The Center’s third conference on April 15 was timely and thought-provoking. We are so grateful to our sponsors for making the gathering possible, and to our excellent panelists and moderators for taking time out of their schedules. Video of the sessions is available now
Feature articles
Who’s paying for your news?
More and more news content is being produced by nonprofit organizations, which often provide content free of charge to other media. But who is funding these nonprofits, and does it matter whether their donors are anonymous?
The Fall and Rise of Partisan Journalism
You don’t need to have a degree in history — or even to have paid much attention when you suffered the US history survey course as an undergraduate — to know that American newspapers were very partisan in the 19th century. “Editors,” wrote one historian, “unabashedly shaped the news and their editorial comment to partisan purposes.
Internationally, media “partisanship” has many facets
Partisanship in the media is by no means an American phenomenon, and it has many different manifestations abroad, a panel of four experts discussed Friday at the 2011 UW-Madison journalism ethics conference. The speakers talked …
Polling the People: Shortcomings of the Press
Wisconsin just went through a Supreme Court election with a historically high voter turnout rate, but there weren’t any polls in the run-up to election day. In fact, statewide polls in general are lacking, according …
Partisan Media and Public Perception
Journalists and scholars discussed the difference between a biased public and a biased media at last Friday’s third annual ethics conference at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. In the process, they introduced the “hostile …
Government proposals threaten South African press freedom?
Attempts by the ANC in South Africa to introduce a new system of press regulation have stirred up fears that press freedoms and access to information will be unduly restricted. In this article, Herman Wasserman reviews the controversy and examines how schools of journalism have jumped into the fray. The result is robust public discussion on the role of media in the transitional democracy of South Africa
Governor Walker and the Beast: Do ends justify the means?
The storm of controversy that swirls around the prank call to Gov. Scott Walker raises the oldest question in ethics: If you achieve results, who cares about the means?
Of course, we are taught to be wary of “the ends justifies the means” reasoning, but is this always the case in journalism?
By existing journalism standards, the prank call was unethical practice. But explaining how such standards apply in a world of new media and new practices is complicated . . .
A Librarian reacts to “A Librarian Reacts to WikiLeaks”
Across the country, librarians wrestle with competing interests regarding access to classified documents released by the website WikiLeaks. Stanford librarian James Jacobs offers a counterpoint to our Jan. 24 article by law librarian Bill Sleeman.
In Your Face: The Ethics of Opinion Journalism
In March, Sun TV News, Canada’s newest all-news TV station, is scheduled to begin broadcasting amid concern it will follow Fox News – feature hosts that are fiercely partisan and opinionated.
Across the border, Americans debate the future of the Fox News model. Will it spread to CNN? Or, did MSNBC, by parting ways with partisan host Keith Olbermann, signal a return to moderate opinion journalism?
The debate is roiled by worries that extreme media destroy civility in public life, perhaps even cause violence. When a gunman shot a congresswoman and others outside a Tucson supermarket in January, some media reports blamed extreme media.