Religious Challenge as a Challenge to Universal Journalistic Ethics

Section: Sociology of Journalism

The paper continues the analysis of the religious segment of the mass consciousness and draws attention to the problem of universal ethical system in journalism. The author suggests that religious ethos is a fundamental challenge for the construction and implementation for such a system. Theoretically the ethical choice of any journalist is to be free, individual and predominantly based on moral values (with deep impact of religious ethos for believers). The impact of the social norms from outside is considered to be secondary within the proposed normative model (which does not exclude conformism and even authoritarian pressure in practice). Author proposes to pay more attention on ontological and axiological origins of ethics in academic courses on Journalism Ethics for students and emphasize personal responsibility for moral choice.