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CHAPTER 14 The Culture of Journalism Values, Ethics, and Democracy know today as investigative journalism. Her undercover work-including time spent posing as a mental patient at the Women's Lunatic Asylum, an unwed mother looking to rid herself of an unwanted child, and a sinner at a home for unfortunate women-exposed a need for reforms in the care of the mentally ill and of underprivileged members of society. MODERN TOURNALISM IN THE INEORMATION AGE ETHICS AND THE NEWS MEDIA REPORTING RITUALS AND THE LEGACY OF PRINT JOURNALISM JOURNALISM IN THE AGE OF TV AND THE INTERNET ALTERNATIVE MODELS: PUBLIC JOURNALISM AND "FAKE" NEWS DEMOCRACY AND REIMAGINING JOURNALISM'S ROLE IN 1887, a young reporter left her job at the Pittsburgh Dispatch to seek her fortune in New York City. Only twenty-three years old, Elizabeth "Pink" Cochrane had grown tired of writing for the society pages and answering letters to the editor. She wanted to be on the front page. But at that time, it was considered "unladylike" for women journalists to use their real names, so the Dispatch editors, borrowing from a Stephen Foster song, had dubbed her "Nellie Bly." After four months of persistent job-hunting and freelance writing, Nellie Bly earned a tryout at Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, the nation's largest paper. Her assignment: to investigate the deplorable conditions at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. Her method: to get herself declared mad and committed to the asylum. After practicing the look of a disheveled lunatic in front of mirrors, wandering city streets unwashed and seemingly dazed, and terrifying her fellow boarders in a New York rooming house by acting crazy, she succeeded in convincing doctors and officials to commit her. Other New York newspapers reported her incarceration, speculating on the identity of this "mysterious waif," this "pretty crazy girl" with the "wild, hunted look in her eyes."! Her two-part story appeared in October 1887 and caused a sensation. Bly was the first reporter to pull off such a stunt. In the days before so-called objective journalism, Nellie Bly's dramatic first-person accounts documented harsh cold baths ("three buckets of water over my head-ice cold water-into my eyes, my ears, my nose and my mouth"); attendants who abused and taunted patients; and newly arrived immigrant women, completely sane, who were committed to this "rat trap" simply because no one could understand them. After the exposé, Bly was famous. Pulitzer gave hera permanent job, and New York City committed $1 million toward improving its asylums. Within a year, Nellie Bly had exposed a variety of shady scam artists, corrupt politicians and lobbyists, and unscrupulous business practices. Posing as an "unwed mother" with an unwanted child, she uncovered an outfit trafficking in newborn babies. And disguised as a sinner in need of reform, she revealed the appalling conditions at a home for "unfortunate women."A lifetime champion of women and the poor, Bly pioneered what was then called detective or stunt journalism. Her work inspired the twentieth-century practice of investigative journalism-from Ida Tarbell's exposés of oil corporations in 1902-1904 to the Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting, awarded in 2016 to Leonora L aPeter Anton and Anthony Cormier of the Tampa Bay Times and Michael Braga of the Sarasota H eraldTribune "for a stellar example of collaborative reporting by two news organizations that revealed escalating violence and neglect in Florida mental hospitals and laid the blame at the door of state officials. "2 One problem facing journalism today is that in the last few years, traditional print and broadcast newsrooms have dramatically cut back on news investigations, which are expensive and time consuming, even though readers and viewers want more of them, not fewer. Mary Walton, writing about the state of investigative reporting for American Journalism Review, made this point in 2010:"Kicked out, bought out or barely hanging on, investigative reporters are a vanishing species in the forests of dead tree media and missing in action on Action News. I-Teams are shrinking or, more often, disappearing altogether. Assigned to cover multiple beats, multitasking backpacking reporters no longer have time to sniff out hidden stories, much less write them." She reported that Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) membership fell more than 30 percent, from 5,391 in 2003, to a 10-year low of 3,695 in 2009." But encouragingly, the slack has been picked up, at least partially, by nontraditional and online media. Jason Stverak, writing for Watchdog. org, has noted, "Today, nonprofit news groups across the country are providing the 'unsexy and repetitive' coverage that the old-guard press began abandoning at the turn of the century.... Nonprofit news groups will lead the way in conducting investigative reports and keeping elected officials open and honest." And in 2017, IRE reported that its membership had climbed to more than 5,000. JOURNALISM IS THE ONLY MEDIA ENTERPRISE that democracy absolutely requiresand it is the only media practice and business that is specifically mentioned and protected by the U. S. Constitution. However, with the major decline in investigative reporting and traditional news audiences, the collapse of many newspapers, and the rise of twenty-fourhour cable news channels and Internet news blogs, mainstream journalism is searching for new business models and better ways to connect with the public. 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 onlinenews 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 fo rms of news Launc hPad macmillan learning launchpadwor ks. com V isit LaunchPad for Media & Culture and use Learning Curve to review concepts from this chapter. As you read this chapter, think about how often you look at the news in a typical day. What are some of the recent events or issues you remember reading about in the news? Where is the first place you go to find information about a news event or current issue? If you start with a search engine, what newspapers or news organizations do you usually end up looking at? Do you prefer opinion blogs over news organizations for your information? Why or why not? Do you pay for news-either by buying a newspaper or newsmagazine or by going online? For more questions to help you understand the role of journalism in our lives, see "Questioning the Media" in the Chapter Review. MODERN JOURNALISM IN THE INFORMATION AGE In modern America, serious journalism has sought to provide information that enables citizens to make intelligent decisions. Today, this guiding principle faces serious threats. Why? First, we may just be producing too much information. According to social critic Neil Postman, as a result of developments in media technology, society has developed an "information glut" that transforms news and information into "a form of garbage. "S Postman believes that scientists, technicians, managers, and journalists merely pile up mountains of new data, which add to the problems and anxieties of everyday life. As a result, too much unchecked data-especially on the Internet-and too little thoughtful discussion emanate from too many channels of communication. A second, related problem suggests that all the data (and distractions) the media now provide have questionable impact on improving public and political life. Many people feel cut off from our major institutions, including journalism. As a result, some citizens are looking to take part in public conversations and civic debates-to renew a democracy in which many voices participate. For example, while the election of Donald Trump in 2016 invigorated and infuriated Americans across the political spectrum, his controversial presidency has engaged the American public on a much deeper level than have the more predictable presidencies of the past. What Is News? In a 1963 staff memo, NBC news president Reuven Frank outlined the narrative strategies integral to all news: "Every news story should ... display the attributes of fiction, of drama. It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising and falling action, a beginning, a middle, and an end." Despite Frank's candid insights, many journalists today are uncomfortable thinking of themselves as storytellers. Instead, they tend to describe themselves mainly as information-gatherers. News is defined here as the process of gathering information and making narrative reports-edited by individuals for news organizations-that offer selected frames of reference; within those frames, news helps the public make sense of important events, political issues, cultural trends, prominent people, and unusual happenings in everyday life. Left: Ben Margot/AP Images; right: AP Images "DEEP THROAT" The major symbol of twentieth-century investigative journalism, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's (above right) coverage of the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post helped topple the Nixon White House. In All the President's Men-the newsmen's book about their investigation-a major character is Deep Throat, the key unidentified source for much of Woodward's reporting. Deep Throat's identity was protected by the two reporters for more than thirty years. Then, in the summer of 2005, he revealed himself as Mark Felt (above), the former No. 2 official in the FBI during the Nixon administration. (Felt died in 2008.) Characteristics of News Over time, a set of conventional criteria for determining newsworthiness-information most worthy of transformation into news stories-has evolved. Journalists are taught to select and develop news stories relying on one or more of these criteria: timeliness, proximity, conflict, prominence, human interest, consequence, usefulness, novelty, and deviance. Most issues and events that journalists select as news are timely, or new. Reporters, for example, cover speeches, meetings, crimes, and court cases that have just happened. In addition, most of these events have to occur close by, or in proximity to, readers and viewers. Although local TV news and papers offer some national and international news, readers and viewers expect to find the bulk of news devoted to their own to wns and communities. rRook Air Most news stories are narratives and thus contain a healthy dose of conflict-a key ingredient in narrative writing. In developing news narratives, reporters are encouraged to seek contentious quotes from those with opposing views. For example, stories on presidential elections almost always feature the most dramatic opposing Republican and Democratic positions. And many stories in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, pitted the values of other cultures against those of Western culturefor example, Islam versus Christianity or premodern traditional values versus contemporary consumerism. Reader and viewer surveys indicate that most people identify more closely with an individual than with an abstract issue. Therefore, the news media tend to report stories that feature prominent, powerful, or influential people. Because these individuals often play a role in shaping the rules and values of a community, journalists have traditionally been responsible for keeping a watchful eye on them and relying on them for quotes. But reporters also look for human-interest stories: extraordinary incidents that happen to "ordinary people. In fact, reporters often relate a story about a complicated issue (such as unemployment, war, tax rates, health care, or homelessness) by illustrating its impact on one "average" person, family, or town. Two other criteria for newsworthiness are consequence and usefulness. Stories about isolated or bizarre crimes, even though they might be new, near, or notorious, often have little impact on our daily lives. To balance these kinds of stories, many editors and reporters believe that some news must also be of consequence to a majority of readers or viewers. For example, stories about issues or events that affect a family's income or change a community's laws have consequence. Likewise, many people look for stories with a practical use: nts on buying a used car or choosing a college, strategies for training a pet or removing a stain. Finally, news is often about the novel and the deviant. When events happen that are outside the routine of daily life, such as a seven-year-old girl trying to pilot a plane across the country or an ex-celebrity involved in a drug deal, the news media are there. Reporters also cover events that appear to deviate from social norms, including murders, rapes, fatal car crashes, fires, political scandals, and gang activities. For example, as the war in Iraq escalated, any suicide bombing in the Middle East represented the kind of novel and deviant behavior that qualified as major news. Values in American Journalism Although newsworthiness criteria are a useful way to define news, they do not reveal much about the cultural aspects of news. News is both a product and a process. It is both the morning paper or evening newscast and a set of subtle values and shifting rituals that have been adapted to historical and social circumstances, such as the partisan press values of the eighteenth century or the informational standards of the twentieth century. For example, in 1841, Horace Greeley described the newly founded New York Tribune as "a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other." Greeley feared that too much neutrality would make reporters into wimps who stood for nothing. Yet the neutrality Greeley warned against is today a major value of conventional journalism, with mainstream reporters assuming they are acting as detached and all-seeing observers of social experience. Neutrality Boosts Credibility-and Sales As former journalism professor and reporter David Eason notes, "Reporters ... have no special method for determining the truth of a situation nor a special language for reporting their findings. They make sense of events by telling stories about them." Even though journalists transform events into stories, they generally believe that they are-or should be-neutral observers who present facts without passing judgment on them. Conventions such as the inverted-pyramid news lead, the careful attribution of sources, the minimal use of adverbs and adjectives, and a detached third-person point of view all help reporters perform their work in an apparently neutral way. Like lawyers, therapists, and other professionals, many modern journalists believe that their credibility derives from personal detachment. Yet the roots of this view reside in less noble territory. Jon Katz, media critic and former CBS News producer, discusses the history of the neutral pose: The idea of respectable detachment wasn't conceived as a moral principle so much as a marketing device. Once newspapers began to mass market themselves in the mid-1880s, .. · publishers ceased being working, opinionated journalists. They mutated instead into businessmen eager to reach the broadest number of readers and antagonize the fewest.... Objectivity works well for publishers, protecting the status quo and keeping journalism's voice militantly moderate.? To reach as many people as possible across a wide spectrum, publishers and editors realized as early as the 1840s that softening their partisanship might boost sales. Partisanship Trumps Neutrality, Especially Online and on Cable Since the rise of cable and the Internet, today's media marketplace has offered a fragmented world where appealing to the widest audience no longer makes the best economic sense. More options than ever exist, with newspaper readers and TV viewers embracing cable news, social networks, blogs, and Twitter. The old "mass" audience has morphed into smaller niche audiences that embrace particular hobbies, story genres, politics, and social networks. News media outlets that hope to survive appeal no longer to mass audiences but to interest groups-be they sports fans or history buffs, conservatives or liberals. So, mimicking the news business of the eighteenth century, partisanship has become good business. For the news media today, muting political leanings to reach a mass audience makes no sense because such an audience no longer exists in the way it once did-especially in the days when only three major TV networks offered evening news for a half hour, once a day. Instead, news media now make money by targeting and catering to niche groups on a 24/7 news cycle. In such a marketplace, we see the decline of a more neutral journalistic model that promoted fact-gathering, documents, and expertise and held up "objectivity" as the ideal for news practice. Rising in its place is a new era of partisan news-what Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel call a "journalism of assertion"-marked partly by a return to journalism's colonial roots and partly by the downsizing of the "journalism of verification" that kept watch over our central institutions. This transition is symbolized by the rise of the cable news pundit on Fox News or MSNBC as a kind of "expert," with more standing than verified facts, authentic documents, and actual experts. Today, the new partisan fervor found in news, both online and on cable, has been a major catalyst for escalating the nation's intense political and ideological divide. In the Trump era, ratings and revenue have gone up across cable news but especially on those networks that are the most partisan. On the conservative spectrum, Fox News' evening hosts have generally operated as loyal supporters of the Trump administration. On the left t in cable news, MSNBC hosts have emerged as President Trump's harshest daily critics. CNN has tried to position itself as more neutral-but it also has the lowest evening ratings. Whereas in 2018 Sean Hannity on Fox News and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC occasionally draw an audience of three million or more, CNN's most popular evening host/reporter, Anderson Cooper, had an average viewership of just under one million. Of the three, Cooper (by far) did the most actual reporting in the field. FARO LINE Fear Does No r YOU CANT FIX Belong i nScheel STUND MOU CAN FIT OUT ONSERVATIVE FORT Roger Kisby/Redux ON MARCH 24, 2018, JES I LOVEAND @ PEACE STUDENTS DEMAND ACTION WE HAVI STEPPED NOLI more than 1.2 million people supported March for Our Lives, a student-led demonstration organized to support gun control legislation following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left fourteen students and three staff members dead just one month prior. Since the march, the organization continues to grow and fight against the endemic gun violence in the United States by demanding that government leaders pass gun control legislation. Other Cultural Values in Journalism Even the neutral journalism model, which most reporters and editors still aspire to, remains a selective and uneven process. Reporters and editors turn some events into reports and discard many others. This process is governed by a d eeper set of subjective MacBook Air beliefs that are not neutral. Sociologist Herbert Gans, who studied the newsroom cultures of CBS, NBC, Newsweek, and Time in the 1970s, generalized that several basic "enduring values" have been shared by most American reporters and editors. The most prominent of these values, which persist to this day, are ethnocentrism, responsible capitalism, smalltown pastoralism, and individualism. 11 By ethnocentrism, Gans meant that in most news reporting, especially foreign coverage, reporters judge other countries and cultures on the basis of how "they live up to or imitate American practices and values." In identifying responsible capitalism as an underlying value, Gans contended that journalists sometimes naïvely assume that businesspeople compete with one another not primarily to maximize profits but "to create increased prosperity for all." Gans pointed out that although most reporters and editors condemn monopolies, "there is little implicit or explicit criticism of the oligopolistic nature of much of today's economy"12 Another value that Gans found was the romanticization of small town pastoralism: favoring the small over the large and the rural over the urban. Many journalists equate small-town life with innocence and harbor suspicions of cities, their governments, and urban experiences. Consequently, stories about rustic communities with crime or drug problems have often been framed as if the purity of country life had been contaminated by "mean" big-city values. Finally, individualism, according to Gans, remains the most prominent value underpinning daily journalism. Many idealistic reporters are attracted to this profession because it rewards the rugged tenacity needed to confront and expose corruption. Beyond this, individuals who overcome personal adversity are the subjects of many enterprising news stories. Often, however, journalism that focuses on personal triumphs neglects to explain how large organizations and institutions work or fail. Many conventional reporters and editors are unwilling or unsure of how to tackle the problems raised by institutional decay. In addition, because they value their own individualism and are accustomed to working alone, many journalists dislike cooperating on team projects or participating in forums in which community members discuss their own interests and alternative definitions of news.13 GLOBAL VILLAGE News Bias around the Globe News consumers throughout the world generally agree that news coverage should be politically unbiased, but many do not believe that their country's news media achieves this goal particularly well. A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center questioned media consumers from thirty-eight countries to gauge how unbiased they believed their news media to be. Perhaps not surprisingly, in light of recent political events, consumers in the United States expressed a marked distrust in the news media in terms of bias; although 78 percent of American respondents felt the news media should be free of political bias, only 47 percent of respondents believed that political issues were covered fairly across the news. The following table highlights consumer perceptions of media bias around the globe. Take a look to see where media consumers are most (or least) trusting about the lack of bias in their news, as well as how they feel about the media's ability to present news about government leaders and officials, portray news accurately, and cover the most important news events. Tanzania Vietnam Canada Germany Nigeria Sweden South Africa India Mexico Russia Japan UK Venezuela U. S. Brazil Israel Argentina Spain South Korea Greece Political issuesfairly 839 78% 7346 72 67% 661 65% 65% 58% 55 55% 52% 52% 474 45% 42 37 33 27% 10 News about govt. leaders andofficials 89 Tex 79% 779 68% 78% 69% 72% 55% 682 59N SO 58% 50 50% 48 26 25% News accurately 934 BON 78% 757 719 78% 733 80% 62 60% 691 63% sen SEN 519 49 361 Most important news events 85% 74% 86% 76% 72% 68% 74% 669 754 56 Data from Pew Research Center, accessed My 31, 2018, www. enclobal. com/2018/01/11/publics-globally want unbiased news coverage butae divided on whether the news. media. deliver Facts, Values, and Bias Traditionally, reporters have aligned facts with an objective position and values with subjective feelings.14 Within this context, news reports offer readers and viewers details, data, and description. It then becomes the citizen's responsibility to judge and take a stand about the social problems represented by the news. Given these assumptions, reporters are responsible only for adhering to the tradition of the trade-"getting the facts." As a result, many reporters view themselves as neutral "channels" of information rather than selective storytellers or citizens actively involved in public life. Still, most public surveys have shown that while journalists may work hard to stay neutral, the addition of partisan cable channels such as Fox News and MSNBC has undermined reporters who try to report fairly. So while conservatives tend to see the media as liberally biased, liberals tend to see the media as favoring conservative positions. But political bias is complicated. During the early years of Barack Obama's presidency, many pundits on the political Right argued that Obama got much more favorable media coverage than did former president George W. Bush. But left-wing politicians and critics maintained that the right-wing media-especially news analysts associated with conservative talk radio and Fox's cable channel-rarely reported evenhandedly on Obama, painting him as a "socialis t" or as "anti-American." n rRook ETHICS AND THE NEWS MEDIA National journalists occasionally face a profound ethical dilemma, especially in the aftermath of 9/11: When is it right to protect government secrets, and when should those secrets be revealed to the public? How must editors weigh such decisions when national security bumps up against citizens' need for information? In 2006, Dean Baquet, then editor of the Los Angeles Times (in 2014, he became the executive editor of the New York Times), and Bill Keller, then executive editor of the New York Times, wrestled with these questions in a coauthored editorial: Finally, we weigh the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing. There is no magic formula. ... We make our best judgment. When we come down on the side of publishing, of course, everyone hears about it. Few people are aware when we decide to hold an article. But each of us, in the past few years, has had the experience of withholding or delaying articles when the administration convinces us that the risk of publication outweighed the benefits.... We understand that honorable people may disagree... to publish or not to publish. But making those decisions is a responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the government. is What makes the predicament of these national editors so tricky is that in the war against terrorism, some politicians maintain that one value terrorists truly hate is "our freedom." At the same time, some of these same politicians criticized the Times for carefully editin g and then publishing the W ikiLeaks documents. There is irony here: What is more integral to liberty than the freedom of an independent press-so independent that for more than two hundred years U. S. courts have protected the news media's right to criticize our political leaders and, within boundaries, reveal government secrets? Ethical Predicaments What is the moral and social responsibility of journalists, not only for the stories they report but also for the actual events or issues they are shaping for millions of people? Wrestling with such media ethics involves determining the moral response to a situation through critical reasoning. Although national security issues raise problems for a few of our largest news organizations, the most frequent ethical dilemmas encountered in most newsrooms across the United States involve intentional deception, privacy invasions, and conflicts of interest. Deploying Deception Ever since Nellie Bly faked insanity to get inside an asylum in the 1880s, investigative journalists have used deception to get stories. Today, journalists continue to use disguises and assume false identities to gather information on social transgressions. Beyond legal considerations, though, a key ethical question comes into play: Does the end justify the means? For example, can a newspaper or TV newsmagazine use deceptive ploys to go undercover and expose a suspected fraudulent clinic that promises miracle cures at a high cost? Are news professionals justified in posing as clients desperate for a cure? In terms of ethics, there are at least two major positions and multiple variations. At one end of the spectrum, absolutist ethics suggests that a moral society has laws and codes, including honesty, that everyone must live by. This means citizens, including members of the news media, should tell the truth at all times and in all cases. In other words, the ends (exposing a phony clinic) never justify the means (using deception to get the story). An editor who is an absolutist would cover this story by asking a reporter to find victims who have been ripped off by the clinic and then telling the story through their eyes. At the other end of the spectrum is situational ethics, which promotes ethical decisions on a case-bycase basis. If a greater public good could be served by using deceit, journalists and editors who believe in situational ethics would sanction deception as a practice. Should a journalist withhold information about his or her professional identity to get a quote or a story from an interview subject? Many sources and witnesses are reluctant to talk with journalists, especially about a sensitive subject that might jeopardize a job or hurt another person's reputation. Journalists know they can sometimes obtain information by posing as someone other than a journalist, such as a curious student or a concerned citizen. Most newsrooms frown on such deception. In particular situations, though, such a practice might be condoned if reporters and their editors believed that the public needed the information. The ethics code adopted by the Society of Professional Journalists (SP]) is е f mostly silent on issues of deception. The code does say that "journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information," and it also calls on journalists to "seek truth and report it" (see Figure 14.1). So is it being "honest" for reporters to use deceptive tactics in the pursuit of truth? . er "S a art y d is SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS' CODE OF ETHICS Invading Privacy To achieve "the truth" or to "get the facts," journalists routinely straddle a line between "the public's right to know" and a person's right to privacy. One infamous example is the phone hacking scandal involving News Corp.'s now-shuttered U. K. newspaper, News of the World. In 2011, the Guardian reported that News of the World reporters had hired a private investigator to hack into the voice mail of thirteen-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler and had deleted some messages. Although there had been past allegations that reporters from News of the World had hacked into the private voice mails of the British royal family, government officials, and celebrities, this revelation on the extent of News of the World's phone hacking activities caused a huge scandal and led to the arrests and resignations of several senior executives. Today, in the digital age, when reporters can gain access to private e-mail messages, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages, as well as voice mail, such practices raise serious questions about how far a reporter should go to get information. In the case of privacy issues, media companies and journalists should always ask these ethical questions: What public good is being served here? What significant public knowledge will be gained through the exploitation of a tragic private moment? Although journalism's code of ethics says, "The news media must guard against invading a person's right to privacy," this clashes with another part of the code: "The public's right to know of events of public importance and interest is the overriding mission of the mass media. "16 When these two ethical standards collide, should journalists err on the side of the public's right to know? Conflict of Interest Journalism's code of ethics also warns reporters and editors not to place themselves in positions that produce a conflict of interest-that is, any situation in which journalists may stand to benefit personally from stories they produce. "Gifts, favors, free travel, special treatment or privileges," the code states, "can compromise the integrity of journalists and their employers. Nothing of value should be accepted."1Z Although small newspapers with limited resources and poorly paid reporters might accept such "freebies" as game tickets for their sportswriters and free meals for their restaurant critics, this practice does increase the likelihood of a conflict of interest that produces favorable or uncritical coverage. On a broader level, ethical guidelines at many news outlets attempt to protect journalists from compromising positions. For instance, in most cities, U. S. journalists do not actively participate in politics or support social causes. Some journalists will not reveal their political affiliations, and some even decline to vote. Barry Wetcher/TM and copyright Fox Searchlight Pictures. All rights reserved/ Everett Collection MICHAEL FINKEL was let go from the New York Times in 2001, after it was revealed that he had created composite characters for a story. His subsequent experiences with an accused murderer who had used Finkel's name while on the lam were documented in his memoir True Story, which was made into a 2015 movie starring Jonah Hill as Finkel alongside James Franco as Christian Longo, eventually convicted of murder. For these journalists, the rationale behind their decision is straightforward: Journalists should not place themselves in a situation in which they might have to report on the misdeeds of an organization or a political party to which they belong. If a journalist has a tie to any group, and that group is later suspected of involvement in shady or criminal activity, the reporter's ability to report on that group would be compromised-along with the credibility of the news outlet for which he or she works. Conversely, other journalists believe that not actively participating in politics or social causes means abandoning their civic obligations. They believe that fairness in their reporting, not total detachment from civic life, is their primary obligation. Resolving Ethical Problems When a journalist is criticized for ethical lapses or questionable reporting tactics, a typical response might be "I'm just doing my job" or "I was just getting the facts." Such explanations are troubling, though, because in responding this way, reporters are transferring personal responsibility for the story to a set of institutional rituals. There are, of course, ethical alternatives to self-justifications such as "I'm just doing my job" that force journalists to think through complex issues. With the crush of deadlines and daily duties, most media professionals deal with ethical situations only on a case-by-case basis as issues arise. However, examining major ethical models and theories is a common strategy for addressing ethics on a general rather than a situational basis. The most wellknown ethical standard, the Judeo-Christian command to "love your neighbor as yourself," provides one foundation for constructing ethical guidelines. Although we cannot address all major moral codes here, a few key precepts can guide us. Aristotle, Kant, and Bentham and Mill The Greek philosopher Aristotle offered an early ethical concept, the "golden mean"-a guideline for seeking balance between competing positions. For Aristotle, this was a desirable middle ground between extreme positions, usually with one regarded as deficient and the other as excessive. For example, Aristotle saw ambition as the balance between sloth and greed. Another ethical principle entails the "categorical imperative" developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). This idea maintains that a society must adhere to moral codes that are universal and unconditional, applicable in all situations at all times. For example, the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") is articulated in one form or another in most of the world's major religious and philosophical traditions and operates as an absolute moral principle. The First Amendment, which prevents Congress from abridging free speech and other rights, could be considered an example of an unconditional national law. British philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) promoted an ethical principle derived from "the greatest good for the greatest number," directing us to distribute a good consequence to more people rather than to fewer, whenever we have a choice. "18 Developing Ethical Policy Arriving at ethical decisions involves several steps. These include laying out the case; pinpointing the key issues; identifying involved parties, their intents, and their competing values; studying ethical models; presenting strategies and options; and formulating a decision. One area that requires ethics is covering the private lives of people who have unintentionally become prominent in the news. Consider Richard Jewell, the Atlanta security guard who, for eighty-eight days, was the FBI's prime suspect in the city park bombing at the 1996 Olympics. During this time, at least two key ethical questions emerged: (1) Should the news media have named Jewell as a suspect even though he was never charged with a crime? (2) Should the media have camped out daily in front of his mother's house in an attempt to interview him and his mother? The Jewell case pitted the media's right to tell stories and earn profits against a person's right to be left alone. Working through the various ethical stages, journalists formulate policies grounded in overarching moral principles. Should reporters, for instance, follow the Golden Rule and be willing to treat themselves, their families, or their friends the way they treated the Jewells? Or should they invoke Aristotle's "golden mean" and seek moral virtue between extreme positions? In Richard Jewell's situation, how might journalists have developed guidelines to balance Jewell's interests and those of the news media? 1 d REPORTING RITUALS AND THE LEGACY OF PRINT JOURNALISM Unfamiliar with being questioned themselves, many reporters are uncomfortable discussing their personal values or their strategies for getting stories. Nevertheless, a stock of rituals, derived from basic American values, underlie the practice of reporting. These include focusing on the present, relying on experts, balancing story conflict, and acting as adversaries toward leaders and institutions. Focusing on the Present In the 1840s, when the telegraph first enabled news to crisscross America instantly, modern journalism was born. To complement the new technical advances, editors called for a focus on the immediacy of the present. Modern front-page print journalism began to de-emphasize political analysis and historical context, accenting instead the new and the now. As a result, the profession began drawing criticism for failing to offer historical, political, and social analyses. Modern journalism tends to reject "old news" for whatever new event or idea disrupts today's routines. During the 1996 elections, when statistics revealed that drug use among middle-class high school students was rising, reporters latched on to new versions of the drug narrative, which had surfaced about crack cocaine during the 1986 and 1988 national elections. But these 1990s reports made only limited references to the 1980s. And although drug problems and addiction rates did not diminish in subsequent years, these topics were virtually ignored by journalists during national elections from 2000 to 2016. Indeed, given the space and time constraints of current news practices, reporters seldom link stories to the past or to the ebb and flow of history. (To analyze current news stories, see "Media Literacy and the Critical Process: Telling Stories and Covering Disaster".) Getting a Good Story Early in the 1980s, the Janet Cooke hoax demonstrated the difference between the mere telling of a good story and the social responsibility to tell the truth.2 Cooke, a former Washington Post reporter, was fired for fabricating an investigative report for which she initially won a Pulitzer Prize. (It was later revoked.) She had created a cast of characters, featuring a mother who contributed to the heroin addiction of her eight-year-old son. At the time the hoax was exposed, Chicago columnist Mike Royko criticized conventional journalism for allowing narrative conventions-getting a good story-to trump journalism's responsibility to the daily lives it documents: "There's something more important than a story here. This eight-year-old kid is being murdered. The editors should have said forget the story, find the kid. ... People in any other profession would have gone right to the police."22 Had editors at the Post done so, Cooke's hoax would not have gone as far as it did. According to Don Hewitt, the creator and longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes, "There's a very simple formula if you're in Hollywood, Broadway, opera, publishing, broadcasting, newspapering. It's four very simple words-tell me a story."23 For most journalists, the bottom line is "Get the story"-an edict that overrides most other concerns. It is the standard against which many reporters measure themselves and their profession. Getting the Story First In a discussion on public television about the press coverage of a fatal airline crash in Milwaukee in the 1980s, a news photographer was asked to talk about his role in covering the tragedy. Rather than discussing the poignant, heartbreaking aspects of witnessing the aftermath of such an event, the excited photographer launched into a dramatic recounting of how he had slipped behind police barricades to snap the first grim photos, which later appeared in the Milwaukee Journal. As part of their socialization into the profession, reporters often learn not only to emotionally detach from a tragic event but also to evade authority figures in order to secure a story ahead of the competition. The photographer's recollection points to the important role journalism plays in calling public attention to serious events and issues. Yet he also talked about the news gathering process as a game that journalists play. It's now routine for local television stations, 24/7 cable news, and newspapers to run self-promotions about how they beat competitors to a story. In addition, during political elections, local television stations and networks project winners in particular races and often hype their projections when they are able to forecast results before the competition does. MEDIA LITERACY AND THE CRITICAL PROCESS Telling Stories and Covering Disaster Covering difficult stories such as natural disasters like hurricanes or floods-may present challenges to journalists about how to frame their coverage. The opening sections, or leads, of news stories can vary depending on the source-whether it is print, broadcast, or online news-or even the editorial style of the news organization (e. g., some story leads are straightforward; some are very dramatic). And, although modern journalists claim objectivity as a goal, it is unlikely that a professional in the storytelling business can approximate any sort of scientific objectivity. The best journalists can do is be fair, reporting and telling stories to their communities and nation by explaining the complicated and tragic experiences in words or pictures. To explore this type of coverage, try this exercise with examples from recent disaster coverage of a regional or national event. 1. DESCRIPTION Find print and broadcast news versions of th e same disaster story (use Lexi sNexis ifavailable). Make copies of each story, and note the pictures chosen to tell the story. 2. ANALYSIS Find patters in the coverage. How are the stories treated differently in print and on television? Are there similarities in the words chosen or images used? What kinds of experiences are depicted? Who are the sources the reporters use to verify their information? 3. INTERPRETATION What do these patterns suggest? Can you make any interpretations or argumentsbased on the kinds of disasters covered, sources used, areas covered, or words/images chosen? How are the stories told in relation to their importance to the entire community or nation? How complex are the stories? 4. EVALUATION Which stories are the strongest? Why? Which are the weakest? Why? Make a judgment onhow well these disaster stories serve your interests as a citizen and the interests of the larger community or nation. 5. ENGAGEMENT In an e-mail or letter to the editor, share your findings with relevant editors and TVnewsdirectors. Make suggestions for improved coverage, and cite strong stories that you admired. Share with the class how the editors and news directors responded. Journalistic scoops and exclusive stories attempt to portray reporters in a heroic light: They have won a race for facts, which they have gathered and presented ahead of their rivals. It is not always clear, though, how the public is better served by a journalist's claim to have gotten a story first. In some ways, the 24/7 cable news, the Internet, and bloggers have intensified the race for getting a story first. With a fragmented audience and more media competing for news, the mainstream news often feels more pressure to lure an audience with exclusive, and sometimes sensational, stories. Although readers and viewers might value the aggressiveness of reporters, the earliest reports are not necessarily better, more accurate, or as complete as stories written later, with more context and perspective. This kind of scoop behavior, which has become rampant in the digital age, demonstrates pack or herd journalism, which occurs when reporters stake out a house; chase celebrities in packs; or follow a story in such herds that the entire profession comes under attack for invading people's privacy, exploiting their personal problems, or just plain getting the story wrong. Relying on Experts... Usually Men Another ritual of modern print journalism-relying on outside sources-has made reporters heavily dependent on experts. Reporters, though often experts themselves in certain areas by virtue of having covered them over time, are not typically allowed to display their expertise overtly. Instead, they must seek outside authorities to give credibility to seemingly neutral reports. What daily reporters know is generally subordinate to whom they know. During the early twentieth century, progressive politicians and leaders of opinion such as President Woodrow Wilson and columnist Walter Lippmann believed in the cultivation of strong ties among national reporters, government officials, scientists, business managers, and researchers. They wanted journalists supplied with expertise across a variety of areas. Today, the widening gap between those with expertise and those without it has created a need for public mediators. Reporters have assumed this role as surrogates who represent both leaders' and readers' interests. With their access to experts, reporters transform specialized and insider knowledge into the everyday commonsense language of news stories. Reporters also frequently use experts to create narrative conflict by pitting a series of quotes against one another or, on occasion, use experts to support a particular position. In addition, the use of experts enables journalists to distance themselves from daily experience; they are able to attribute the responsibility for the events or issues reported in a story to those who are quoted. To use experts, journalists must make direct contact with a source-by phone or e-mail or in person. Journalists do not, however, heavily cite the work of other writers; that would violate reporters' desire not only to get a story first but to get it on their own. Telephone calls and face-to-face interviews, rather than extensively researched interpretations, are the stuff of daily journalism. In addition, expert sources have historically been predominantly white and male. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) conducted a major study of the 14,632 sources used during 2001 on evening news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC. FAIR found that only 15 percent of sources were women-and 52 percent of these women represented "average citizens" or "non-experts." By contrast, of the male sources, 86 percent were cast in "authoritative" or "expert" roles. Among U. S. sources for whom race could be determined, the study found that white sources "made up 92 percent of the total, blacks 7 percent, Latinos and Arab Americans 0.6 percent each, and Asian Americans 0.2 percent."24 (At that time, the 2000 census reported that the U. S. population stood at 69 percent white, 13 percent Hispanic, 12 percent black, and 4 percent Asian.) So as mainstream journalists increased their reliance on a small pool of experts, they probably alienated many viewers, who may have felt excluded even from vicarious participation in day-to-day social and political life. By 2012, the evidence suggested little improvement. In fact, a study from the 4th Estate showed that over a six-month period during the 2012 election, men were "much more likely to be quoted on their subjective insight in newspapers and on television." This held true even on stories specifically dealing with women's issues. The 4th Estate study showed that "in front page articles about the 2012 election that mention[ed] abortion or birth control, men (were) 4 to 7 times more likely to be cited than women." The study concluded by noting that such a "gender gap undermines the media's credibility."25 These gender and source representation numbers have not change d much, even recently. Adrienne L aFrance, a staff writer for the Atlantic, found similar numbers borne out in her own work in both 2013 and 2015: "Male dominance in global media is well documented, and has been for many decades. Both in newsrooms and in news articles, men are leaders-they make more money, get more bylines, spend more time on-camera, and are quoted far more often tha n women-by a ratio of about 3:1 ." LaFrance cites an American Sociological Review study summarizing these data over the last forty years: "The findings of these studies are consistent: They all report substantial underrepresentation of female names, and they typically find that female names constitute approximately one fourth of all mentions."26 These numbers should not be surprising when we look at recent data on the number of women who actually lead print and broadcast newsrooms as top editors and managers. A key 2018 Women's Media Center study found that in the United States, 86.47 percent of newsroom leaders were white, "down slightly from 86.97 percent" in the center's 2016 survey. Of all leaders, about 33 percent were white women, while just over 2 percent were black women, and less than 2 percent were His panic or Asian women. As Nikole Hanna hJones, racial injustice reporter for the New York Times Magazine noted in the study, "It's rare to see a woman of color in a mainstream newsroom in a very high management position, and, for those who are there, it's [often] been a struggle." It is reasonable to conclude that if more women were in charge of newsrooms, more news sources would be Women. By the late 1990s, many journalists were criticized for blurring the line between remaining neutral and being an expert. The boom in twenty-four-hour cable news programs at this time led to a news vacuum that was eventually filled with talk shows and interviews with journalists willing to give their views. During events with intense media coveragesuch as the 2000 through 2016 presidential elections, 9/11, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars-many print journalists appeared several times a day on cable programs acting as experts on the story, often providing factual information but sometimes offering only opinion and speculation. Some editors even encourage their reporters to go on these shows for marketing reasons. Today, many big-city newspapers have office space set aside for reporters to use for cable, TV, and Internet interviews. Critics contend that these practices erode the credībility of the profession by blending journalismn with celebrity culture and commercialism. Daniel Schorr, who worked as a journalist for seven decades (he died in 2010), resigned from CNN when the cable network asked him to be a commentator during the 1984 Republican National Convention along with former Texas governor John Connally. Schorr believed that it was improper to blend ajournalist anda politician in this way, but the idea seems innocent by today's blurry standards. As the late media writer David Carr pointed out in the New York Times in 2010, "Where there was once a pretty bright line between journalist and political operative, there is now a kind of continuum, with politicians becoming media providers in their own right, and pundits, entertainers and journalists often driving political discussions,"2 often hailed as the father of modern journalism, believed that journalists should act as mediators between the general public and the political elite. In addition to treating journalism as a research-based science, Lippmann believed that the role of a journalist was essential to democracy, as citizens were otherwise uninformed about sociopolitical issues. Balancing Story Conflict For most journalists, balance means presenting all sides of an issue without appearing to favor any one position. The quest for balance presents problems for journalists. On the one hand, time and space constraints do not always permit the presentation of all sides; in practice, this value has often been reduced to "telling both sides of a story." In recounting news stories as two-sided dramas, reporters often misrepresent the complexity of social issues. The abortion controversy, for example, is often treated as a story that pits two extreme positions (staunchly pro-life versus resolutely pro-choice) against each other. Yet people whose views fall somewhere between these positions are seldom represented (studies show that this group actually represents the majority of Americans). In this manner, "balance" becomes a narrative device to generate story conflict. On the other hand, although many journalists claim to be detached, they often stake out a moderate or middle-of-the-road position between the two sides represented in a story. In claiming neutrality and inviting readers to share their "detached" point of view, journalists offer a distant, third-person, all-knowing point of view (a narrative device that many novelists use as well), enhancing the impression of neutrality by making the reporter appear value-free (or valueless). The claim for balanced stories, like the claim for neutrality, disguises journalism's narrative functions. After all, when reporters choose quotes for a story, these are usually the most dramatic or conflict-oriented words that emerge from an interview, press conference, or public meeting. Choosing quotes sometimes has more to do with enhancing drama than with being fair, documenting an event, or establishing neutrality. Until the recent shift to appealing to smaller niche audiences in the Internet age, the balance claim long served the financial interests of twentieth-century news organizations that staked out the middle ground. William Greider, a former Washington Post editor, saw the tie between good business and balanced news: "If you (were going to be a mass circulation journal, that mean[t] you (were] going to be talking simultaneously to lots of groups that [had] opposing views. So you (had) to modulate your voice and pretend to be talling to all of them."22 Acting as Adversaries The value that many journalists take the most pride in is their adversarial relationship with the prominent leaders and major institutions they cover. The prime narrative frame for portraying this relationship is sometimes called a gotcha story, which refers to the moment when, through questioning, the reporter nabs "the bad guy," or wrongdoer. This narrative strategy-part of the tough questioning style of some reporters-is frequently used in political reporting. Many journalists assume that leaders are hiding something and that the reporter's main job is to ferret out the truth through tenacious factgathering and gotcha questions. An extension of the search for balance, this stance locates the reporter in the middle, between them" and "us," between political leaders and the people they represent. Critics of the tough questioning style of reporting argue that while it can reveal significant information, when overused it fosters a cynicism among journalists that actually harms the democratic process. Although journalists need to guard against becoming too cozy with their political sources, they sometimes go to the other extreme. By constantly searching for what politicians may be hiding, some reporters may miss other issues or other key stories. When journalists employ the gotcha model to cover news, being tough often becomes an end in itself. Thus, reporters believe they have done their job just by roughing up an interview subject or by answering the limited "What is going on here?" question. Yet the Pulitzer Prize, the highest award honoring journalism, often goes to the reporter who asks ethically charged and open-ended questions, such as "Why is this going on?" and "What ought to be done about it?" JOURNALISM IN THE AGE OF TV AND THE INTERNET The rules and rituals governing American journalism began shifting in the 1950s. At the time, former radio reporter John Daly hosted the CBS network game show What's My Line? When he began moonlighting as the evening news anchor on ABC, the network blurred the entertainment and information border, foreshadowing what was to come. In the early days, the most influential and respected television news program was CBS's See It Now. Coproduced by Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow, See It Now practiced a kind of TV journalism lodged somewhere between the neutral and narrative traditions. Generally regarded as "the first and definitive" news documentary on American television, See It Now sought to report in depth-to tell and show the American audience what was happening in the world using film as a narrative tool," according to A. William Bluem, author of Documentary in American Television. Murrow worked as both the program's anchor and its main reporter, introducing the investigative model of journalism to television-a model that programs like 60 Minutes and Dateline would imitate. Later, of course, Internet news-gathering and reporting would further alter journalism. Differences between Print, TV, and Internet News Although TV news reporters share many values, beliefs, and conventions with their print counterparts, television transformed journalism in a number of ways. First, while print editors traditionally cut stories to fit the physical space around ads, TV news directors had to time their stories to fit between commercials. Despite the fact that a much higher percentage of space is devoted to print ads (about 60 percent at most dailies), TV ads (which take up less than 25 percent of a typical thirty-minute news program) generally seem more intrusive to viewers, perhaps because TV ads take up time rather than space. The Internet has "solved" these old space and time problems by freeing stories from those constraints. Second, while modern print journalists are expected to be detached, TV news derives its credibility from live, on-the-spot reporting; believable imagery; and viewers' trust in the reporters and anchors. In fact, from the early 1970s through the early 2000s, most annual polls indicated that the majority of viewers found TV news a more credible resource than print news. Indeed, viewers have tended to feel a personal regard for the local and national anchors who appear each evening on TV sets in their living rooms. Today, however, the credibility gap has disappeared, partly because of the growing distrust people have of all news media and partly because of print reporters' growing star status as guests on (or even hosts of local or cable TV news programs. By the mid-1970s, the public's fascination with the Watergate scandal, combined with the improved quality of TV journalism, helped local news departments realize profits. In an effort to retain high ratings, stations began hiring consultants, who advised news directors to invest in national prepackaged formats-such as Action News or Eyewitness News-which employ the same theme music and opening graphic visuals from market to market. Consultants also suggested that stations lead their newscasts with crime blocks: a group of TV stories that recount the worst local criminal transgressions of the day. A cynical slogan soon developed in the industry: "If it bleeds, it leads." Depending on the local station, multiple studies continue to show that crime stories still dominate as the lead story on any typical evening newscast-far more than any other category of news. TOYOTA DAY Chance Yeh/Getty Images MORNING NEWS SHOWS are closely tended patches of the network news landscape. Competition between shows like Today and Good Morning America remains intense, and network executives sometimes intervene to make "fixes," like the controversial 2012 reassignment of former Today anchor Ann Curry, who had come forward and accused Matt Lauer of sexual assault. Five years later in the midst of the #M eToo movement, similar accusations were made against Lauer by multiple women, and he was eventually fired from NBC, leaving Willie Geist, Samantha Guthrie, Carson Daly, and Al Roker (pictured here) to run the show, with Hoda Kotb (not pictured) replacing Lauer as Guthrie's main coanchor. Pretty-Face and Happy-Talk Culture In the early 1970s at a Milwaukee TV station, consultants advised the station's news director that the evening anchor looked too old. The anchor, who showed a bit of gray, was replaced and went on to serve as the station's editorial director. He was thirty-two years old at the time. In the late 1970s, a reporter at the same station was fired because of a "weight problem," although that was not given as the official reason. Earlier that year, she had given birth to her first child. In 1983, Christine Craft, a former Kansas City television news anchor, was awarded $500,000 in damages in a sex discrimination suit against station KMBC (she eventually lost the monetary award when the station appealed). She had been fired because consultants believed she was too old, too unattractive, and not deferential enough to men. Such stories are rampant in the annals of TV news, and they have helped create the stereotype of the half-witted but physically attractive news anchor, reinforced by images from popular culture-from Ted Baxter on TV's Mary Tyler Moore Show to Ron Burgundy in the Anchorman films. Although the situation has improved slightly, national news consultants set the agenda for what local reporters should cover (lots of crime) as well as how they should look and sound (young, attractive, pleasant, and with no regional accent). Essentially, news consultants-also known as news doctors-have advised stations to replicate the predominant male and female advertising images of the 1960s and 1970s in modern local TV news. Another strategy favored by news consultants is happy talk: the ad-libbed or scripted banter that goes on among local news anchors, reporters, meteorologists, and sports reporters before and after news reports. During the 1970s, consultants often recommended such chatter to create a more relaxed feeling on the news set and to foster the illusion of conversational intimacy with viewers. Some also believed that happy talk would counter much of that era's "bad news," which included coverage of urban riots and the Vietnam War. A strategy still used today, happy talk often appears forced and may create awkward transitions, especially when anchors transition to reports on events that are sad or tragic. Sound Bitten Beginning in the 1980s, the term sound bite became part of the public lexicon. The TV equivalent of a quote in print news, a sound bite is the part of a broadcast news report in which an expert, a celebrity, a victim, or a person-in-the-street responds to some aspect of an event or issue. With increasing demands for more commercial time, there is less time for interview subjects to explain their views. As a result, sound bites have become the focus of intense criticism. With shorter comments from interview subjects, TV news sometimes seems like dueling sound bites, with reporters creating dramatic tension by editing competing viewpoints together, as if interviewees had actually been in the same location speaking to one another. Of course, print news also pits one quote against another in a story, even though the actual interview subjects may never have met. Once again, these reporting techniques, also at work in online journalism, are evidence of the profession's reliance on storytelling devices to replicate or create conflict. Ted Soqui/Getty Images ANDERSON COOPER has been the primary anchor of Anderson Cooper 360 since 2003. Although the program is mainly taped and broadcast from its New York City studio and typically features reports of the day's main news stories, with added analyses from experts, Cooper is one of the few "talking heads" who reports live fairly often from the field for major news stories. Notably, he has done extensive coverage of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; the February 2011 uprisings in Egypt; the 2016 massacre at Pulse-a gay nightclub in Orlando-which claimed forty-nine lives, making it the worst mass shooting in U. S. history at that time; and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in September 2017. Pundits, "Talking Heads," and Politics The transformation of TV news by cable-with the arrival of CNN in 1980-led to dramatic changes in TV news delivery at the national level. Prior to cable news and the Internet), most people tuned to their local and national news late in the afternoon or evening on a typical weekday, with each program lasting just thirty minutes. But today, the 24/7 news cycle means that we can get TV news anytime, day or night, and constant new content has led to major changes in what is considered news. Because it is expensive to dispatch reporters to document stories or maintain foreign news bureaus to cover international issues, the much less expensive "talking head" pundit has become a standard for cable news channels. Such a programming strategy requires few resources beyond the studio and a few guests. Today's main cable channels have built their evening programs along partisan lines and follow the model of journalism as opinion and assertion: Fox News goes right with pundit stars like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham; MSNBC leans left with Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Lawrence O'Donnell; and CNN stakes out the middle with hosts who try to strike a more neutral pose, like Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, and Don Lemon. Today's cable and Internet audiences seem to prefer partisan talking heads over traditional reporting. This suggests that in today's fragmented media marketplace, going after niche audiences along political lines is smart business-although not necessarily good journalism. What should concern us today is the jettisoning of journalism-anchored in reporting and verification-that uses reporters to document stories and interview key sources. In its place, on cable and online, are highly partisan pundits who may have strong opinions and charisma but who probably do no reporting themselves and therefore may not have all their facts straight. Convergence Enhances and Changes Journalism For mainstream print and TV reporters and editors, online news has added new dimensions to journalism. Both print and TV news can continually update breaking stories online, and many reporters now post their online stories first and then work on the traditional versions. This means that readers and viewers no longer have to wait until the next day for the morning paper or for the local evening newscast for important stories. To enhance the online reports, which do not have the time or space constraints of television or print, newspaper reporters are increasingly required to provide video or audio for their stories. This might allow readers and viewers to see full interviews rather than just selected print quotes in the paper or short sound bites on the TV report. However, use of technology in the newsroom comes with a special set of problems. Print reporters, for example, can conduct e-mail interviews rather than leave the office to question a subject in person. Many editors discourage this practice because they think relying on e-mail gives interviewees the chance to control and shape their answers. While some might argue that this provides more thoughtful answers, journalists say it takes the elements of surprise and spontaneity out of the traditional news interview, during which a subject might accidentally reveal information-something less likely to occur in an online setting. Another problem for journalists, ironically, is the wide-ranging resources of the Internet. This includes access to versions of stories from other papers or broadcast stations. The mountain of information available on the Internet has made it all too easy for journalists to-unwittingly or intentionally-copy other journalists' work. In addition, access to databases and other informational sites can keep reporters at their computers rather than out cultivating sources, tracking down new kinds of information, and stayi ng in touch with their communities. Launc hPad macmillan learning launchpadworks. com Campbell et al., Media and Culture, 12e, © 2019 Bedford/St. Martin's The Contemporary Journalist: Pundit or Reporter? Journalists discuss whether the 24/7 news cycle encourages reporters to offer opinions more than facts. Discussion: What might be the reasons why reporters should give opinion s, and what might be the reasons why they MacBook Air shouldn't? Most notable for journalists in the digital age, however, are the demands that convergence has made on their reporting and writing. Print journalists at newspapers (and magazines) are expected to carry digital cameras so that they can post video along with the print versions of their stories. TV reporters are expected to write print-style news reports for their station's website to supplement the streaming video of their original TV stories. And both print and TV reporters are often expected to post the Internet versions of their stories first, before the versions they do for the morning paper or the six o'clock news. And journalists today are increasingly expected to tweet and blog. The Power of Visual Language The shift from a print-dominated culture to an electronic-digital culture requires that we look carefully at differences among various approaches to journalism. For example, the visual language of TV news and the Internet often captures events more powerfully than do words. Over the past fifty years, television news has dramatized America's key events. Civil Rights activists, for instance, acknowledge that the movement benefited enormously from televised news that documented the plight of southern blacks in the 1960s. The news footage of southern police officers turning powerful water hoses on peaceful Civil Rights demonstrators, as well as the news images of "white only" and "colored only" signs in hotels and restaurants, created a context for understanding the disparity between black and white in the 1950s and 1960s. Other TV images are also embedded in the collective memory of many Americans: the Kennedy and King assassinations in the 1960s; the turmoil of Watergate in the 1970s; the first space shuttle disaster and the Chinese student uprisings in the 1980s; the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in the 1990s; the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in 2001; Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the historic election of President Obama in 2008; and the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. More recently, the visual images etched in our collective consciousness have been of mass shootings: the murders of twenty schoolchildren and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012; the murders of forty-nine people in an Orlando nightclub in 2016; the Las Vegas gunman who opened fire on a concert crowd in 2017, killing 58 and injuring more than 850; and the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where seventeen people-fourteen students and three staff members were killed. During these critical events, TV news has been a cultural reference point, often sparting national debates, most recently over gun control and the meaning of the Second Amendment MUCK RACK MUCK RACK Daily When news isn't good news Courtesy of Muckrack. com Journo job moves for Friday sondert The Woman had NEWS IN THE DIGITAL AGE Today, more and more journalists use Twitter in addition to performing their regular reporting duties. Muck Rack collects journalists' tweets in one place, making it easier than ever to access breaking news and realtime, online reporting Today, the Internet, for good or bad, functions as a repository for news images and video, alerting us to stories that the mainstream media missed or to videos captured by amateurs. In 2013, CIA employee Edward Snowden chose a civil liberties advocate and columnist for the London-based Guardian to receive leaked material on systematic surveillance of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency. The video inte rview with the Guardian scored 1.5 million Yo uTube hits shortly after its release. As New York Times columnist David Carr noted at the time, "News no longer needs the permission of traditional gatekeepers to break through. Scoops can now come from all corners of the media map and find an audience just by virtue of what they reveal."32 More recently, during the 2016 presidential campaign, a video from 2005 surfaced in which candidate Donald Trump could be heard bragging "in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women ... saying that when you're a star, they let you do it. m32 The inc ident and video got a second life during the #M eToo movement in 2018, when a number of critics pointed to the infamous Trump tape as the beginning of the movement. ALTERNATIVE MODELS: PUBLIC JOURNALISM AND "FAKE NEWS" In 1990, Poland was experiencing growing pains as it shifted from a state-controlled economic system to a more open market economy. The country's leading newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza-the first noncommunist newspaper to appear in Eastern Europe since the 1940s-was also undergoing challenges. Based in Warsaw with a circulation of about 350,000 at the time, Gazeta Wyborcza had to report on and explain the new economy and the new crime wave that accompanied it. Especially troubling to the news staff and Polish citizens were gangs that robbed American and Western European tourists at railway stations, sometimes assaulting them in the process. The stolen goods would then pass to an outer circle, whose members transferred the goods to still another exterior ring of thieves. Even if the police caught the inner circle members, the loot usually disappeared. These developments triggered heated discussions in the newsroom. A small group of young reporters, some of whom had recently worked in the United States, argued that the best way to cover the story was to describe the new crime wave and relay the facts to readers in a neutral manner. Another group, many of whom were older and more experienced, felt that the paper should take an advocacy stance and condemn the criminals through interpretive columns on the front page. The older guard won this particular debate, and more interpretive pieces appeared. 33 This story illustrates the two competing models that have influenced American and European journalism since the early twentieth century. The first-the informational or modern model-emphasizes describing events and issues from a seemingly neutral point of view. The second-a more partisan or European model-stresses analyzing occurrences and advocating remedies from an acknowledged point of view. For a fictionalized representation of these differences, contrast the depiction of journalists on HBO's U. S. program The Newsroom (2012-2014) with that on the Danish TV series Borgen (2010-2013). In The Newsroom, discussions of remedies and viewpoints take place off camera; in Borgen, journalists talk about these issues on and off camera. In most American newspapers today, the informational model dominates the front page, while the partisan model remains confined to the editorial pages and an occasional front-page piece. However, alternative models of news-from the serious to the satiricalhave emerged to challenge modern journalistic ideals. The Rise and Decline of the Public Journalism Movement From the late 1980s through the 1990s, a number of papers experimented with ways to involve readers more actively in the news process. These experiments surfaced primarily at midsize daily papers, including the Ch arlotte Observer, the Wichita Eagle, the Virginia nPilot, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Davis "Buzz" Merritt, editor of the Wichita Eagle at the time, defined key aspects of public journalism, including moving "beyond the limited mission of telling the news' to a broader mission of helping public life go well," and moving "from seeing people as consumers-as readers or nonreaders, as bystanders to be informed-to seeing them as a public, as potential actors in arriving at democratic solutions to public problems."24 TO Campbell et al., Media and Culture, 12e, © 2019 Bedford/St. Martin's CITIZEN JOURNALISM One way technology has allowed citizens to become involved in the reporting of news is through cell phone photos and videos uploaded online. Witnesses can now pass on what they have captured to major mainstream news sources, like CNN's Reports, or post to their own blogs and websites. In 1990, historian Christopher Lasch argued that "the job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information. *** Although he overstated his casejournalism does both and more-Lasch made a cogent point about how conventional journalism had lost its bearings. In the so-called objective era of modern journalism, mainstream news media had lost touch with its partisan roots. The early mission of journalism-to advocate opinions and encourage public debate-had been relegated to alternative magazines, the editorial pages, news blogs, and cable news channels starring allegedly elite reporters. Tellingly, Lasch connected the gradual decline in voter participation, which began in the 1920s, to more professionalized conduct on the part of journalists. With a modern "objective" press, he contended, the public increasingly began to defer to the "more professional news media to watch over civic life on its behalf. Public journalism is best imagined as a conversational model for news practice. Modern journalism had drawn a distinct line between reporter detachment and community involvement; public journalism-driven by citizen forums, community conversations, and even talk shows-obscured this line. Throughout the 1990s, before people felt the full impact of the Internet-public journalism served as a response to the many citizens who felt alienated from participating in public life. This alienation arose, in part, from viewers who watched passively as the political process seemed to play out in the news and on TV between party operatives and media pundits. Public journalism seemed to involve both the public and journalists more centrally in civic and political life. Editors and reporters interested in addressing citizen alienation-and reporter cynicism-began devising ways to engage people as conversational partners in determining the news. In an effort to draw the public into discussions about community priorities, these journalists began sponsoring citizen forums, where readers would have a voice in shaping aspects of the news that directly affected them. The public journalism movement was in decline by 2000, partly because it failed to gain the support of many mainstream editors and reporters, many beholden to a detachment model of journalism and wary of becoming too involved in the communities they covered. However, the leaders of the movement had also not foreseen or addressed the changing economic structure of the news business. In the wake of lost classified ad revenue amid the rise of free advertising online, newspaper executives furiously cut reporting staffs and expensive investigative projects, reduced the print space for news, or converted to onlineonly operations. While such trends temporarily helped profits and satisfied stockholders, 1. d they limited both the range of stories told and the views represented in a community. As the advocates of public journalism acknowledged, people had grown used to letting their representatives think and act for them. Today, more community-oriented journalism and other civic projects offer citizens an opportunity to deliberate and to influence their leaders. This may include broadening the story models and frames they use to recount experiences, paying more attention to the historical and economic contexts of these stories, doing more investigative reports that analyze both news conventions and social issues, taking more responsibility for their news narratives, participating more fully in the public life of their communities, admitting to their cultural biases and occasional mistakes, and ensuring that the verification model of reporting is not overwhelmed by cable's journalism of assertion. Arguing that for too long journalism had defined its role only in negative terms, news scholar Jay Rosen noted: "To be adversarial, critical, to ask tough questions, to expose scandal and wrongdoing ... these are necessary tasks, even noble tasks, but they are negative tasks." In addition, he suggested that journalism should assert itself as a positive force, not merely as a watchdog or as a neutral information conduit to readers but as "a support system for public life."36 The Shifting Meanings of "Fake News" and the Rise of Satiric Journalism For many young people, it is especially frustrating that two wealthy, established political parties-beholden to special interests and their lobbyists-control the nation's government. In part, this frustration explained the popularity of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential campaign season, as they were considered outside the political establishment. After all, 98 percent of congressional incumbents get reelected each year-not always because they've done a good job but often because they've made promises and done favors for the lobbyists and interests that helped get them elected in the first place. Why shouldn't people, then, be cynical about politics? It is this cynicism that has drawn increasingly young audiences to so-called fake news shows like Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Trevor Noah; TBS's Full Frontal with Samantha Bee; HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and Seth Meyers's "A Closer Look" segments on NBC's Late Night program. Following in the tradition of Saturday Night Live (SNL), which began in 1975, news satires tell their audiences something that seems truthful about politicians and how they try to manipulate media and public opinion. But most important, these shows use humor and detailed research to critique the news media and our political system. SNL's sketches on GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008, when Seth Meyers served as the show's head writer, drew large audiences and shaped the way younger viewers thought about the election. By the 2016 campaign, all the current news satires were aiming their sharp acerbic lenses at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as at CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. In reality, at their best, these programs, which employ numerous researchers and writers, do some of the best reporting on the state of our politics and provide some of the best criticism of the so-called non-fake-news media. In critiquing the limits of news stories and politics, The Daily Show has historically parodied the narrative conventions of evening and cable news programs: the clipped eightsecond sound bite that limits meaning; the formulaic shot of the TV news "stand up," depicting reporters "on location" to establish credibility by revealing that they were really there; and the talking heads and opinionated pundits of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. In a now famous 2004 exchange with actor-comedian Rob Corddry, former host Jon Stewart asked his "political correspondent" for his opinion about presidential campaign tactics. "My opinion? I don't have opinions," Corddry answered. "I'm a reporter, Jon. 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 want to look it up." During his reign as news court jester, Stewart, who stepped down from The Daily Show in 2015, exposed the melodrama of TV news that nightly depicts the world in various stages of disorder while offering the stalwart, comforting presence of celebrity-anchors overseeing it all from their high-tech command centers. Even before CBS's usually neutral and aloof Walter Cronkite signed off the evening news with "And that's the way it is," network news anchors tried to offer a sense of order through the reassurance of their individual personalities. Before the Trump era, "fake news" had generally referred to the kind of satirical news found on SNL's "Weekend Update" or Comedy Central. But during the 2016 presidential campaign, "fake news" took on a new meaning, increasingly referring to inaccurate and false news stories that emerged on Facebook during the election and originated in Eastern es 1 S rn Europe. Following the election of Donald Trump, the phrase began to take on newer meanings. As the BBC reported during President Trump's first year, "all sorts of things, misinformation, spin, conspiracy theories, mistakes, and reporting that people just don't like-have been rolled into it."32 In fact, as the BBC report suggests, President Trump managed to expand the definition to encompass any news report or news analysisevidence based or not-that he did not like, especially those that portrayed his administration in a negative light. Left: Eric Llebowitz/HBO/Everett Collection; right: Richard Shotwell/AP Images NEWS AS SATIRE Satirical news has become something of a cottage industry in recent years, stemming from SNL's "Weekend Update" segment and dominated by The Daily Show. Several Daily Show correspondents have gone on to their own news-related shows and have interviewed a variety of political leaders and prominent figures in the process. For example, John Oliver (left) of Last Week Tonight scored a major interview with Edward Snowden in 2015. In addition, the Daily Show's hiring of South African comedian Trevor Noah (right) as Jon Stewart's replacement and Samantha Bee's Full Frontal have brought much more diversity to the fake news business. While fake news programs often mock the formulas that real TV news programs have long used, they also present an informative and insightful look at current events and the way "traditional media cover them. For example, they expose hypocrisy by juxtaposing what a politician said recently in the news with the opposite position articulated by the same politician months or years earlier. Indeed, many Americans have admitted that they watch news satires not only to be entertained but also to stay current with what's going on in the world. In fact, a prominent Pew Research Center study back in 2007 found that people who watched these satiric shows were more often "better informed" than most other news consumers, usually because these viewers tended to get their news from mul tiple sources and a cross section of news media. Ma cBook Air Although the world has changed, local TV news formulas (except for splashy opening graphics and Doppler weather radar) have gone virtually unaltered since the 1970s, when SNL first started making fun of TV news. Local newscasts still limit most reporters' stories to two minutes or less and promote stylish anchors, a "sports guy," and a certified meteorologist as familiar personalities whom we invite into our homes each evening. Now that a generation of viewers has been raised on the TV satire and political cynicism of "Weekend Update," David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee, Jimmy Kimmel, and The Daily Show, the slick, formulaic packaging of political ads and the canned, cautious sound bites offered in news packages are simply not as effective. Maybe younger audiences would value news more if it matched the complicated storytelling that surrounds them-in everything from TV dramas to interactive video games to their own conversations. DEMOCRACY AND REIMAGINING JOURNALISM'S ROLE Journalism is central to democracy: Both citizens and the media must have access to the information that we need to make important decisions. As this chapter illustrates, however, this is a complicated idea. For example, in the aftermath of 9/11, some government officials claimed that reporters or columnists who raised questions about fighting terrorism, invading Iraq, or developing secret government programs were being unpatriotic. Yet the basic principles of democracy require citizens and the media to question our leaders and government. Isn't this, after all, what the American Revolution was all about? (See "Examining Ethics: W ikileaks, Secret Documents, and Good Journalism".) Ma cBook Air Conventional journalists will fight ferociously for the principles that underpin journalism's basic tenets-freedom of the press, the obligation to question government, the public's right to know, and the belief that there are two sides to every story. These are mostly worthy ideals, but they do have limitations. These tenets, for example, generally do not acknowledge any moral or ethical duty for journalists to improve the quality of daily life. Rather, conventional journalism values its news-gathering capabilities and the wellconstructed news narrative, leaving the improvement of civic life to political groups, nonprofit organizations, business philanthropists, individual citizens, and TV comedians. Social Responsibility Although reporters have traditionally thought of themselves first and foremost as observers and recorders, some journalists have acknowledged a social responsibility. Among them was James Agee in the 1930s. In his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which was accompanied by the Depression-era photography of Walker Evans, Agee said that he regarded conventional journalism as dishonest, partly because the act of observing intruded on people and turned them into story characters that newspapers and magazines then exploited for profit. Agee also worried that readers would retreat into the comfort of his writing-his narrative-instead of confronting what for many families was the horror of the Great Depression. For Agee, the question of responsibility extended not only to journalism and to himself but to the readers of his stories as well: "The reader is no less centrally involved than the authors and those of whom they tell. " Agee's self-conscious analysis provides insights into journalism's hidden agendas and the responsibility of all citizens to make public life better. Deliberative Democracy According to advocates of public journalism, when reporters are chiefly concerned with maintaining their antagonistic relationship to politics and are less willing to improve political discourse, news and democracy suffer. The late Washington Post columnist David Broder thought that national journalists like him-through rising salaries, prestige, and formal education--have distanced themselves "from the people that (they] are writing for and have become much, much closer to people (they] are writing about. " Broder believed that journalists need to become activists, not for a particular party but for the political process and in the interest of reenergizing public life. For those who advocate for public journalism, this might also involve mainstream media spearheading voter registration drives or setting up pressrooms or news bureaus in public libraries or shopping malls, where people converge in large numbers. Public journalism offers people models for how to deliberate in forums, and then it covers those deliberations. This kind of community journalism aims to reinvigorate a deliberative democracy in which citizen groups, local government, and the news media work together more actively to shape social, economic, and political agendas. In a more deliberative democracy, a large segment of the community discusses public life and social policy before advising or electing officials who represent the community's interests. A Lost Generation of Journalists In the aftermath of the November 2016 election that installed reality-television star Donald Trump as the forty-fifth U. S. president, we might think that the biggest challenge facing journalism would be the Trump administration's almost daily attacks-without supporting evidence-on the "fake media." But the real crisis in journalism started years before Trump, with the catastrophic loss of ad revenue to the Internet and the loss of reporters in print and broadcast newsrooms. Following the election, most U. S. news professionals conceded that they had missed a story of monumental proportions. The factors behind this historic journalistic failing are numerous and complex, but the most important one is perfectly simple: In the last decade, the number of journalists working at daily newspapers in the United States has been cut in half, and this radical reduction has brought a remorseless cutback in coverage of the working-class and rural communities where Trump built his electoral-college majority. The press simply did not have the reporters on the ground to document this historic shift and the appeal of Trump. For years, the anxieties of a vast swath of the public had been overlooked, leaving them isolated and voiceless-forgotten communities that found a voice in the Trump campaign. Much of the news that these communities did get came from the pundit class, mostly from cable (especially Fox News) and regional talk radio. This news-media failure is the most striking evidence yet the United States needs to replenish its ranks of working journalists, who must rededicate to the press's fundamental mission-in the words of Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their now-classic The Elements of Journalism-"to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing." A few numbers reveal the problem: • In the fifteen-year transiti on from the newsprint era to the digital age, the Unite dStates lost nearly 24,000 daily newspaper reporters-from a high of 56,400 in 2001 to fewer than 30,000 in 2017-according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. • In that same period, America's trust in the mass media ("to report the news fully, accurately and fairly) has fallen from 53 percent to 32 percent, according to annual Gallup polls. • In the 1970s, the ratio of public relations specialists to working reporters was roughly1:1. By 2001, that ratio had become 2:1. And by 2015, according to the U. S. Bureau of Statistics, the ratio had reached an astonishing imbalance of nearly 5:1. The decline in the number of reporters and the rise of PR and political spin doctors raise significant concerns. During and following the digital turn, journalists have increasingly relied on press releases both for stor y ideas and for news copy. However, according to Robe rt McChesney and John Nichols in The Death and Life of American Journalism, "as editorial staffs shrink, there is less ability for news media to interrogate and counter the claims in press releases."22 As an example, a 2012 Pew study reported that during the national election that year, journalists "often functioned as megaphones for political partisans, relaying assertions rather than contextualizing them."43 With the decrease in reporters and the increase in PR practitioners, far fewer journalists are available to vet information and fact-check the press releases that PR specialists pitch daily to multiple news organizations. For example, on the subject of health news, Pew researchers in 2014 reported on a JAMA Internal Medicine finding "that half of the stories examined relied on a single source or failed to disclose conflicts of interest from sources."44 Finally, more students coming from journalism schools are taking jobs as business writers and PR workers. The journalism profession, then, needs to not only figure out a new business model for the twenty-first century but also figure out how to recruit the best and brightest journalism students. Back in 1791, our founders offered special protection to journalists under the First Amendment-not to public relations specialists. Good journalism, after all, helps democracy work: It makes sense of key issues, documents events, keeps watch over our central institutions, and tells a community's significant stories. In the partisan era in which we now live, overloaded with decontextualized information and undocumented punditry, these skills are more important than ever. Good journalism and compelling stories will eventually save and sustain the profession, no matter how the marketplace continues to fracture. EXAMINING ETHICS Wik iLeaks, Secret Documents, and Good Journal ism Since its inception in 2006, the controversial website WikiLeaks has eased millions of documents-from revelations of toxic dumps in Africa to the 2013 release of 1.5 million U. S. diplomatic records, many involving Pres ident Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. In 201 6, WikiLeaks offered reports on the NSA's "bugging" operation of multiple foreign leaders and a searchable database of thirty thousand of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's e-mails. Wikileaks' controversial spokesperson and self-identified "editor in chief," Julian Assange-an Australian online activist-has been called everything from a staunch free-speech advocate to a "hitech terrorist" (by former U. S. vice president Joe Biden). Certainly, government leaders around the world have faced embarrassment from the site's many document dumps and secrecy breaches. In its most controversial move, in 2010 WikiLeaks offered 500,000-plus documents, called the "War Logs," to three mainstream print outlets-the Guardia n in the United Kingdom, the German magazine Der Spiegel, and the NewYork Times. These documents were mainly U. S. military and state department dispatches and internal memos related to the Afghan and Iraq wars-what Bill Keller, then executive editor of the New York Times, called a "huge breach of secrecy" for those running the wars. Keller described working with Wikileaks as an adventure that "combined the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of handling a vast secret archive with the more mundane feat of sorting, searching and understanding a mountain of data."- Indeed, one of the first major stories the Times wrote, based on the "War Logs" project, reported on "Pakistan's ambiguous role as an American ally. Then, just a few months later, Osam a bin Laden was found hiding in the middle of a Pakistani suburb. Wik iLeaks presents a number of ethical dilemmas and concerns for both journalists and citizens. News crític and journalism professor Jay Rosen has called W ikiLeaks "the world's first stateless news organization. But is Wikileaks actually engaging in journalism and therefore entitled to First Amendment protections? Or is it merely an important "news source, news provider, content host, [or) whistle blower," exposing things that governments would rather keep secret, as one critic from the Nieman J ournalism Lab suggests And should any document or material obtained by WikiLeaks be released for public scrutiny, or should some kinds of documents and materials be withheld? Examining Ethics Activity As a class or in smaller groups, consider the ethical concerns laid out above. Following the ethical template outlined on page 17 in Chapter 1, begin by researching the topic, finding as much information and analysis as possible. Read Bill Keller's New York Times Magazine piece "Dealing with Assange and the Wikileaks Secrets" (January 26, 2011). See also Nikki Usher's work for Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab and Jay Rosen's blog , PressThink. Consider also journalism criticism and news study sites, such as the Columbia Journalism Review, the Pew Research Center, and the First Amendment Center. Watch Julian Assange's interview on CBS's 60 Minutes from Januar y 2011 Next, based on your research and informed analysis, decide whe ther WikiLeaks is a legitimate form of journalism and whether there should be newsroom policies that restrict the release of some kinds of documents when in partnership with a resourc e like WikiLeaks (such as the "War Logs" project described here). Create an outline for such policies. Chapter 14 Review COMMON THREADS One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is the role that media plays in a democracy. Today, one of the major concerns is the proliferation of news sources. How well is our society being served by this trend-especially on cable and the Internetcompared with the time when just a few major news media sources dominated journalism? Historians, media critics, citizens, and even many politicians argue that a strong democracy is only possible with a strong, healthy, skeptical press. In the old days, a few legacy or traditional media-key national newspapers, three major networks, and three newsmagazines-provided most of the journalistic common ground for discussing major issues confronting U. S. society. In today's online and 24/7 cable world, though, the legacy media have ceded some of their power and many of their fact-checking duties to new media forms, especially in the blogosphere. As discussed in this chapter and in Chapter 8, this power shortage is partly because substantial losses in advertising (which has gone to the Internet) have led to severe cutbacks in newsroom staffs, and partly because bloggers, 24/7 cable news media, and news satire shows like The Daily Show, Full Frontal, and Last Week Tonight are factchecking the media as well as reporting stories that used to be the domain of professional news organizations. The case before us, then, goes something like this: In the old days, the major news media provided us with reports and narratives to share, discuss, and argue about. But in today's explosion of news and information, that common ground has eroded or is shifting. Instead, today we often rely only on those media sources that match our comfort level, cultural values, or political affiliations; increasingly, these are blog sites, radio talk shows, or cable channels. Sometimes these opinion sites and channels are not supported with the careful fact-gathering and verification that has long been a pillar of the best kinds of journalism. So in today's media environment, how severely have technological and cultural transformations undermined the common-ground function of mainstream media? And are

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