摘要：The author examines the role of the news media in the formation of European identity, presuming that they are expected to play a crucial role in both the perception and the construction of the emerging European identity as well as in the preserving and the developing of the national identity. One of the main problems at covering the EU-related issues is setting the boundaries between informing the public and promoting specific ideas leading to the construction of the EU identity. Providing the public with true, verified, accurate, relevant, unbiased, diverse and balanced information is the primary journalistic goal, in one way or another defined by the ethical codes of all the EU states, while one-sided promotion in the sense of supplying the citizens with selective truth and biased publicity should not be considered as part of any quality news discourse, even though it is occurring under the label of identity building. The author’s thesis is that the news media are assigned an important role of informing the citizens about the relevant EU issues, without having a special task of promoting the EU. A critical distance should be established towards the information obtained from the Government and other public relations sources. Journalistic questions should be asked. To be able to implement their task, journalists need to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to cover the EU politics, they should aspire to follow the standards of the classical paradigm of journalism as the public service, and maintain the professional ethical attitude in all phases of the communication process.
关键词：European identity; national identity; media roles; journalistic ethics
