Assessment of Newspaper's Undertaking of News and Information Sourcing as a Key Element in Professional Ethics

Iranian Journalists, nowadays use contents of other media more than the past. According to handbooks and textbooks of professional ethics in journalism, in normal situation journalists should identify their sources clearly and declare the name of medium which is used in their articles. For assessment of sourcing in Iranian newspapers, 7 national newspaper were selected which they shown variety of journalism atmosphere in Iran. By content analysis of all articles in these newspapers and Chi-square test, the researcher understand that there in a significant difference between political and apolitical newspapers in sourcing and also this difference is significant in various news beats. This research shows that about 25 percent of articles in newspapers have not any source. In political newspapers, sourcing is more important and in news beats, sports and events desks have the least sourcing.