Journalism is: public service, relevant, current, impactful, truthful, connection (esp in the modern age) and investigative–giving the people information so that they can make educated and informed decisions about the world

Thinking about journalism as part of culture, not just a process–journalists are apart of the community especially when it comes to what they report on–journalism is a lot of time telling the stories of community

2

Technological determinism: the belief that changes in technology changes society alone, journalism as a part of culture is different because it’s not just impacted by changes in technology but strongly by community and culture

How does journalism fulfill the functions of communication?: 

• Correlation: helping readers grasp meaning in events, connect different events with one each other and contextualize and explain

• Surveillance: ensures that what is being reported on has some accountability, serves as a check against figures on power sometimes

• Cultural transmission: conveying cultural ideals in wording, images, videos, etc., also entertainment

• Entertainment journalism

Challenges of journalism today: 

• Funding

• Audience disengagement

• Trying to reach a diverse and increasingly polarized audience

• Many criticize for being to negative

• Conflicts on what journalists want to report on & funders 

• Combating news avoidance–how to give news without causing disillusionment/disengagement in audience

• Changing information consumption habits

• Evolving technology

• Political pressures

• Changing economical models

Opportunities for journalism today:

These challenges are leading the field to reinvent itself, which means journalists today have a greater opportunity to:

• Connect with new, more diverse audience

• Experimenting with new forms of storytelling

• Experiment responsibly with new technologies - including drones, AI, augmented reality, and other tools

• Experiment with new business models

• Involving students actively in the journalistic process

Viewing journalism today as more of a collaboration

If we view journalism today as being more of a collaborative process, just who is it that journalists are collaborating with?

• Citizens/members of the audience, being receptive to your audience

• Nonprofits

• Educational institutions

• Creative groups

• Hopefully less collaborating with partisan groups/stuff that could lead to conflict of interests

• Researchers 

• Technology

-Ai?

-Platforms? - could be bad because platforms use algorithms which could control what information goes to who

Key historical moments in early journalism

• In 17th and 18th centuries, was mostly controlled by rich people and political parties

• In the Penny Press era, we moved to it being controlled by advertisement

• Led to: trying to be more objective and fair, doing best not to annoy advertisers

  • The hiring of actual journalists to report news

  • Values of objectivity, fairness, integrity (avoiding conflicts of interest)

  • Values of truth and accuracy

  • But what about sensationalism?: is: reporting on things that get the most clicks or views The Pulitzer/Hearst battles

Cultural diversity in early journalism:

• Cherokee Phoenix, Native-American newspaper, in 1828

• Frederick Douglass anti-slavery The North Star in 1847

• Virginia’s first black newspaper: The Richmond Planet, 1882

What led to sensationalism?-> A push for advertisement money, advertising model, can lead to important information being ignored

Technology’s influence on journalism

• The Associated Press forms in 1846, in large part because newspapers wanted to band together to take advantage of the telegraph

• Edward R Murrow’s reporting from London Sept 1940

• TV news coverage of the war in vietnam 30 years later

The evolution of journalistic ethics

• Because penny press era mostly

• Objectivity-developed due to penny press era and journalists have to be responsive to lots of people

• What other value has it led to, particularly today: being more open to gain trust from audience

• Hutchins Commision - private commission investigating the press, sponsored by Time Inc. publisher Henry Luce in 1947

  • It called for more oversight of the press

  • Also helped lead to some key ethical principles in journalism that have evolved over time

    • Editorial independence

    • Separation of editorial and business operations “the wall”

    • Fairness and balance

Production of news

• Framing the news: how will a story be framed: what is the angle?

• Sources: deciding what sources will be used in a story. How are they selected? This is about whose voice get heard

• Gathering the news: what does it mean to cover a beat? Why does it matter in producing the news?

• The ever-changing ways news is distributed: print, radio, tv, online, social media

Addressing news deserts and thinking the way journalism serves people

News desert: A community with no access to local news or information

“Previously defined as a community without a newspaper. As a result of dramatic shrinkage in number of local news outlets in recent years, we have expanded our definition to include communities where residents

What leads to local news deserts:

• Major dailies closing (ie the Rocky Mountain News)

• Consolidation (chains leading to less local news, more regional news

• Family-owned or other independent newspapers selling to chains focused on more regional news

• Ghost newspapers - funding cut so much that they cannot produce sufficient local coverage, especially in rural or suburban areas

• Regional newspapers scaling back coverage in some areas

Potential solutions:

• Nonprofit funding for struggling news organizations (so that they don’t have to answer to the whims of large funders)

• Public funding for struggling news organizations-controversial, could possibly end up being propaganda

• Investment in local and regional broadcast coverage

• Public access TV

• Digital-first or digital-only outlets (500 new ones cited in report)

• Foundation funding (eg lenfest institute for journalism with the philadelphia inquirer), knight foundation

Regaining journalism’s priorities

• Engage with new audiences

• Invest in human capital

• Tie strategies to the needs of communities journalists serve

• Diversify sources of revenue, moving away from print ads

• Know when to compete and when to collaborate

• Increase public and nonprofit funding in areas at risk of becoming news deserts

• Look at the last part of the report, about hedge funds and businesses buying newspapers: how can buyers be diversified

Journalism manifesto

• Argues that change needs to be seen as an inherent attribute of institutions if they are to survive and not just a possible attribute. This is because they need to adapt to a changing world around them

• The fragmentation of audiences, polarization of news coverage and rise of misinformation and disinformation have dealt decisive blows to the illusion of cohesion in the media ecosystem. 

Without these, journalism ends up being disconnected from reality and the people that it is supposed to bring value to

Ch 2

• Under pressure from both the rise of anti-liberal populist parties and the increasing centrality of social media in the formal and informal mechanisms of political communication, the elite system that once powered journalistic operations in liberal democratic regimes has turned against itself.  

• A recent trend of decline in trust in elite/expert institutions, such as medicine, government, and journalism, which can partly be linked to things like political polarization

• Lippmanian solution: elite journalism as an elite activity, produced by and for the elites

• Press keeps its commentary within the confines of the bounds of institutional debate, no matter how warped those bounds might become

• This is because the exercise of power is unequal by definition, making the ensuing collective less equitable than assumed and providing misguided cues as to what coming together means, entails and counts for, and for whom. 

Norms: indicative of the ruling class, can sometimes be a way to stifle any sort of meaningful conflict and individuality, agency, and change

Key philosophical frameworks:

John Stuart Mill & Utilitarianism: Whatever brings the greatest amount of happiness is best: if lying brings the most happiness, then its good

Immanuel Kant & Rule- or Duty-based Ethics: morality should be based on a set of rules e.g don’t lie, don’t steal

• Think about how each of these can be applied in media

  • Duty-based systems: act on a set of rules

  • Utilitarian systems: will doing something cause more harm than good?-measuring rate of goodness from an action

  • Social justice systems: frameworks, causing positive progress in social justice when people might disagree

  • Ethics of care: think about how reporting can show care and compassion, especially to people who are victims

  • Moral relativism: allowing whatever based on opinions

A central tension of media ethics in a profit-based system

• Informing the public, providing a public service

  • What content is going to best inform the public?

  • What kinds of content are missing in the information ecosystem that we can provide?

  • How do we create content that is going to serve many diverse communities

  • How do we create content that is going to help citizens make informed decisions?

Tensions caused by profit based systems:

• Maximizing profit

  • What content is going to get the most viewers, readers, listeners, etc?

  • What content are they most likely to pay for

  • What content is going to attract the most advertisers or funders?

  • What content is going to alienate or discourage the most viewers, readers, listeners, etc?

Ethics in journalism: central tensions

• Privacy versus public’s ‘right to know’

- reporting on deaths before family knows, threats to those giving information, people who are underage

• Transparency

  • Questions about anonymous sources, going undercover

  • Being clear about who (or what) helped produce news content

  • How does this apply especially to AI?: must notify that it’s being used

• Social Impact: e.g reporting on suicide due to it leading to copycats

  • Copycat crimes, identifying victims

  • Concerns about profiling, representation

• Accuracy and fairness

  • Sticking to the facts, but which facts need to be emphasized?

• Independence and ‘objectivity’

  • Everyone has some sort of bias, important to understand that it’s impossible to fully objective

Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics

1. Seek truth and report it: verify accuracy of info and take responsibility for it, emphasize context

2. Minimize harm: how to cause the least amount of damage and balance it with the need for information

3. Act independently: avoid conflicts of interests, avoid gifts

4. Be accountable and transparent: take responsibility for your work and explain your decisions to the public

• Helps to distinguish between news and advertising, fact and opinion

What ethical challenges does AI present for journalism

• What are the biggest risks for AI in journalism

  • How do ethical principles of accountability and transparency apply here?

  • What kind of new challenges does AI present for journalistic ethics and norms?: potential for taking jobs, misinformation, ai lacks moral code

  • What are the biggest opportunities for AI in journalism?: take up menial tasks and allow journalists more time for more deep dives into important stuff

Journalism Manifesto: Elites

Basically: journalism is relying on elites (people with power–politicians, CEOs, celebrities, etc) rather than ordinary people

• “Mainstream journalism about public affairs has been driven largely by elites, written by elites, and consumed by elites”

• Negative effects: disconnects ordinary people from journalism

• According to Zelier and many others, journalists have traditionally treated “the audience” poorly because they are catering/relying on elites, which is why the audience has lost much trust in them

• The reliance on elites contradicts the ‘monitor’ function of the press because they won’t be monitoring the elites as well/or at all because of their dependency on them

Journalism Manifesto: Norms

• Norms are described as “shared occupational cues for occupational behavior” – they are also thought of as the “oughts” of practice

• Some norms of journalism today: share relevant information, be fair, be truthful, be from specific backgrounds (wealthy white male base), to strive for objectivity, have a balanced story

What does ‘press freedom’ means?

• How do we define the term: 

  • The ability to publish views without restrictions from outside sources

• What factors influence it–political pressure, government, corporations, outside threats, lack of popularity–views that are unpopular-risk of making advertisers/viewership mad, societal forces

• How do these factors differ from country to country, state to state?

What kind of forces can hinder press freedom?

• Political threats: examples-threats on pentagon papers, legal threats (legislation and lawsuits), physical threats (in-person and online), language threats

• Think about stuff like KKK riots–are they threats or expressions of freedom of speech?

• Wars: government doesn’t want publications that are against the war

• Economic pressures

What rights are granted by the first amendment?

RAPPS: religion, assembly, protest, petition, speech

• Press performs a check by surveillance similar to a branch of government

What speech should be limited?

What can we do as a society to encourage diverse array of voices in public discussion?: 

What voices or messages should be restricted?:

How should it be done?:

What do the pieces show us about the first amendment?

Wells: shows how freedom of speech can be restricted by groups of those in power, argues that a voice needs to be given to minorities to go against specifically lynching and the spread of misinformation, call to action for african americans to protect themselves and for the government to protect their rights and allow african americans a voice

• Also an informational piece

• The existence of competing media narratives and the importance of it: The narrative in white newspapers at the time framed lynching as a justice, while Wells countered that

Douglass: 

Argument: everyone, regardless of birth, social status, or popularity, should have the right to share their views and have them heard by others–men who are rich and powerful should not have any more right to speak over others or restrict others speech–free speech is pointless if not everyone can exercise it

Government role: government needs to be involved in protection of free speech, the expression of views freely is a key component of liberty

Right to hear: just as people should have the right to speak their views, they should have the right to have their views heard–it violates man’s rights, just as much as it does to suppress his ability to speak, to restrict his ability to hear certain views

• In today’s environment: algorithms on the internet can heavily influence the views that people today are able to hear–censoring them from certain views and promoting others

News Article

Headline: present tense, no articles, strong verb, action→effect

Byline: name

Lead: key action, effect, active voice, location, day of the week, usually past tense

Most important→least important

Quotes: “quotes should look like this,” said Patrick Walters, a w&l journalism professor.

‘Positive’ versus ‘negative’ first amendment liberties

What are negative liberties?

• Ones that we normally think of that protect the press and speakers from government intervention

• Think of these as protecting the right to speak

• How do we look at speech that is hateful or otherwise problematic from this viewpoint?: negative liberties imply that this is ok as long as it’s not threatening

What are positive liberties?

• Governing in the public interest, promoting a healthy speech environment–what things can the government do to promote this?

• Think of these as protecting and ensuring the public’s “right to hear:” how can we make people comfortable publishing a variety of viewpoints?

• What kind of actions would this entail? Whose ‘liberties’ are we talking about here? Does the government have the right to promote a healthy speech environment?

• How do we look at speech that is hateful or otherwise problematic from this viewpoint

First amendment laws: restrictions on free speech:

• Government restrictions on speech can produce a “chilling effect” on speech: What does that mean?: Anyone who disagrees with government speech is restricted

• Efforts to restrict first amendment protections over history: 

  • Alien and sedition acts in 1798: set precedent for not being able to speak badly about government during wars

  • Espionage act of 1917 “clear and present danger” of Shenck v United States

  • Near v Minnesota, 1931, ruled in a case involving an anti-semitic newspaper that ‘prior restraint’ should be used only in serious or grave threats to national security

  • Pentagon Papers in 1971-72, government’s use of “prior restraint” to stop the New York Times from publishing this information

General exceptions to First Amendment protections

Libel: type of defamation that is published (printed, broadcasted, published online)

• Times v Sullivan, 1964, Montgomery, Alabama: Public figures need to prove actual malice in order to provide they have been libeled

Slander: spoken defamation 

Obscenity: In order to be deemed obscene, material must:

• Not appeal to the ‘prurient interest’ of the community: is there any value in it?

• Describe sexual conduct in an offensive manner

• Lack serious literary, artistic, scientific or political value

• Indecent material is not obscenity, but it is subject to regulation (ratings, broadcast times, etc)

Violations of intellectual property: Copyrights, patents, and trademarks

• Copyright: protects authorship of works (books, movies, songs, etc)

• Patents: protects inventions from being copied (devices, drugs, etc)

• Trademarks: protects images, designs, logos, phrases, and names

The Journalism Manifesto: Audiences (70-92)

• How have American journalists traditionally acted in regards to audiences, according to Zelizer?

  • Assume they know that the audience wants and that they will always have their attention, have taken audience for granted for way too long, believes that they don’t need to connect with the audience

• What impact has this had, in the past and more recently?: audience has stopped paying for subscriptions, reduced trust in journalists in general, lost trust and participation of audience “the shift from assumed and taken for granted to known and uncertain audiences..” – learn audience through seeing what audience clicks on, polls, etc, seeing what retains audience

• How can journalists can best get to know their audience: go out to see them, ask for feedback, metrics can only tell you so much

• How can diverse audiences be made more involved in the process of making news?: working with disenfranchised communities and try to connect their messages with them

Nikole Hannah-Jones and the ‘1619 project’ in the NYT

• Project to provide an alternative view of the growths of freedoms and democracy in America and the roles that African Americans played in it, the 1619 project is when slaves first came to America and she argued that this was when America started

• Received varied reactions due to proposing that American history should start at 1619 because of the slave trade, also for challenging narratives of American history and suggesting different framings

• Purpose of the piece: educational piece on how history should be taught from 1619 because of slave trade, African Americans were 

• What question is it trying to answer?: To analyze the way that we tell history, the role that marginalized people played in developing American principles

• How does history relate to journalism?: Journalism can be a way of educating people about history

• How does this relate to framing?: suggests a different framing of history that includes more of the roles african americans played in it

• What cultural forces impacted its creation?: the growth of the BLM movement–a response against pushback to the movement, the growth of MAGA under Trump’s presidency

• What other narratives is it responding to or competing with?: MAGA

• Key points: challenge foundational american values–they have been contradicted by the marginalization of certain identities since their formation, that slavery played a large role in forming the country, principles of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” from constitution

The Journalism manifesto: Reform or Revolution?

The problem: journalism relies too much on connections of the elites, attempts to be objective, and also is not in touch with its audience

Reform: being more inclusive, respect alternative points of view, democratic processes, transformative action–shift the role of media to enable “transformative action”

Revolutionize: journalists should be part of the audience, “no holds barred makeover”- anything can be changed except prioritizing the audience, discarding norms (objectivity), not relying on elites

First Amendment

• The first amendment has been reinterpreted for different periods of history

• Political speech is the most protected speech because founding fathers wanted to be able to criticize leaders without being punished–despite some changes being made to free speech over the years mainly due to the invention of things like magazines, radio, internet, political speech is always protected

• Examples of political speech: engaging in public discourse

• US first amendment unique because most other countries make exceptions for certain types of speech such as hate speech

The first amendment:

• Only prevents government from regulating your speech

• Private company can regulate all they like e.g. woman who gave trump middle finger was fired by her company (cause it’s private)

• Social media platforms can regulate your speech because they are privately owned–causes some controversy due to large scale of social media these days

• When public officials use social media to interact with public, they cannot kick people off their social media platforms. See case of AOC and trump doing so.

Symbolic Speech

• When action speaks, should form or content control?

• Taking a knee during national anthem-Colin Kapernick

• Burning the flag

Laws addressing speech issues

• Broad categories

• Prior restraint: requires strict scrutiny: a compelling governmental interest that is narrowly tailored: a compelling governmental interest that is narrowly tailored

• Time, place, and manner restrictions on speech: be content neutral, be narrowly tailored, serve a significant governmental interest, leave ample alternative channels for communication

• Censorship: eg commercial speech; broadcast–has to deal with “indecent” speech and regulations related to it because of how accessible broadcast is esp to children, broadcasts use aircast which belongs to everyone–justification for regulations

• Libel and privacy

• Forum issues-is social media a public forum

• Protection anonymous speech–anonymous speech is protected under 1A, however individuals can request courts to unmask anonymous individuals for specific reasons

• CDA section 230: website owners have immunity for content on their website that they did not put there, responsible for internet being able to flourish

• DMCA: copyright law that protects work on the internet, enacted in 1998

The Bradenburg Standard

• Protecting speech that incites violence

  • The speech much incite: “Imminent (a specific time frame) Lawless action that is likely to occur” - must be tied to something specific