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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?
1.
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
FURTHER READING
Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939,
1969.
Alterman, Eric. What Liberal Media? The Truth about Bias and the News. New York: Basic, 2003.
Bennett, W. L., Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston. When the Press Fails: Political Power and
the News Media from Iraq to Katrina. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Campbell, Richard. “60 Minutes” and the News: A Mythology for Middle America. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1991.
Carey, James W. “The Press and the Public Discourse.” Kettering Review (Winter 1992): 9–22.
Commission on Freedom of the Press (Hutchins Commission). A Free and Responsible Press. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1947. Available at https://archive.org/details/freeandresponsib029216mbp.
Dickinson, Roger, Julian Matthews, and Kostas Saltzis. “Studying Journalists in Changing Times:
Understanding News Work as Socially Situated Practice.” International Communication Gazette 75
(February 2013): 3–18.
Gans, Herbert J. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek,
and Time. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004.
———. Democracy and the News. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Glasser, Theodore L., ed. The Idea of Public Journalism. New York: Guilford, 1999.
Gray, Jonathan, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson, eds. Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-
Network Era. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Guttenplan, D. D. American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2009.
Hallin, Daniel C. “Sound Bite News: Television Coverage of Elections, 1968–1988.” Journal of
Communication 42.2 (Spring 1992): 5–24.
Hayes, Arthur S. Press Critics are the Fifth Estate: Media Watchdogs in America. Westport, CT: Praeger,
2008.
Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the
Crimea to Kosovo. London: Prion, 2000.
Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the
Public Should Expect. New York: Three Rivers, 2001.
Lasch, Christopher. “Journalism, Publicity and the Lost Art of Argument.” Gannett Center Journal 4.2
(Spring 1990): 1–11.
Lippmann, Walter. Liberty and the News. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.
MacPherson, Myra. “All Governments Lie”: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone. New
York: Scribner, 2006.
McChesney, Robert W., and John Nichols. The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media
Revolution that Will Begin the World Again. Philadelphia: Nation Books, 2010.
McChesney, Robert W., and Victor W Pickard. Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The
Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It. New York: New Press, 2011.
Miraldi, Robert. Seymour Hersh: Scoop Artist. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books/University of Nebraska
Press, 2013.
Schudson, Michael. The Sociology of News. New York: Norton, 2012.
Sperber, Ann M. Murrow: His Life and Times. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986.
Thomas, Helen. Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed
the Public. New York: Scribner, 2006.
