The Ethics Syllabus F2007

0166-420-01/American Journalism Ethics

Fall 2007

Dr. Michael Robertson

Office: 502 University Center

Phone: 422-6250 (office); 510-836-4870 (home)

Email: robertson@usfca.edu

Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday 3:30p-430p. If you need to see me, don't hesitate to ask for a time convenient for you. (Coffee in Crossroads is always pleasant.)

Course Description: American Journalism (4). Analysis of the ethical constraints and obligations of U.S. journalism and their grounding in the First Amendment. Current ethical and legal issues facing journalists. Development of systems and techniques for confronting ethical challenges. Offered once a year. American Journalism Ethics is the capstone course for the journalism minor. Students should take the course after the completion of Introduction to Media Studies, Journalism I, Journalism II and one 300-level journalism course.

Rationale: The First Amendment is the bedrock of American journalism ethics. Nothing is more compelling (I hope) than investigating its philosophical antecedents, particularly the way in which the philosophical, the political, the practical and the ideal intermingled to produce the constitutional right to a free press that some would argue guards all our other freedoms. Nothing is more vexing than a consideration of how that freedom, by its very nature, seems to produce ethical dilemmas, tangles, abuses and outrages that may threaten the continued existence of that section of the First Amendment that applies to the press. Much has changed since founders deemed a free press the guarantee of an informed and engaged electorate. Advances in technology, the rise of the so-called “objective” mainstream press, government control and suppression of information, media consolidation and the splintering of audiences have all changed the nature of news gathering and distribution. This class will examine the background of the First Amendment and the special protections it affords the news media, as well as the responsibilities implied by the powers granted the press. It will pay particular attention to the ethical problems that arise when journalists, sometimes consumed by the highest motives, find themselves tempted to do things that the law says they may do but which the community feels those journalists should not do. We shall also pay attention to those instances when journalists decide to break the law, going beyond the protections afforded by the First Amendment but acting in what they believe to be the spirit of the First Amendment. We will pay particular attention to the ethical tension between the ideals of fair and balanced journalism and the desire to use journalism as an instrument for social justice.

Texts: J. Herbert Altschull’s From Milton to McLuhan, The Ideas Behind American Journalism. Additional required reading is on electronic reserve at the library.

Additional Required Media. Subscribe to Romanesko’s Media News at www.poynter.org. Students are required to create a blog on which they will post at least once a week on issues of journalism ethics. Students will also be required to comment at least once at week on posts at the blog I have created for this ethics class. (More about your blogging responsibilities will be described in a separate handout.)

Class meets twice a week. Students should expect to put in an additional six to nine hours a week in outside reading, writing, research and consumption of required media.

Reminder: Under the current policies of the Media Studies Department, a student will not get credit in the major for any course in which he or she receives a grade of less than C; that is, a grade of C-minus or lower means you must retake the course.

Academic misconduct: Instances of source fabrication or plagiarism will result in the most severe sanctions possible.

Deadlines: If you have any handicap or any other physical, emotional or personal problem that will interfere with your performance, you should discuss it with the professor by the end of the first week of the course or as soon as the problem arises. Every effort will be made to accommodate legitimate problems if they are discussed in a timely fashion. Some chronic problems may receive a sympathetic hearing but result in no adjustment to expectations for performance. A semester's-end revelation of personal problems will not improve your grade

Attendance: Regular class attendance is also expected. Two unexcused absences are allowed, but in‑class work missed through absence may not be made up although it may be excused. If you miss class for any reason, it is YOUR responsibility to find out what future class assignments are. Excused assignments will not be averaged into your grade; unexcused assignments will be -- as a zero. Excessive absences will factor into the class participation portion of your grade.

Assignments: Weekly written reports are required on certain of the assigned readings. Three essays of 1,000 words are also required. The topics for those essays are currently posted at the class blog. Due dates are the 4th, 9^th and 12^th weeks of the semester. Each will draw on assigned reading, class discussion, interviews with at least two working journalists and whatever additional research you deem necessary. In the category of working journalists I include reporters, editors of all kinds, news directors, station managers, news anchors and so on. If you have any doubt if a potential source is appropriate, check with me beforehand. During those interviews, you may explore not only the specific actions of those news industry workers but also the broader ethical philosophies upon which they base their decisions.

A major paper of 2,500 words on a topic chosen in conjunction with the teacher will be due December 5. There will be a midterm. There will be no final exam.

Final grade: Essays, 30 percent; weekly reading reports, 15 percent; blogging and blog comments, 10 percent; midterm, 15 percent; class participation, 10 percent; final project, 20 percent.

Semester Schedule Fall 2007

Week One What good is this class? An introduction to the

8.27.2007 Potter Box. Assignment: For Wednesday present me with: 1) the exact words of the First Amendment, accompanied by; 2) a page giving your opinion of its most important ethical implications in regard to contemporary journalism

Week Two No Monday class. Finding your ethics. Assignment:

9.3.2007 You will have read Christians, et al., “Ethical Foundations and Principles” and prepared a Reading Response, which is due at class time on Wednesday. Topic for the first essay will be discussed. The essay will be due in two weeks.

Week Three What were the founders thinking and why? Assignment:

9.10.2007 You will have read Altschull, pages 1-29, and prepared a Reading Response, which is due at class time Monday.

Week Four Do the ends justify the means? The ethics of

9.17.2007 interviewing. Assignment: You will have read the

assigned essays but no Reading Response is required, although you will probably draw on those readings for citations in your First Essay, which is due at class time Wednesday.

Week Five The philosophical underpinnings of contemporary 9.24.2007 journalism ethics. Assignment: You will have read

Altschull, pages 33-64, and prepared a Reading Response,

which is due at class time Monday.

Week Six The philosophical underpinning of contemporary 10.01.2007 journalism ethics. Assignment: You will have read

Altschull, pages 101-135, 156-166, and prepared a Reading

Response, which is due at class time Monday.

Week Seven The rise of objectivity as the principal journalistic norm.

10.8.2007 Complicity in power: questioning objectivity. Assignment:

You will have read the assigned essays and prepared a Reading Response, which is due at class time Monday.

Week Eight Midterm. Discussion of second essay.

10.15.2007

Week Nine Privacy: “A journalist is always selling someone out.” –

10.22.2006 Joan Didion. When journalism becomes “nonfiction,” does it acquire the privileges – and the excuses – of art? Assignment: You will have read the assigned essays but no Reading Response is required. Second Essay is due Wednesday.

Week Ten When journalists bend the rules to do the job Going

10.29.2007 undercover: Do the ends ever justify the means? Assignment: You will have read the assigned essays and prepared a Reading Response, which is due at class time Monday. Discussion of the Third Essay, which is due in two weeks.

Week Eleven Photojournalism. Showing those things we should not

11.5.2007 show. Turning away from those things that should be seen. Assignment: You will have read the assigned essays and prepared a Reading Response, which is due at class time Monday.

Week Twelve National Security vs. the public’s right to know.

11.12.2007 The patriotic press. Prior restraint. The Freedom of Information Act, the Patriot Act and the government control of information. Assignment: You will have read the assigned essays, but no Reader Response is due. Third essay is due at class time Wednesday.

Week Thirteen Protecting sources. Advocacy journalism. Assignment:

11.19.2007 You will have read the assigned essays and prepared a Reading Response, which is due at class time Monday.

Week Fourteen Diversity in the newsroom and in news coverage. If “news

11.26.2007 is what happens to editors,” what happens when the editors don’t reflect the demographics of the community? Assignment: You will have read the assigned essays and prepared a Reading Response, which is due at class time Monday.

Week Fifteen Newsroom Codes of Ethics. The class builds its own.

12.3.2006 Assignment: You will have read the assigned Codes of

Ethics. For class time Wednesday you will have

prepared a brief essay describing the essence of your

own personal code of journalistic ethics, those rules

or guidelines or insights that you can draw upon when

you face what you think will be your own greatest

challenges as a working journalist. You will also post this

essay on your blog.

The term paper is due December 12. There will be no final exam.

1st Essay for American Journalism Ethics

Let us assume for the sake of argument that the more information consumers of news media have, the better choices they will be able to make in some area of their lives, beginning with the political but not necessarily ending there. The idea of utility will be our standard for what is newsworthy – for the sake of argument.

Let us further assume that you are a reporter working on a story that you think is, indeed, newsworthy. You believe reasons exist that make it desirable for people to get this information. That being the case, what – if any – are the ethical limits that govern how you go about that most basic of all journalist activities, the face-to-face interview?

I am not talking about granting anonymity to sources, a topic we will consider later in more detail. I am talking about all the ways in which one tries to get the subject talking and keep the subject talking, everything from the opening compliment, to the fake smile, to the mild flirtation, to that moment when Connie Chung “in an interview with Kathryn Gingrich, the mother of then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, urged her subject to whisper her son's comments about First Lady Hilary Clinton ‘just between us.’ The whisper was picked up by the microphone and used by Chung for broadcast.” (That quote is from the Museum of Broadcasting website.)

The list of techniques for “opening up” sources goes on and on, from laughing at dirty jokes to putting down your note pad and lowering your pencil, the implication being that what is about to be said, or was just said, is not part of the interview. (As a former student recently reminded me, I once told him to “keep two drinks behind” whomever he was interviewing, the implication being you should coax the person being interviewed into having a few drinks in the first place. I may have said something like that? How ethical would that be?)

Some guidelines: Part of this exercise consists simply of your making a good first choice, of selecting an interesting aspect of this problem to concentrate on, and also a manageable aspect since the suggested length of this paper is 1,500 words. Also, I don’t simply want just a “term paper” in which you only summarize the ideas of others. I can imagine a good essay that consists of your drawing on a half-dozen sources, pointing out conflicts or particular pertinent points and explaining in your own words why you embrace certain ideas and reject others. A possible approach might be to see what the books say on some point and then discussing with working journalists how useful the books are. (I think we are talking about “field ethics” here, what you actually do, not what you say you will do.)

The minimum number of sources for this will be five: two journalists (or former journalists or qualified journalism teachers) and three 'paper sources,' which could be from materials I've put on Canvas or emailed to you, or could be from your own research, online or in the library. It is possible five sources may not be enough. Hitting that number is not a guarantee of a good grade.

2nd Essay for American Journalism Ethics: The Ethics of Going Undercover

Find an instance of a reporter or reporters going undercover in pursuit of a news story that ended in controversy, that is, with legal action being taken against the reporter for deception or, at least, with a general outcry – by the public and/or by media ethicists -- concerning the appropriateness of the reporter(s) concealing identity.

Give the basic details of the incident, including (ideally): 1) the degree to which the news organization anticipated objections to the deception and the process by which they decided the deception would be justified; 2) the specific rules or codes or institutional practices they considered during that decision-making process; 3) the attack on their conduct and their defense of it; 4) the degree to which the news organization changed its rules or codes or institutional practices as a result of that attack; 5) the degree to which the public was served by the news story; 6) the degree to which the reporting of similar future stories is now more or less likely given the ethical conduct of the news organization.

I also want you to cite any rules, codes or guidelines concerning going undercover that you discover in the course of your reading that you find particularly valuable. Make sure you explain why you find them valuable. Either by citing the best of the rules and/or codes you find or by developing rules or codes of your own, end the essay with a statement of what you think “best practices” should be when it comes to going undercover. In other words, is it possible to create a clear and simple set of rules for going undercover that will resolve most of the ethical confusion around this issue most of the time?

Guidelines for Final Paper in American Journalism Ethics

Your final paper should be a straightforward term paper, 2,000-4,000 words long with standard footnotes and bibliography.

A wide range of topics is acceptable. One might take a general issue like plagiarism, protecting sources, invading privacy, cleaning up quotes, maintaining good relations on a beat, accepting gifts, identifying the race or ethnicity of people in the news, sacrificing accuracy in the service of being first, treating New Age stories (pet psychics, astrology) seriously, refusing to treat New Age stories seriously, cooperating with authorities by suppressing information in war stories or crime stories or stories of “national interest.” One might choose to be extra provocative: Is it possible for television news to be ethical???

You might also tackle specific events – the Lindbergh kidnapping; the Janet Cooke fiasco; the run-up to the current Iraq war; famous undercover cases – and probe their ethical dimensions.

I would keep in mind some of the things we talked about when we were preparing for the class presentations. What are/the facts of the situation? What is/was the common ethical view of the situation by those most intimately involved in the situation? What is/was the common ethical view of the situation at the time by those outside the situation, the experts, the pundits, the public? To what degree do you think a more rigorous ethical analysis is needed? That is, once you have collected opinions about the ethical issue, what do you think, applying some of the techniques and ideas we have discussed during the semester. (This is, of course, a golden opportunity to talk about the strengths and the limitations of the Potter Box.)

Remember: To pass this paper, you must cite three journalists with whom you have been in contact – face-to-face, phone or email. They need not be currently employed as journalists, which means other journalism faculty are fair game.

You have my phone number and my email.