Wed
Apr 15 2009
03:04 pm
Town hall meeting on media ethics and credibility
By: R. Neal
When: Wed. December 31, 1969 7:00 PM

Media Ethics and Credibility - April 30, 2009, 7 p.m. at the Howard Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, Cumberland Avenue, Knoxville.

From the ETSPJ:

In today’s world of 24-hour access to information, the need for credible, fair reporting is more important than ever. The Society of Professional Journalists will observe Ethics Week, April 27-May 1, by hosting a series of town hall meetings focused on restoring journalistic credibility by helping readers, viewers, listeners and Web site visitors understand what credible journalism is.

The East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists has been selected as one of 10 chapters across the country to host one of these meetings, beginning at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 30 in the Toyota Auditorium of the Baker Center on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville.

The meeting will begin with a discussion about citizen journalism, bloggers, and reader comments on Web sites. As more and more media businesses cut their news staffs, editors may rely on citizen journalists to fill vacancies or to provide first-hand accounts of events. However, do these citizen journalists operate under the same ethical guidelines as trained journalists? Bloggers and Web site visitors often comment on popular issues and stories presented in the news, which can blur the line between factual information and opinions.

continued...

SPJ’s large and diverse membership consistently identifies ethics as one of the organization’s most important missions. The SPJ Code of Ethics, first adopted in 1926, is an industry standard. One element of the code is to “invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.”

During the town hall meeting, the audience is encouraged to ask questions about how local stories are covered and the decision making process of editors and reporters as they go about their jobs of covering and presenting the news.

The panel will include Jack McElroy, editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel; Bill Shory, WBIR-TV news director; Michael Grider, VolunteerTV.com interactive producer; and Glenn Reynolds, UT law professor and founder of Instapundit.com. Marianna Spicer, CNN’s executive editor for news standards, will moderate the program.

Topics:
jcgrim's picture

Could there possibly be a

Submitted by jcgrim on Thu, 2009/04/30 - 2:11pm.

Could there possibly be a more shameless group to be leading a forum on journalistic ethics? If it were not true, it would be a sick joke. There isn't a person in this group who has done anything except fail Journalism Ethics 101 by ignoring powerful interests in east TN and the republican party.

Who, for example, in this group uttered a word about Mayor Bill Haslam's conflict of interest when Pilot Oil gouged the public during the oil shortage last year?

Where were they this legislative session when developers, oil & coal companies had their boy Joe McCord (Maryville) elected in 2008 and then selected to chair the House Conservation and Environment Committee? Or warned that McCord's primary focus is not the public's right to clean water but gifts to his true constituents, oil and coal companies. His bills will handicap the Dept of Environment and Conservation from issuing permits to developers and redefines water pollution. He and his fellow right to lifer Bill Dunn (Knoxville) have sponsored hideous legislation that, if the average voter knew the consequences to our ground water, would certainly oppose them. (HB0899 by Dunn; HB0954 by McCord; HB0973 by McCord;HB1204;by McCord;HB1205;by McCord.)

Or the racist "Instapundit" Glenn Reynolds who linked to his favorite right wing blogger in 2008 "EASTER THOUGHTS" to his namesake, "Instapunk."Here's a sample of how he and his namesake think: "On the other hand, I am sick to death of black people as a group. The truth. That is part of the conversation Obama is asking for, isn't it?...Here's the dirty secret all of us know and no one will admit to. There ARE niggers." This particular example ignores his war cheerleading for the Iraq fiasco, but there is not enough room in the comments to site all of his amoral musings.

Shameless and disgusting, all of them.

StaceyDiamond's picture

journalism

Submitted by StaceyDiamond on Wed, 2009/04/15 - 3:25pm.

This past Sunday I couldn't figure out what was the biggest waste of journalism, that Chris Matthews spent most of his show trying to handicap Obam's competition for 2012 or that I found the Sentinel pPrspective section and realized what everyone has been complaining about. I would rather read Thomas Sowell than have a Sunday comment section with nothing more than the venerable local letters about how Ina Hughs is not a Christian and Obama is a socialist. I would hope even in hard times they could do better than this, but maybe times are really that hard.

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