looks at economic data from publicly traded newspaper companies’ financial statements (2011-2020 for digital advertising revenue and 2013-2020 for total revenues), circulation data from Alliance for Audited Media (2015-2020), and digital audience data from Comscore (2014-2020). This addendum supplements the State of the News Media newspapers fact sheet , which presents the analysis at the overall industry level.

To gain a clearer picture of how local U.S. newspapers have fared the past few years, researchers reexamined the data used in the Center’s State of the News Media newspapers fact sheet to exclude several publications geared toward a national audience, even if they also report news for a particular region (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today). Specifically, this analysis gives an overview of the state of local U.S. newspapers using circulation data from Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) for 2015-2020, revenue data from SEC filings of publicly traded newspaper companies (2011-2020 for digital advertising revenue and 2013-2020 for total revenues), and digital audience data from Comscore (2014-2020). Since Gannett (the parent company of USA Today) does not break out revenue by individual news brands in its SEC filings, USA Today could not be excluded from the revenue data. Please see the “Revenue” section for more details.

In this analysis, the four publications included in our definition of national newspapers account for a disproportionately large share of circulation in the newspaper industry. These four publications top the list for print readership in the Alliance for Audited Media data. Accounting for digital circulation is more difficult, however, given that three of these four publications do not fully report their digital circulation to AAM, as discussed previously in this Decoded post . The closest available measure of digital circulation is digital subscriptions, which The New York Times publishes in public SEC filings and The Wall Street Journal provides in audited statements on the Dow Jones website. The Washington Post, as a privately held company, does not publicly report its digital subscription numbers, although data will emerge sporadically in press reports . Each of these four publications – The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today – has digital subscription numbers in the millions, far surpassing metro publications with comparable print circulation, according to the best available public information. Removing the national-profile papers from the data provides a clearer view of publications operating on a more locally focused scale.

With these national publications excluded, researchers examined the circulation of over 600 daily U.S. newspapers that submit to regular circulation audits by AAM and revenues from SEC filings of five publicly traded newspaper companies that account for more than 300 U.S. daily newspapers. Researchers also examined digital traffic of the top 46 local daily U.S. newspapers with the highest circulation, according to AAM data. The digital traffic analysis includes only the top 46 papers by circulation since many daily newspapers do not receive enough traffic to their websites to be measured by Comscore, the data source relied on here.

Not all data sources in the State of the News Media newspapers fact sheet allowed researchers to remove specific publications. Some data in the main fact sheet is therefore not included in this analysis: employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, historical circulation data from Editor & Publisher, and historical revenue data from News Media Alliance. Because the historical circulation and revenue data could not be included in this analysis, the circulation and revenue figures presented here are not adjusted according to the historical data like they are in the main fact sheet. Rather, they are presented as originally reported by AAM and companies’ SEC filings.

Read the full State of the News Media methodology .

This locally focused analysis shows that many of the trends apparent in the overall newspaper industry hold true for local U.S. newspapers as well.

The total combined print and digital circulation for locally focused U.S. daily newspapers in 2020 was 8.3 million for weekday (Monday-Friday) and 15.4 million for Sunday. Each of these numbers is roughly on par with the previous year, but they are still among the lowest reported: Total weekday circulation is down 40% since 2015, the first year available for this analysis. Similarly, total Sunday circulation has fallen 45% since 2015.

Total Circulation
Print Circulation
Digital Circulation

Within those overall declines is a more complex relationship between print and digital circulation. Print weekday circulation in 2020 was down 12% from 2019, while print Sunday circulation declined 10%.

In contrast, digital weekday circulation was up 30% in 2020, and digital Sunday circulation climbed 29%. The 2020 increases for digital circulation are the greatest year-over-year increases for digital since 2015. Overall, digital weekday circulation has grown 21% since 2015, and digital Sunday circulation has increased 27%.

Print, meanwhile, experienced a steady decline in both weekday and Sunday circulation between 2015 and 2020, falling 55% for print weekday during this time and 54% for print Sunday.

To get a clearer picture of the digital audience for locally focused publications, researchers reexamined the Comscore data included in the State of the News Media newspapers fact sheet by removing newspapers with a national audience from the analysis (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today). This updated analysis of locally focused daily U.S. newspapers includes the remaining top 46 publications based on their circulation. 1

Note: For each year, the average traffic for each website during the fourth quarter (October-December) was calculated; the data point represents the overall average of those numbers. Analysis is of the top 46 newspapers by average Sunday circulation for Q3 2015-2020, according to Alliance for Audited Media data, excluding The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, which have a large national audience. For each newspaper, the Comscore entity matching its homepage URL was analyzed.

Source: Comscore Media Metrix® Multi-Platform, U.S., Unique Visitors, October-December 2014-2020.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, there were an average of 7.6 million monthly unique visitors to these 46 local news sites, up 9% from 2019. (When the four national publications above are included, newspapers received 13.9 million unique online visitors in the fourth quarter of 2020, up 14% from 2019.)

The average number of monthly unique visitors to local news websites has increased 44% since the fourth quarter of 2014, the first year in our data.

The increase in the number of visitors to locally focused news sites has been accompanied by a simultaneous decline in the duration of those visits – a pattern that exists for the newspaper industry overall. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the average minutes per visit to the websites of local papers was 1.8 minutes, compared with 2.1 minutes in Q4 2019. This is a 13% year-over-year decline, the steepest drop in minutes per visit since Q4 2014, the first year in our data.

Note: For each year, the average minutes per visit for each website during the fourth quarter (October-December) was calculated; the data point represents the overall average of those numbers. Analysis is of the top 46 newspapers by average Sunday circulation for Q3 2015-2020, according to Alliance for Audited Media data, excluding The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, which have a large national audience. For each newspaper, the Comscore entity matching its homepage URL was analyzed.

Source: Comscore Media Metrix® Multi-Platform, U.S., Average Minutes Per Visit, October-December 2014-2020.

Overall, the average duration of visits to local news websites has declined 41 seconds since Q4 2014, similar to the overall decrease of 45 seconds in the broader industry.

The total advertising revenue for locally focused U.S. daily newspapers in 2020 was $1.07 billion, based on the Center’s analysis of financial statements for publicly traded newspaper companies. 2 This is down 40% from 2019, much steeper than the 25% decline the overall newspaper industry experienced during the same time. Total circulation revenue was $1.1 billion in 2020 for local newspapers, compared with $1.5 billion in 2019. As is also seen in the overall industry, 2020 was the first year local newspaper advertising revenue fell below circulation revenue.

In the revenue charts above, data is pulled directly from year-end Securities and Exchange Commission filings of five publicly traded newspaper companies. In 2019 and 2020, that includes the following: Belo, Lee, Tribune, McClatchy (2019 only) and Gannett. Since Gannett does not break out revenue by individual news brands in its SEC filings, USA Today could not be excluded from this part of the analysis. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are not publicly traded and do not file public financial reports with the SEC. For this reason, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are not part of the revenue analysis here or in the Center’s State of the News Media newspapers fact sheet. Revenue figures from The New York Times have been excluded.

Note: Data shows the dollar amount of each revenue type according to analysis of year-end SEC filings. Figures do not include The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal, which have a large national audience. USA Today is included as part of Gannett’s overall revenues. Dollar values are not adjusted according to pre-2013 data from News Media Alliance and thus are not comparable to the estimated figures published in Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media newspapers fact sheet. n

Source: Pew Research Center analysis of year-end Securities and Exchange Commission filings of publicly traded newspaper companies (2013-2020).

Digital advertising accounted for 35% of advertising revenue for locally focused U.S. newspapers in 2020, based on this analysis of publicly traded newspaper companies. That share is roughly on par with the 39% of ad revenue coming from digital ads in the overall industry. For local newspapers, the share of ad revenue coming from digital has grown steadily from 15% in 2011, the first year in our data.

Note: Figures do not include The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal, which have a large national audience. USA Today is included as part of Gannett’s overall revenues.

Source: Pew Research Center analysis of year-end Securities and Exchange Commission filings for publicly traded newspaper companies that break out digital advertising revenue for each year (2011-2020).

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Palgrave Handbook of Science and Health Journalism

Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

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Table of contents (23 chapters)

Core Issues in Science and Health Journalism

Who Speaks for/on Science and Health? Use of Sources by Science and Health Reporters

Who Are Science and Health Journalists?

Numeracy in Science and Health Journalism

Uncertainty in the Process of Risk Communication for Public Health: An Integrative Theory-Based Approach

Muzzling Misinformation: Drawing from Other Disciplines and Engaging Health and Science Journalists as Research Collaborators

Understanding Complexity in Science/Health: The Challenges for Two Cultures

Reporting Formats and Audiences

The Politics and Economics of Health and Science Journalism on TV

Telling Science/Health Stories in Audio

Social Media and Science/Health Reporting

Innovative Journalism Practices: Insights for Reporting Science and Health Issues

Key Science and Health Topics in the Media: Now and in the Future

Media Coverage of Space Science and Exploration

Covering Major Epidemics/Pandemics

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