This is a summary of the first in a nationwide series of forums convened by journalists to examine the core values and responsibilities of their profession. This one, held November 6 in Chicago, Illinois, examined what is the purpose of journalism. It was co-sponsored by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
None of the forums is intended to be definitive but rather form a kind of coordinated reporting effort by the Committee of Concerned Journalists. The substance of the forums will be the basis of a monograph that attempts to distill what journalists can agree on as their core values and responsibilities.
The day brought together journalists from different backgrounds, from traditional community journalism at the Chicago Tribune, to the editor of Better Homes and Garden, from local TV to the internet, from opinion columnists to alternative advocacy weekly journalism and asked them all to answer the same question: what is journalism.
We learned that whatever quarter they came from, including the advocacy ranks, they had certain core values in common: a commitment to accuracy, to fairness and balance, to reflecting the diversity of their readership (or community), to always approaching reporting with an open mind, to having their primary commitment to the reader--not the advertiser or shareholder. The journalist should be a provider of reliable, verified, true information--even a seeker of truth.
As Patty Calhoun, editor of the alternative Denver weekly Westword, put it, "You can't have a point of view until you've explored all points of view."
We also heard a consensus that journalists are struggling because they have become isolated culturally from their readers, that their tastes and definitions of news need to broaden and become more populist. But, this balancing must occur without abdicating principles of journalism or standards of reporting, without pandering, assuming audiences are dumb or at the expense of providing people with information they need to self govern. Journalism is suffering because it is failing to find this balance.
Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists that inspired these forums, began the session by explaining their purpose:
"It is crucial to the survival of a journalism that truly serves the needs of a self-governing people that journalists themselves engage in a period of national conversation and reflection to clarify the common values and the common responsibilities that journalism holds."
"We believe that if we cannot better articulate what those values and responsibilities mean, they will cease to mean anything."
"Each of the forums will confront and examine key questions of journalistic practices and principles. Our task here in Chicago today is to examine two fundamental questions: First, what is journalism anyway? What is the common ground between the Chicago Tribune, the local television station, service magazines and the Internet? And, second, who is a journalist today? What responsibilities, values, principles make one person a journalist, as opposed to a propagandist, or a simple communicator?"
Clarence Page, the Tribune columnist who moderated the morning session, illustrated how illusory definitions of journalism have proven in the past:
"Ted Koppel says our business is largely a profession of map making--trying to draw places for people to venture, to journey, to learn from. Rupert Murdoch was once questioned about practicing tabloid journalism, and he responded, 'I prefer to call it excitement.' Ellen Goodman, describing what we commentators do, says our business is to make sense of all that is happening in the world. Others have said journalism is a first draft or a rough draft of history, or that it is literature in a hurry. I think our most important function is that of agenda setting."
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