Current Issue
Volume 22, Number 4 (2007)
Who Is a Journalist and Why Does it Matter? Disentangling the Legal and Ethical Arguments
Erik Ugland, Marquette University
Jennifer Henderson, Trinity University
The contemporary debate about ‘‘who is a journalist’’ is occurring in two distinct domains: law and professional ethics. Although the debate in these domains is focused on separate problems, participants treat the central question as essentially the same. This article suggests that the debates in law and professional ethics have to be resolved independently and that debate within those domains needs to be more nuanced. In law, it must vary depending on whether the context involves constitutional law, statutory law, or the distribution of informal privileges by government officials. In professional ethics, the debate should not be oriented around a single definitional threshold but should identify tiers that take account of different communicators’ unique goals, tactics, and values.
Shifting Roles, Enduring Values: The Credible Journalist in a Digital Age
Arthur S. Hayes, Fordham University
Jane B. Singer, University of Central Lancashire/University of Iowa
Jerry Ceppos, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Santa Clara University
When everyone can be a publisher, what distinguishes the journalist? This article considers contemporary challenges to institutional roles in a digital media environment and then turns to three broad journalistic normative values— authenticity, accountability, and autonomy—that affect the credibility of journalists and the content they provide. A set of questions that can help citizens determine the trustworthiness of information available to them emerges from the discussion.
Death in Gambella: What Many Heard, What One Blogger Saw, and Why the Professional News Media Ignored it
Douglas McGill, The McGill Report
Jeremy Iggers, Twin Cities Media Alliance
Andrew R. Cline, Missouri State University
Doug McGill published several articles about the massacre of 425 members of the Anuak tribe by the Ethiopian military in 2003 and 2004 on his Web site, The McGill Report. The mainstream news media ignored it. McGill’s narrative demonstrates the impact of his reporting on the Anuak community worldwide, its impact on several beneficiary groups in the United States, and the lack of interest by the mainstream news media that failed to fulfill journalism’s primary purpose. Two responses follow McGill’s narrative. Jeremy Iggers examines the social and economic realities that make it difficult for journalists to fulfill their primary purpose. He suggests that partnerships between journalists and engaged citizens may provide a new model for journalism. Andrew Cline examines the rhetorical and ethical nature of the journalistic transaction between journalist and audience. Who counts as a journalist arises from the experiences of an audience that uses a journalist’s work as a civically important text.
The Role of Journalist and the Performance of Journalism: Ethical Lessons From ‘‘Fake’’ News (Seriously)
Sandra L. Borden, Western Michigan University
Chad Tew, University of Southern Indiana
Some have suggested that Jon Stewart of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (TDS) and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (TCR) represent a new kind of journalist. We propose, rather, that Stewart and Colbert are imitators who do not fully inhabit the role of journalist. They are interesting because sometimes they do a better job performing the functions of journalism than journalists themselves. However, Stewart and Colbert do not share journalists’ moral commitments. Therefore, their performances are neither motivated nor constrained by these commitments. Using a virtue theory framework, we suggest that this distinction between journalists and their imitators is morally significant because it implies differences in the kinds of excellence these moral agents are pursuing in their work. Rather than evaluating the work of Colbert and Stewart in the role of journalists, we propose analyzing their contributions to media ethics in the role of media critics.
Who Is a Development Journalist? Perspectives on Media Ethics and Professionalism in Post-Colonial Societies
Bala A. Musa, Department of Communication Studies Azusa Pacific University
Jerry Komia Domatob, Department of Mass Communications Alcorn State University
Journalistic practice and professionalism across the globe are characterized by certain universals as well as unique particularities. In most post-colonial societies, the ethical philosophies and professional ethos of journalists reflect the tension between the commitment to integrity and social responsibility, shared by journalists worldwide, and the contextual interpretation and application of these principles. This article examines the ethics and ethos of development journalism as a philosophically, culturally, and historically evolving professional ideology. It surveys the ethical landscape of development journalists and shows how development journalists balance the dialectic of a universalist ethical philosophy and a relativistic professional ethos.
Sports Journalism as Moral and Ethical Discourse
Thomas P. Oates, Northern Illinois University
John Pauly, Marquette University
This paper explores the marginalized practice of sportswriting to demonstrate the limited ways in which the question ‘‘who is a journalist?’’ has been answered within the profession. Following John Dewey and Raymond Williams, we offer an alternative view of democratic culture that values narrative as well as information. We also discuss how ‘‘New Journalists’’ (and other writers since), in their quest for fresh, sophisticated storytelling strategies, turned to sports as a cultural activity worthy of serious examination. Our goal is to demonstrate that sportswriting fundamentally resembles other forms of reporting and that journalism should not use sports as an ethical straw man against which to defend the virtue of its serious work. This suspension of our usual ethical judgments would deepen our sense of the moral significance of sportswriting and allow us to rethink journalism’s relation to democratic culture in productive new ways.
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