School of Journalism director Geneva Overholser (pictured above and below right, middle) and journalism professors Félix Gutiérrez and Philip Seib spoke about media ethics, journalists of color and advocacy journalism — respectively — Wednesday at the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC) Convention in Chicago.
“Ethics and the Business of Journalism: A Discussion of Urgent Importance” (Geneva Overholser)
She said she once was discouraged when news owners made huge profits and then did not reinvest the money in their media businesses, but that now it’s a different world.
“We didn’t make those early investments,” she said. “But I’m far from disparaging today's business decisions. We need to be teaching entrepreneurialism in journalism school. The old business model is broken. High-quality advertisers don’t want it. If we can’t figure out how to pay for the creation of content then we have a problem.”
Overholser said new technologies are changing journalism at an unprecedented rate and the industry needs to re-examine its ethics and dedication to covering both local and important national and international news.
“I think we in journalism tend to think our ethics have been all purpose and spotless, which they have not,” she said. “Journalism is changing so quickly and old ethics standards don’t always apply.”
"Lessons from the Past and Fodder for the Future: Forty Years After Kerner and Lionel (Lee) C. Barrow's Vision of an Inclusive AEJMC” (Félix Gutiérrez)
“Lee Barrow may have just gotten a foot in the door for African Americans, but he left the door open for all other races,” Gutiérrez said.
Barrow (pictured below right) said his hope is to make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream a reality.
“I think what the panelists have pointed out is that although we’re not where we used to be, we ain’t where we oughta or want to be and there’s a lot of work left to be done," Lee said. "We have many miles to go.”
Panelists pointed to data showing that the number of journalists of color in the newsroom and broadcast studio is not nearly on pace with percentages of ethnic minorities in the country.
“40 years after the Kerner Report, there is no method of holding broadcasters accountable,” said panelist Anita Fleming-Rife of Grambling State University. “Forty years after, we are right where we started – at the starting line.”
Said Sharon Bramlett-Solomon of Arizona State University: “We’re at parity nowhere – not print, broadcast or online.”
Gutiérrez advised the audience to make alliances with other agencies and non-profits to ensure more journalists of color are hired, and therefore more stories are covered.
“The gaps are greater and the needs for leadership are greater than during that time,” he said. “Every mission needs a vision. It can be all of us (who can make a difference). As Frederick Douglass said, ‘The role of newspapers is to agitate, agitate, agitate.’”
“Advocacy Journalism or Public Relations? (Re)Defining the Values of News” (Philip Seib)
“Good journalism is intrinsically advocacy in the sense that it hopes for reactions,” he said. “Why do journalism otherwise? Do you want people to read and watch something and not react? I think one of the roles of journalism is to stimulate a reaction amongst moral people. You’re advocating thinking. It’s not so much you’re saying you should take one side or another, but advocating that they should consider the subject.”
He said, however, that distinctions must be made between who does traditional objective reporting and who does advocacy journalism, citing Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann as examples of journalists who are not objective. “Truth comes in packaging news broadcasts and newspaper articles truthfully, saying, for example, ‘Now here is Bill Moyers with his commentary for the night’ to draw a distinction.”
He said one of the world’s greatest journalists was Edward R. Murrow because he effected change.
“I think it is very clear if you read Murrow’s broadcast that he was very strongly in favor of much stronger U.S. support for the British war cause,” Seib said. “Murrow, along with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, felt that the U.S. would have to eventually face Hitler by itself if the U.S. did not enter the war soon. When the other side is Adolf Hitler, you have a bit of leeway with being unobjective. In retrospect, Murrow was on the right side.”
