Kod Etika Kewartawanan Malaysia dan Kepentingannya kepada Profesionalisme Wartawan Akhbar Berbahasa Melayu di Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysian Journalism Code of Ethics was introduced in 1989 by Malaysian Press Institute (now known as MPI) and the Newspaper Editors’ Association (ONE) has paves the way for the rising of professionalism in national journalism. According to Djohn E. Drewry, there is a need to form an ethic to elevate a career into a professional. Furthermore, with the advancement of media technology and communication, it threatens the careers of journalists and requires into the debates or re-evaluation done on this topic, more so now when journalism work are easily regulated by the public. Do journalists use the existing code of ethics and what is its importance to the professionalism of a journalist’s career? This question needs to be answered by journalists as the use of this code of ethics is still less even though the importance is recognized by many scholars. This study utilises the quantitative approach, whereby 272 journalists from five Malay language newspaper were asked to answer a questionnaire. The questionnaires were distributed randomly and analyzed descriptively. This study found that the majority of journalists knew about the Code of Ethics (EKM) and its importance in elevating the professionalism of journalism in Malaysia. Findings from the study also found that journalists possess a high level of ethics according on the practice of the eight EKM.