978-1319058517 Chapter 14

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PART 5

Democratic Expression and the Mass Media

The digital turn and online outlets—particularly Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—have provided new

methods that allow ordinary citizens and nonprofit groups to do some of the work once performed by

investigative journalists. The lack of centralized control over the Internet also means that people have

been able to use digital technologies and our interconnectedness as a way to be heard and to effect

change—especially in countries where press freedom has been limited or compromised. Both the Arab

Spring uprisings in the Middle East and the Occupy Wall Street movement serve as examples. Another

example is the role that “fake news” and e-mails from hacked accounts, disseminated through social

media, might have played in the 2016 presidential election. The digital turn has also created significant

ethical challenges. “Hacktivists” like WikiLeaks and Anonymous and whistleblowers like Edward

Snowden have raised issues regarding whether some government and business documents should remain

secret—to protect national security, volatile economic markets, or vulnerable diplomats or other

individuals at work in difficult areas of the world—or if all information should be made available to the

public at all times. How shall we police the online world and control its overwhelming array of voices and

traffic? What concerns should we have as traditional news media shrink? We face these questions, and

many others, as our society continues to explore how powerful mass media fit into a democracy.

Chapter 14

The Culture of Journalism: Values, Ethics, and Democracy

In this chapter, we examine the changing news landscape and definitions of journalism. We will:

• Explore the values underlying news and ethical problems confronting journalists

• Investigate the shift from more neutral news models to partisan cable and online news

• Study the legacy of print-news conventions and rituals

• Investigate the impact of television and the Internet on news

• Consider contemporary controversial developments in journalism and democracy—specifically, the

public journalism movement and satirical forms of news

Preview Story: Throughout the history of investigative journalism, reporters such as Nellie Bly have

played a “watchdog” role while wrestling with ethical challenges and concerns for their own safety.

I. Modern Journalism in the Information Age

A. What Is News?

Characteristics of News.

B. Values in American Journalism.

1. Neutrality Boosts Credibility—and Sales.

2. Partisanship Trumps Neutrality, Especially Online and on Cable.

3. Other Cultural Values in Journalism.

4. Facts, Values, and Bias.

II.

Ethics and the News Media

A. Ethical Predicaments.

1. Deploying Deception.

2. Invading Privacy.

3. Conflict of Interest.

B. Resolving Ethical Problems.

1. Aristotle, Kant, and Bentham and Mill.

2. Developing Ethical Policy.

III.

Reporting Rituals and the Legacy of Print Journalism

A. Focusing on the Present.

1. Getting a Good Story.

2. Getting a Story First.

B. Relying on Experts.

C. Balancing Story Conflict.

D. Acting as Adversaries.

IV.

Journalism in the Age of TV and the Internet

A. Differences between Print, TV, and Internet News.

1. Pretty-Face and Happy-Talk Culture.

2. Sound Bitten.

B. Pundits, “Talking Heads,” and Politics.

C. Convergence Enhances and Changes Journalism.

D. The Power of Visual Language.

V. Alternative Models: Public Journalism and “Fake” News

A. The Public Journalism Movement.

1. Criticizing Public Journalism.

B. “Fake” News and Satiric Journalism.

VI.

Democracy and Reimagining Journalism’s Role

A. Social Responsibility.

B. Deliberative Democracy.

Case Study: Bias in the News

Media Literacy and the Critical Process: Telling Stories and Covering Disaster

Case Study: A Lost Generation of Journalists?

Examining Ethics: WikiLeaks, Secret Documents, and Good Journalism

LECTURE IDEAS

I. Modern Journalism in the Information Age

• American journalists generally think of themselves as information gatherers and follow commonsense

criteria for determining newsworthiness. Define this set of criteria, and give examples of news

according to the “What Is News?” discussion in the text.

• Consider how the first suspects in the Oklahoma City bombing were described as dark-haired,

bearded men of Middle Eastern heritage. The idea that a horrible bombing could have been

perpetrated by a white American was difficult at first for the media to grasp, and not surprisingly,

such reports made hate crimes against Arab Americans and Muslims soar after the blast.

• The economic/consumer coverage between Thanksgiving and Christmas (especially the day after

Thanksgiving) is a good example of procapitalism, proconsumer spending coverage (reports about

debt are typically scarce until January). The reports hype spending and generally equate a “good

economy” with how much consumer confidence is “out there.”

• Here’s what Jim Lehrer told Columbia Journalism Review Daily’s Liz Cox Barrett about objective

news reporting on June 6, 2006:

I don’t deal in terms like “blatantly untrue” . . . that’s for other people to decide. . . . I’m

not in the judgment part of journalism. I’m in the reporting part of journalism.

• Brent Cunningham, Columbia Journalism Review’s managing editor, offers a pertinent discussion

of the principle of objectivity in “Re-thinking Objectivity” (CJR, July/August 2003). A failure of

the press, Cunningham writes, is “allowing the principle of objectivity to make [journalists] passive

recipients of news, rather than aggressive analyzers and explainers of it.” He argues that the

principle of objectivity can become an obstacle on the way to finding “truth” for several reasons:

• It excuses lazy reporting. Most reporting ends when a reporter has “both sides of the story,” in a

he said–she said fashion, leaving the reader alone to decide who’s right and who’s wrong.

• It exacerbates journalists’ tendency to rely on official sources, which makes it easier and quicker

to get “both sides of the story.”

• It makes reporters wary of seeming to argue with authorities for fear of losing access (if they

should come across as being “biased”).

• It makes reporters hesitant to inject into the news issues that aren’t already there.

• It often fails to cut through the omnipresent spin because nearly every word a reporter hears from

an official source has been shaped to the proper effect.

• It fails to fill the vacuum left by a weak political opposition.

• Here is the full text of what “fake” reporter Rob Corddry said to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show on

August 23, 2004:

Corddry: I’m sorry, my “opinion”? No, I don’t have “o-pin-i-ons.” I’m a reporter, Jon,

and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time

repeating the other. Little thing called “objectivity”—might wanna look it up some day.

Stewart: Doesn’t objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence and calling out

what’s credible and what isn’t?

Corddry: Whoa-ho! Well, well, well—sounds like someone wants the media to act as a

filter! [high-pitched, effeminate] “Ooh, this allegation is spurious! Upon investigation

this claim lacks any basis in reality! Mmm, mmm, mmm.” Listen buddy: not my job to

stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.

• Former New York Times reporter Doug McGill writes eloquently about the objective method and its

drawbacks in his blog, The McGill Report. Quoting from his essay, McGill writes, “Some reporters,

including me in my early days, actually wear their ignorance as a badge of honor. ‘Give me any

subject and I can write a story within minutes,’ they crow as, I said, did I. But of course, that just

means they can paint-by-numbers really well. They can take a bunch of facts and press them into

the daily journalism mold that makes a story, really fast. But as for nuance, as for complexity, as

for truth?” You can find McGill’s entire essay at http://www.mcgillreport.org/objectivity.htm.

• Explain the enduring values—such as ethnocentrism, responsible capitalism, small-town

pastoralism, and individualism—that inform presumably “neutral” news stories.

II. Ethics and the News Media

• Discuss the use of deceptive, invasive, and ethically conflicting practices that plague American

journalism.

• Discuss absolutist and situational ethics as they relate to media as well as to school and life. How

do they differ? What are their uses? Relate them to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of

Ethics (Figure 14.1 in the textbook).

• In the riots after the Rodney King verdict, when white Los Angeles police officers were acquitted for

beating King, who was black, the vast majority of those killed were African Americans and Latinos.

Yet the bulk of the coverage was given to the black-on-white beating of truck driver Reginald Denny,

as videotaped by a helicopter news crew. Although it was not often mentioned in the 1992 coverage,

race-related riots have a long, ugly history in the United States, including brutal violence in East St.

Louis and elsewhere in 1917; in Chicago, Charleston, Omaha, and Washington, D.C., in 1919; in

Mobile, Beaumont, and Detroit in 1943; in Los Angeles in 1965; all over the country in 1967; and

several times in the 1980s in Miami.

• A National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (known as the Kerner Commission) studied

racial violence and its media coverage after widespread rioting in 1967. The commission found that

(1) news coverage doesn’t create more violence, (2) coverage tends to overemphasize law-

enforcement activities and minimize the underlying grievances, and (3) the press refers to “blacks”

and “black problems” but frequently does so as if blacks weren’t part of the audience. The same

problems resurfaced in the coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

• Here are some examples of journalism’s integrity problems:

• The failure of journalists to assess public opinion during the 2016 presidential campaign has led

to disillusionment among readers, listeners, and viewers. News organizations consistently

underestimated the appeal of Donald Trump during the Republican primaries, and most news

organizations predicted that Hillary Clinton was all but certain to win the general election.

• Some reporters, often spurred by raw ambition, but sometimes also simply overwhelmed by

pressure, have either invented stories or plagiarized the work of others. Jayson Blair and Stephen

Glass are probably the most notorious perpetrators.

• On May 11, 2003, the Sunday New York Times revealed that reporter Jayson Blair, who had

written for the Times for four years, had fabricated and plagiarized many of his more than six hundred

articles. The self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” stated that “the widespread fabrication and

plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the

newspaper.” The Times reported that Blair used a cell phone, laptop, and access to newspaper

databases to hide his true location and patch together information from other newspaper reports.

Shortly thereafter, the Times was shaken by another ethical scandal when it came to light that forty-

three-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg had relied on the reporting of a stringer for a 2002

reputation for being a whiz kid with the ability to track down the most unusual stories. But he was

forced out of his job in 1998 when it was revealed that he had elaborately fabricated dozens of stories

written for the New Republic, George, Rolling Stone, Harper’s, and Policy Review, inventing quotes

and characters to make his stories more interesting. To cover his made-up work, Glass carefully

created phony phone messages, voice mails, fax numbers, notes, and letterheads to get past magazine

fact-checkers. After Glass was fired, he enrolled in law school at Georgetown University (“Why

waste his lying skills?” quipped media critic John Sutherland of the Guardian in London). In the

same week in May 2003 that Jayson Blair’s years of lying were exposed, Glass’s

semiautobiographical novel, The Fabulist, was published. In addition, a movie titled Shattered Glass,

starring Hayden Christensen (Star Wars) as Glass and with Tom Cruise as executive producer, was

released in October 2003. By then, Glass had graduated from law school, lived in New York, was

clerking for a judge, and was trying to get admitted to the New York bar.

• Newsweek writer Joe Klein put himself in an ethical predicament by writing the “anonymous”

novel Primary Colors (1996), which was then heavily promoted by Newsweek, along with stories that

attempted to guess the author’s identity. Newsweek’s editor lied, along with Klein, about not knowing

the book’s author. Klein now writes for Time.

• The blurring of the lines among PR, government, and journalism jobs also poses ethical

continued to appear on Fox News as a political commentator.

• Jeff Jarvis advocates extreme disclosure: “The public, in the end, has to judge the truth of what

we say. Part of that process is revealing our own backgrounds, our own prejudices, including

financial ties, political leanings, and other relevant beliefs. Why not reveal your religion if you’re

covering the abortion debate? Or come clean if you’re covering the auto industry and gave money to

the National Audubon Society?”

• In the summer of 2011, a long-simmering cell-phone-hacking scandal involving British tabloid

News of the World, a part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire (which in the United

States includes Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post), sent shock waves

through Great Britain and beyond. The scandal stretched over several years and several cases,

going back at least to 2002, when days after the disappearance of thirteen-year-old Milly Dowler,

News of the World began intercepting the girl’s e-mail messages. Here is a rough time line of

events:

• In 2005 and 2006, the tabloid reported information from voice-mail accounts of the royal

family, and in 2007, a newspaper editor and a private investigator received jail time for

intercepting hundreds if not thousands of voice-mail messages.

• In July 2009, the Guardian reports alleged that World had paid £1 million to suppress

was arrested in connection with the phone-hacking scandal.

• On July 10, 2011, News of the World published its final issue.

• On July 13, 2011, in the resulting storm of controversy and opposition from Parliament,

Murdoch withdrew $12 billion bid for BSkyB, the largest pay-TV broadcaster in Britain.

• On July 14, 2011, the scandal crossed the Atlantic. The FBI launched a probe into allegations

that News Corp. hacked the phones of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Rupert Murdoch and his son were also personally summoned to appear before a

parliamentary committee back in London.

• On July 15, 2011, Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton announced his resignation, and Rebekah

Brooks, chief executive of News International (the company that runs News Corp. papers in

Britain), stepped down (she was editor-in-chief at World during the phone hacking of Milly

Dowler).

• On July 17, 2011, Brooks was arrested in connection with the scandal. Allegations of bribery

News Corp.

• Journalists face complications when they socialize with sources. Journalism critics point out problems

of perception or journalism ethics when reporters and sources seem to be (or are) too friendly. The

New York Times no longer allows its employees to attend the annual White House Correspondents’

Dinner for this reason. (See Frank Rich, “All the President’s Press,” New York Times, April 29, 2007,

p. WK12, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/opinion/29rich.html.)

• Arthur Hayes, a scholar of media ethics and law, points out that we now have and need a “fifth

estate”: professionals, academics, and even comedians who serve as press critics and watch over

whether journalists are doing their job as watchdogs over the government. Hayes refers to Stephen

Colbert’s comedic skewering of President George H. Bush—as well as the press who covered his

administration—at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006. Colbert told the elite assembly

those they cover.” See Arthur S. Hayes, Press Critics Are the Fifth Estate: Media Watchdogs in

America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008, 120.

III.

Reporting Rituals and the Legacy of Print Journalism

• Explain, with examples, the reporting rituals in modern American journalism, including focusing

on the present, relying on experts, balancing story conflict, and fostering an adversarial relationship

with public figures and institutions. Explore the limitations of the principle of objectivity. Also

explain how television news has changed some of those rituals and whether Internet journalism

changes them further.

• Refer to Neal Gabler’s commentary on the 2016 presidential election, and ask students to evaluate

his assessment critically. Gabler states:

With Trump’s election, I think that the ideal of an objective, truthful journalism is dead, never

to be revived. Like Nixon and Sarah Palin before him, Trump ran against the media,

boomeranging off the public’s contempt for the press. He ran against what he regarded as

media elitism and bias, and he ran on the idea that the press disdained working-class white

America. Among the many now-widening divides in the country, this is a big one, the divide

between the media and working-class whites, because it creates a Wild West of information—a

media ecology in which nothing can be believed except what you already believe.

19, 2010, from managing editor Robert Thomson: “The scoop has never had more significance to

our professional users, for whom a few minutes, or even seconds, are a crucial advantage whose

value has increased exponentially.”

• When CNBC reported that eBay and Yahoo! might merge in March 2000, CNBC’s reporter Steve

Frank was relying on sketchy information at best and was trying to be first with the exciting

announcement. Although the merger didn’t happen, Frank’s story had real-life implications: eBay’s

stock rose $20 a share in twenty-four hours, and Wall Street was in a tizzy in after-hours trading.

The next day, the story was deemed hardly worthy of a mention in the Wall Street Journal. This

mistake points to the extreme competition for business news—especially on cable and the Web—

that has put an extra premium on being fast and first.

professor Mark Crispin Miller to AlterNet. “You absorb reporters into the advancing military unit,

and they’re psychologically inclined to see themselves as part of the military operation.” In fact,

embeds have essentially provided two types of stories: the human-interest stories about the

soldiers’ lives and the narration of troop movements. In this case, although they might have

provided interesting insights into particular skirmishes, embeds, of course, lacked the bigger picture

and couldn’t report on the overall progress of the war.

• Many media critics argue that one of the most troubling developments in current U.S. journalism is

a diminished adversarial relationship between journalists and the important leaders and institutions

they cover. These critics contend that it is far more comfortable for a journalist to act as a

stenographer—recording the official statements from the White House or Congress—than it is to

question the veracity of such statements or provide context for those statements. These critics

believe that, as a result, mistruths have permeated the news unchallenged, among them the

existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion or a definitive link

between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

A 2003 study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) revealed that a majority of

Americans had at least one of the following three false impressions: (1) definitive evidence of links

between Iraq and Al-Qaeda had been established, (2) weapons of mass destruction had been found in

Iraq, or (3) a majority of other countries backed the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

• According to the film documentary Outfoxed (2004), the Rupert Murdoch–owned Fox News was the

opposite of adversarial when it came to championing the George W. Bush administration. Outfoxed

argued that Fox News’s “Fair and Balanced” coverage was, in reality, heavily ideological, relentlessly

supporting every policy decision put forth from the Bush administration and excoriating even the

mildest opponents. The PIPA survey also found that people who relied on Fox for their news were the

Print 53 47

NPR/PBS 77 23

(Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes, October 2003.)

• In 2007, Washington Post reporter William M. Arkin took notice of the press box when he went to

a Red Sox game. He saw seven tiers of desks filled with reporters. In fact, it dawned on him that

more reporters were covering a baseball game than were covering the entire Pentagon. Considering

the fans at the ballpark, Arkin also noted that they respected and depended on sports reporters “for

commentary and amplification and insight; they study and memorize the statistics.” Arkin

continued, “I’ve often thought if we could cover the military like sports, with transparency and

intimate knowledge and a play-by-play that was both affectionate and unsparingly critical, we’d

have a healthier debate. Interest and knowledge on the part of the typical American in foreign

affairs and national security would actually increase.”

• Good investigative journalism often requires research and writing for an extended period. A superb

example is Dale Russakoff’s The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools? (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015). Russakoff, a former staff writer for the Washington Post, spent

IV.

Journalism in the Age of TV and the Internet

• Discuss how the Internet’s role in spreading news and images can, in a sense, last forever and be a

double-edged sword.

• Between 1968 and 1988, the length of the average sound bite declined from forty-three to nine

seconds (see Hallin, 1992). Here are examples:

• CBS Evening News, October 8, 1968:

Walter Cronkite: Hubert Humphrey said today that the nuclear age calls for new forms of

diplomacy, and he suggested regular summit meetings with the Soviet Union. He made

his proposal to a meeting of the nation’s newspaper editors and publishers in Washington.

Humphrey: (Speaks for 1 minute, 26 seconds)

Cronkite [over video of press conference]: Humphrey was asked about the battered state

of the Democratic Party.

Humphrey: (Speaks for 49 seconds)

• ABC World News Tonight, October 4, 1988:

ABC reporter Barry Serafin: Under criticism even from some Republican Party elders for

not talking enough about issues, and seeking to blunt Democratic charges of callousness,

Bush unveiled a new proposal called YES, Youth Engaged in Service, aimed at enlisting

Bush: I will be the education president.

Serafin: And another familiar refrain:

Bush: Read my lips: No new taxes!

According to Daniel Hallin, today’s television journalists treat words more as raw materials to be

edited, shifted around, combined with sounds and images, and reintegrated into a new narrative.

Besides words, accompanying visuals have also become shorter and are used more often. Instead of

letting the interviewee dictate the interview’s content, journalists take more control of the story

(another reason the use of “experts” has increased). Consequently, the news is now much more

• Here’s some information about how online journalism is changing journalism practices:

• Many newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Miami Herald, are now fully integrating

their online news divisions with their print divisions. The Herald and the Times both have a

in 2006:

We are beyond being satisfied with incremental change and giving a polite head nod

toward other media platforms. We are going to execute fundamental restructuring to

support that pledge. Every job in the newsroom—EVERY JOB—is going to be redefined

to include a web responsibility and, if appropriate, radio. For news gatherers, this means

posting everything we can as soon as we can. It means using the Web site to its fullest

potential for text, audio, and video. We’ll come to appreciate that MiamiHerald.com is

not an appendage of the newsroom; it’s a fundamental product of the newsroom.

• Bloggers are significantly affecting journalism by demanding more transparency from journalists

and media outlets. Leading this conversation are bloggers such as Jeff Jarvis

(http://buzzmachine.com; director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the

City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism), Jim Romenesko

(http://jimromenesko.com), and Jay Rosen (http://pressthink.org; professor of journalism at New

York University).

• Major news outlets are responding to the charge by hiring public editors, adding “how we got

the story” links to their online articles, encouraging journalists to start blogs to add more

background to their reporting, and developing online features that encourage citizen feedback.

• Bloggers have become important conduits for journalists, who depend on bloggers’

independent investigations and often expert knowledge to uncover, contextualize, and sustain

important stories. Bloggers can often dig and aggregate information en masse faster than a single

journalist can pull and organize information.

• Bloggers have been key voices in the debate about objectivity in journalism practice. They

argue that objectivity doesn’t exist, that opinions matter in the public discourse, and that

V. Alternative Models: Public Journalism and “Fake” News

• The Project for Excellence in Journalism (http://www.journalism.org) released a study in 2004

revealing the pressure that media outlets are facing, owing to the Internet and twenty-four-hour cable,

to “tell the news” rather than “collect the news.” In other words, the “added value” of context and

thoughtfulness, both in print and broadcast, is diminishing. Here are some specific points from the

study:

• There is much more “news-gathering in the raw” (meaning live coverage), which leads to less

fact-checking and contextualization.

• Consumers and providers value speed and convenience, sometimes at the expense of accuracy.

• Twenty-four-hour news operations pick five or so stories each morning and then recycle the

same information throughout the day. Only 5 percent of stories on cable have new information, and

• The Big Three networks experienced a 34 percent drop in viewers between 1993 and 2004

(although solid investigative news reports like 60 Minutes continue to make substantial profits,

which again points to the value of context in news). The network news decline has also been

countered by a rise in Internet news readership.

• Trust in the media has steadily declined.

• In 2013, the Project for Excellence in Journalism released updated information about television

journalism. The study found:

• The average length of a TV news story remained steady from 2007 to 2012, at around 142

seconds.

• Half of all local TV news stories in 2012 were less than thirty seconds long, and only a fifth were

longer than one minute.

• The amount of airtime devoted to sports, weather, and traffic increased to 40 percent in 2012.

• Commentary and opinion were far more prevalent on cable news networks (63 percent of airtime)

• Bill Moyers and Jon Stewart engaged in two interesting dialogues about the relationship between

comedy and journalism, first in 2003 on Now and then in 2007 on Bill Moyers’ Journal. Transcripts

and video recordings of both shows are available: “Bill Moyers Interviews Jon Stewart,” Now, July

11, 2003 (video: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/archives/stewart_vid.html; transcript:

http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_stewart_print.html); and “Bill Moyers Talks with Jon

Stewart,” Bill Moyers’ Journal, April 27, 2007 (video:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/watch.html; transcript:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/transcript1.html).

VI.

Democracy and Reimagining Journalism’s Role

• Discuss some of the issues surrounding WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden’s actions. Point out how

these cases might relate to other instances of whistle-blowing, such as the Pentagon Papers.

• Direct students to the Pew Research Center’s report “State of the News Media 2016” at

http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/state-of-the-news-media-2016. Ask students to examine the

report to see if they can find ways that journalism is reimagining its role (or is failing to do so.)

MEDIA LITERACY DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES

QUESTIONABLE/ILLEGAL REPORTING PRACTICES AND ETHICAL ISSUES

Make a short list of questionable or illegal methods that reporters might use to get a story (e.g.,

withholding their identity as a reporter). Discuss the circumstances under which these methods might be

justified.

Have students look at the New York Times’ handbook for ethical journalism, which offers

guidance for employees to follow in many types of situations, such as Standards of Behavior; Pursuing

the News; Personal Relations with Sources; Obeying the Law in Pursuit of the News; Accepting

Hospitality from Sources; Protecting the Paper’s Neutrality; Advertisers, Marketing, Promotion;

Disclosure of Possible Conflicts; Investments and Financial Ties; and Dealing with Outside Contributors.

(See New York Times, “Ethical Journalism: A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and

Editorial Departments,” September 2004,

http://www.nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf.) Students can debate the merits of many

of the guidelines. For example, journalists who work at the Times are not allowed to be candidates for any

public office, and they “may not wear campaign buttons or themselves display any other insignia of

partisan politics. They should recognize that a bumper sticker on the family car or a campaign sign on the

lawn may be misread as theirs, no matter who in their household actually placed the sticker or the sign.”

NEWS VALUES

Present students with the full set of news values (professional priorities and industrial imperatives in news

gathering and reporting) that emerged from Gans’s study: ethnocentrism, altruistic democracy,

responsible capitalism, small-town pastoralism, individualism, moderatism, social order, and national

leadership. (See Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What’s News [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,

2004], 42–68.)

Then have students react to Gans’s conclusion that these values do not fit neatly into a particular

political ideology. Responsible capitalism seems more centrist or liberal, but the news is conservative in

that it is biased toward tradition, nostalgia, and the defense of social order. Gans writes, “If the news has

to be pigeonholed ideologically, it is right-liberal or left conservative.”

EXAMINING EXPERT SOURCES

The purpose of this Critical Process exercise is to extend your critical approach to the news. With a

partner, choose for reading and viewing two newspapers (a local daily paper and the New York Times)

and one TV outlet (either a major network, Fox News, or CNN newscast), all from the same weekday.

Devise a chart on which you list every expert source who is quoted in the stories for that day. Column

heads might include “News Event,” “Expert Source,” “Occupations,” “Gender,” “Age (approximate),”

and “Region.” Throughout this project, limit your focus to local, national, or international news.

1. Description. Count the total number of sources used by each newspaper or network program. Do

the sources work in jobs that require professional degrees, or do they work in blue-collar jobs?

Look for quotes in news articles and for sound bites on television. Are all sources identified? How

are they identified? Can you tell which area of the country these sources are from? What kinds of

experts are quoted in the news? What jobs do they seem to hold? What gender are the news

sources?

2. Analysis. After completing your charts, write one or two paragraphs discussing patterns that

emerge. Who seems to get quoted most frequently? Among those quoted, what kinds of

occupations generally appear? Do male sources or female sources dominate?

3. Interpretation. Write a one- or two-paragraph critical interpretation of your findings. How are the

sources used? Why do you think certain sources appear in this day’s news more frequently than

others? Why do reporters seek out certain types of sources rather than others? Does the gender of

sources mean anything?

4. Evaluation. Discuss the limitations of your study; compare whether print or television handles

sources better. Did circumstances on the particular day you chose suggest why one type of expert

appears more often than other types?

5. En gagement. Contact a print reporter, a TV reporter, and/or an editor responsible for your selected

stories. Report your preliminary findings, and document how the reporters came to choose their

sources. (Note: This assignment works either as an in-class presentation or as a written project.

Either way, it should include charts that help organize the material.)

CONVENTIONAL NEWS AND PUBLIC JOURNALISM

Pre-Exercise Questions: Are there any important issues about your college or university community that

have not been in the local news? If so, why do you think they’re missing from news reports?

This discussion/exercise links specifically to the text section titled “Alternative Models: Public

Journalism and ‘Fake’ News.” You’ll be comparing strategies for writing and reporting from (a) a

conventional-news perspective and (b) a public-journalism perspective.

1. Identify a problem on your college or university campus or in the larger community. For example,

“There’s not enough student participation at university events,” “Rising tuition is forcing some

students out of college,” or “There’s a new incident in the longtime adversarial relationship

between the ‘townies’ and the college students.” (Realize that even as you decide how to frame the

question of any topic, you’re suggesting parameters for your story.)

2. Identify the information you’ll need to write the story from conventional- and public-journalism

perspectives. First, start with the conventional-news approach. Where do you go for information?

Do you think you already “know” what these sources would say? Does your approach mean that

there are some people you will or will not consider as sources? Because you are a member of the

campus/community in which this problem exists, what do you know about the problem? Can you

include your knowledge in the story? If so, how? Does the information change if it is a broadcast

story (television or radio) instead of a print story? Address these questions using a public-

journalism approach.

3. How will you organize the two stories? Does all the information fit into a two-sided story

framework? How many “sides” might there actually be to this problem?

4. Analyze the ways in which each approach framed the story. What story details did you select?

Which were emphasized the most? Which story details were excluded? Why? What do the stories

seem to suggest as the cause of the problem? What solutions, if any, do the stories advance?

5. Evaluate each story approach. Which is more deliberative? Which is easier to write? Which is more

interesting to write? Which story do you think would be most interesting to readers? What do you

think was the ultimate goal of each story approach?

Options: This exercise could also be adapted as an individual or group paper assignment. You might

consider having advanced students actually report and write stories from both perspectives.

ANALYZING THE QUALITY OF NEWS

Method: Content analysis and comparison of various news outlets.

One of the major jobs of news media is to keep the public informed about the nation’s political

institutions and the actions of its military. The goal of this assignment is to evaluate how well the media

report these important issues and then to compare the different forms of media. This project involves both

group and individual work.

Part 1: Group Content Analysis of the Media Coverage

To judge how well the media are keeping the public informed, we must first get a clear picture of what

kind of coverage is being presented. We are going to do this step in groups of five to spread out the

work of collecting this information.

1. As a group, select a pertinent topic (a political campaign or overseas military engagements are good

examples).

2. Each group member must take responsibility for a specific media outlet to monitor. Each group

should have a mix of TV newscasts, newspapers, and one Internet news site.

3. Your group must monitor the news for the same five consecutive days. The newspapers should be

daily. Those of you monitoring newspapers must use the paper editions, not the online editions.

However, it is okay for one person to monitor the print version of the San Francisco Chronicle, for

example, and another http://www.sfgate.com.

4. You must be consistent. If you are monitoring the 10 P.M. Channel 2 newscast for five nights, it is

not okay to skip a night or to substitute Channel 11 at 11 P.M.

5. Each person should keep a log of what stories relating to the chosen topic were covered, noting

what it was about. If there was no coverage that day, take note of the kind of stories that were

covered.

6. Each group should generate one summary of the information that each member can use. You can

put this information in lists, tables, or any other form that is easy for your group to digest.

7. Groups have a right to drop a member who does not perform the assigned monitoring. Anyone

dropped from a group will have to do all the monitoring alone.

Part 2: Individual Analysis

Each person will use the group information to write a short paper of 500 to 750 words evaluating the

must attach the group summary to your paper.

—Developed by Donna Hemmila, Diablo Valley College

TRACKING RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN JOURNALISM: A SEMESTER-LONG CRITICAL

PROCESS EXERCISE AND PAPER

In this exercise students discover the most recent developments in the industry, and they become familiar

with industry trade sources. The paper they produce is due in sections, which correspond with the steps in

the Critical Process.

1. Description. Read industry trade sources to get a sense of the main issues affecting journalism. Look

at the Web sites of industry trade associations and professional societies. (Links to Web sites of some

industry trade sources are given in the Classroom Media Sources below.) Take notes on topics that

have multiple stories or mentions in the current year. What issues or developments in the industry

have received a lot of recent attention, discussion, or commentary in industry sources? (Focus only on

information from the current year—and only from trade sources.) Write a one-page synopsis of the

information you found about current topics in the industry. Cite your sources properly.

2. Analysis. Look for one development or pattern that has received significant attention on trade sites

and from trade journalists in the current year. Choose one specific trend, and write one or two pages

with details about the information you found about that trend. Continue to track news about your

topic as the semester progresses. Cite sources properly.

3. Interpretation. What does the trend mean for the state of the industry? Is it evolving? How? What

does it tell you about media in general at the current time? What might it say about our culture or our

society? Can your information help us interpret the role of the industry in our lives? Write up your

interpretation in a five-page paper. (The first page should be a synopsis of the trend, with proper

citations.) You might not have to provide information from your sources for the next four pages

because this section is your interpretation of the trend. (Save any ideas you have about whether the

trend is “good” or “bad” for the Evaluation step of the Critical Process.)

4. Evaluation. Is the trend “good” or “bad”? For the industry? society? culture? democracy? us? What

do you think might happen in the future?

5. Engagement. Are there any actions you can take (related to your trend and the industry)? Possibilities

include posting your views on social media, creating a petition, contacting people in the industry to

see what they think of your interpretation and evaluation, or going to an industry event if any are held

nearby. (This step need not be required if students are not motivated to take action.)

Note: This exercise works well if each step of the Critical Process is due two weeks after the prior step is

due. Limiting students to only trade sources and only information from the current year helps keep them

on track. Your institution’s librarians should be able to provide students with information on how to

access industry trade sources.

CLASSROOM MEDIA RESOURCES

LAUNCHPAD FOR MEDIA & CULTURE: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/mediaculture11e

The Contemporary Journalist: Pundit or Reporter? (2010, 3:12 minutes). In this video, journalist

Clarence Page and journalism professor and author Richard Campbell discuss how today’s new media

age has blurred the distinction between a “journalism of verification” and a “journalism of assertion”

for contemporary reporters.

Fake News/Real News: A Fine Line (2009, 4:11 minutes). The editor of the Onion describes how the

publication critiques “real” news media.

Journalism Ethics: What News Is Fit to Print? (2009, 3:51 minutes). Journalism and legal scholars

discuss the ethical considerations inherent in the news industry. Featuring Frank LoMonte and Joe

Urschel.

The Objectivity Myth (2010, 3:00 minutes). Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Clarence Page and Onion

editor Joe Randazzo explore how objectivity began in journalism and how reporter biases may

nonetheless influence news stories.

Shield Laws and Nontraditional Journalists (2010, 3:06 minutes). James Rainey and Frank LoMonte

discuss shield laws and their effect on journalism.

VIDEOS/DVDS/CDS

Beyond the Frame: Alternative Perspectives on the War on Terrorism (2004, 126 minutes). Interviews

with leading scholars, experts, and activists about the U.S. mainstream media’s coverage of the war

on terrorism, which was largely confined to the opinions of political elites and a commercial frame

dependent on advertisers and ratings. Distributed by the Media Education Foundation, 800-897-0089;

http://www.mediaed.org.

Fear and Favor in the Newsroom (1996, 57 minutes). The testimony of some of the nation’s most

distinguished journalists, including four Pulitzer Prize winners, shatters the myth perpetuated by the

media themselves that editorial decisions are made “without fear or favor.” Available on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTYmSe5xg2U.

Kill the Messenger (2014, 112 minutes). Based on the true story of San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary

Webb’s 1996 “Dark Alliance” investigative journalism series implicating the CIA in the crack

cocaine epidemic in the United States because of the CIA’s involvement with Nicaraguan contras

who were drug traffickers.

Medium Cool (1969, 111 minutes). One of the first films to address the power of the television news

camera, Medium Cool follows a television-news camera operator and his increased apathy toward his

surroundings and his job.

The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News Featuring Noam Chomsky and Edward

Herman (1997, 60 minutes). A comprehensive framework for understanding how the news is

produced and in whose interests it works. Distributed by the Media Education Foundation, 800-897-

0089; http://www.mediaed.org.

NOW with Bill Moyers (2004, December 17, 60 minutes). In his final episode, Bill Moyers reports on the

intersection of media and politics and on how Republicans have used it so successfully. Distributed

by PBS Home Video, 800-531-4727; http://www.shoppbs.org.

Spotlight (2015, 128 minutes). Film about the work of Boston Globe reporters to expose sexual abuse in

the Catholic Church and the subsequent cover-up of the scandal by the Archdiocese of Boston.

Truth (2015, 125 minutes). The story of the controversial 60 Minutes report about President George W.

Bush’s military record and the embattled producer, Mary Mapes, and network anchor, Dan Rather.

Veronica Guerin (2003, 98 minutes). Starring Cate Blanchett, this feature film is based on the story of a

devoted Irish journalist who wrote about organized crime and was ultimately gunned down in her car.

Directed by Joel Schumacher.

WEB SITES

American Press Institute: https://www.americanpressinstitute.org

American Society of News Editors: http://asne.org

Associated Press Media Editors: http://www.apme.com

Benton Foundation (news about journalism): https://www.benton.org/taxonomy/term/24

The Blog Herald: http://www.blogherald.com

Columbia Journalism Review: http://www.cjr.org

Committee to Protect Journalists: https://www.cpj.org

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR): http://www.fair.org

The Institute for Interactive Journalism: http://www.j-lab.org

Investigative Reporters and Editors: http://www.ire.org

Journalism Education Association: http://jea.org

National Press Club: http://www.press.org

News Media Alliance: https://www.newsmediaalliance.org

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism: http://www.journalism.org

Poynter Institute Online: http://www.poynter.org

Reporters without Borders: http://www.rsf.org

Society of Professional Journalists: http://www.spj.org

Vanderbilt Television News Archive: http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu