Contemporary mass communication scholars, as well as some journalists themselves, still debate whether journalism is, or even whether it should be, a profession. But certainly, during the past 250 years, journalism in America has evolved toward professional values, from the one-person printing operations of the Colonial period to the division of labor of the antebellum newsroom and the emergence of reporters in the mid-1860s to the more sophisticated understanding of the social role and responsibility of mass media of the early twentieth century.

To qualify as a profession, an occupation should be founded on a body of specialized knowledge over which the professional gains authority through specialized education and training; furthermore, a professional has a large degree of autonomy from outside censure and is regulated by an internal code of ethics and by the sanction of fellow professionals through professional associations. On a moral...