The Society of Professional Journalists provides an ethical code, establishing a set of guidelines by which journalists are expected to practice their craft. While this code provides fairly comprehensive guidance, it does not address journalists’ awareness of their own biases and prejudices. Adding language to the ethical code addressing this issue would highlight the need for journalists to have insight into personal biases they may have due to socio-economic status, geographic location, race, gender or sexual orientation. The need for self-awareness is prominently mentioned in ethical codes for counseling and psychology organizations. Considering the ability of news media to influence public opinion, those involved in the distribution of news for public consumption would benefit from similar attention to their own prejudices.

Currently, journalists in the United States are not required to take continuing education credits. Such a requirement, especially regarding ethical codes, would serve to provide journalists with an opportunity to regularly refresh the self-insight necessary for a truly unbiased representation of local, national and world events.