Event Title
The Role and Responsibility of Traditional Media
Description
When high profile legal issues arise, the traditional media attempts a familiar balancing act, weighing ethical obligations of fairness, accuracy and objectivity against the necessity for timely and competitive reporting.
This mission, in itself, requires careful execution. But there is significantly more pressure in recent years, due to a voracious 24-hour news cycle, competition by new media entities that have high-tech speed and occasionally choose to remain unfettered by journalistic ethics, and challenging economic realities.
In Panel #1: The Role and Responsibility of Traditional Media, moderator Sara Beale, the Charles L. B. Lowndes Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, talks with a panel of veteran reporters, journalism academics, and experts in the legal side of journalism. The far-ranging discussion covers the basic tenets of journalistic ethics, famous journalistic controversies, and the difficulties faced by print reporters who increasingly have to cover more ground with fewer resources.
Questions/themes/discussion topics
- Balancing speed and accuracy
- The effect of smaller newsrooms and fewer reporters, especially in the world of print journalism
- Resisting manipulation by sources
- Media criticism, from ombudsmen to bloggers
- Historically bad journalism, from McCarthyism to Jayson Blair
Date
9-28-2007 9:35 AM
The Role and Responsibility of Traditional Media
When high profile legal issues arise, the traditional media attempts a familiar balancing act, weighing ethical obligations of fairness, accuracy and objectivity against the necessity for timely and competitive reporting.
This mission, in itself, requires careful execution. But there is significantly more pressure in recent years, due to a voracious 24-hour news cycle, competition by new media entities that have high-tech speed and occasionally choose to remain unfettered by journalistic ethics, and challenging economic realities.
In Panel #1: The Role and Responsibility of Traditional Media, moderator Sara Beale, the Charles L. B. Lowndes Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, talks with a panel of veteran reporters, journalism academics, and experts in the legal side of journalism. The far-ranging discussion covers the basic tenets of journalistic ethics, famous journalistic controversies, and the difficulties faced by print reporters who increasingly have to cover more ground with fewer resources.
Questions/themes/discussion topics
- Balancing speed and accuracy
- The effect of smaller newsrooms and fewer reporters, especially in the world of print journalism
- Resisting manipulation by sources
- Media criticism, from ombudsmen to bloggers
- Historically bad journalism, from McCarthyism to Jayson Blair
