An increased interest in psychological knowledge that is typical of the media sphere defines the important role of psychological disciplines in the training process for media professionals. At that, the modern media environment is rich with psychological information of a low scientific level. Psychological texts circulating in the media space are marked by the strong influence of the mass culture. The main characteristics of the masscult are: 1) entertainment; 2) low standards of scientificity;

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... 3) eclecticism; 4) focus on the cognitive control of behaviour. These features connect with the intention of instrumentality of psychological concepts. This situation allows an analysis of the principles of selection of psychological knowledge to be included in the educational process. Among these methodological grounds the most important are: the compliance with standards of scientificity, problematicity, systemacity, reflexivity. Following these grounds or principles allows overcoming the dependence of perception and thinking on general (for educational psychology) and specific cognitive sets. The general sets include: trust in the information organized in the form of a diagram, trust in typologies and classifications, quantitative estimations and terminological noveltydiagrams, numbers and words. In our opinion, the most important specific sets associated with the peculiarities of the profession are as follows: -treatment of the audience as a faceless crowd that passively perceives information; -identification of social information with the information spreading through the media; -prevalence of the media text form over its content.