The View of Journalism Teachers in a Transition Society on the Future of the Profession: A Comparison Between Ukraine, Russia and the European Union
The View of Journalism Teachers in a Transition Society on the Future of the Profession: A Comparison Between Ukraine, Russia and the European Union

Summary/Abstract: Ukraine as a transition country experiences various challenges in its social, educational, economic, cultural and media sectors: unstable economy, ongoing armed conflict in the Eastern Ukraine, partial reluctance in accepting reforms. Journalism education in Ukraine undergoes a complex transformation supported by national government and foreign projects including Erasmus+ CBHE DESTIN. The purpose of this research is to explore the views of j-schools teachers as key stakeholders on the future tasks, trends and ethical issues of the profession. The study is based on results of a survey conducted by the European Journalism Training Association and the World Journalism Education Council in different world countries, including EU states, Ukraine, and Russia. The article concentrated on comparing and investigating correlations between Ukrainian, Russian and European educators’ views to the same set of questions. The results show that in all three categories of analysis – tasks, trends, ethics – there is a stronger consensus between Ukrainian and Russian teachers than there is between Ukrainian teachers and their European colleagues. All teachers believe in importance of reliability and verification of information, are in favor of a strong sense of responsibility and of less commercialism in journalism and share a strong ethical disapproval of misleading the audiences, for instance by altering photos or quotes. However, Ukrainian and Russian teachers share a somewhat higher appreciation of journalists as disseminators, whereas European educators put more emphasis on the journalistic investigator role. With regard to ethics a main difference is that Europeans see paying or getting money from sources as unacceptable, whereas this practice is more tolerated in Ukraine and Russia

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