- mine whether or not they will carry out their employers'
policies when these do not agree with their own standards of right and wrong. Lawyers and physicians in their struggle to build up a practice are tempted to resort to methods condemned as unethical by the standards of their profession, or in the offices of established practitioners they find practices in use which do not harmonize with their own ethical ideals. In the older professions of law and medicine the members have directly or indirectly regulated the conditions of admission to practice, and have established codes of professional ethics. Such regulation, reinforced by government legislation, has tended to maintain better professional and ethical standards than would be possible without it.
Journalism, among the last of the callings to be generally recognized as a profession, has established neither standards of admission nor a formulated code of ethics. Only recently has the need of professional college courses in preparation for journalism been recognized by the public and by newspapers themselves. With the quickening of the public conscience in regard to political and social conditions has come a keener appreciation of the importance of the newspaper as the greatest single source of information in our democracy, and a realization of the dangers of abuse of this power by editors and publishers. Whatever opinions may be held as to present-day standards in journalism, every one will grant that it is the duty of those who enjoy the advantages of university training in preparation for this profession to maintain the highest ideals in their own work. Opportunity to know the truth carries with it responsibility for making the truth prevail. Noblesse oblige is as true of the privilege of knowledge as it ever was of the privilege of rank.
