Challenges of Journalism Education in Order to Institutionalize Ethical Principles in Iranian Universities

Journalism is a profession in which ethical principles play a prominent role. Therefore, this observance of these principles should be considered in its education. The aim of the current research is to explain the challenges of journalism education in order to institutionalize ethical principles in the country's universities.               

The current research is applied in terms of purpose and mixed research method (qualitative-quantitative). The statistical population in the qualitative part is journalists and university professors with more than 5 years of work experience, and in the quantitative part, the final year journalism students of the country's universities. The non-probability qualitative sampling method is targeted and the quantitative sampling method is census. The tool for collecting information is an interview in the qualitative part and a questionnaire in the quantitative part. In order to analyze the data and draw the model, the thematic analysis was done in the qualitative part and structural equation modeling was done in the quantitative part, and Excel, SPSS and Laserl software were used.

The findings of this research showed that about 70% of the challenges of journalism education in Iranian universities are, in order of importance, related to the way of accepting students, the lack of facilities and equipment of universities, the security of society and the media, and the weakness of ethics in the country's journalism industry. About 30% of the other challenges are the lack of specialization in academic journalism, the weak connection between the university and the media for internships, the lack of attention to ethics in the process of accepting professors, the impossibility of knowing the field before entering the university, the lack of attention to student skills, and the lack of attention of the Ministry of Science to the infrastructure of universities.

Ethical principles play a very prominent role in the field of journalism. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to this category in the way of teaching students.