Journal of Media Ethics

Ethics Training in Journalism & Strategic Communication

Prior research has revealed strengths and weaknesses when it comes to ethics training in the journalism and communication disciplines (Wilkins & Coleman, 2005). While journalists and public relations practitioners have scored quite high on moral development (Coleman & Wilkins, 2009; Plaisance, 2014; Schauster et al., 2020), advertising practitioners have not always performed as well (Cunningham, 2005). In addition, while journalism and communication students often do complete an ethics course in college, they are not always receiving routine professional development training in ethics, despite the fact that new issues are always emerging in these disciplines. Although the Commission on Public Relations Education has addressed how ethics should be taught in the college classroom (Neill et al., 2024; Silverman et al., 2014), less scholarly attention has been given to ongoing professional education related to communication ethics. The Journal of Media Ethics invites scholarly manuscripts that examine the state of ethics training in the disciplines of advertising, journalism, public relations and marketing communication for a special issue planned for 2026 and guest edited by Dr. Marlene Neill of Baylor University. With the special issue, the journal hopes to showcase the wide variety and promise of moral development applications in media ethics scholarship, from theoretical explications to empirical studies.