Religion. Read all about it.

We talked in class (forever ago) about the importance of religion in journalism on two fronts. The first would be covering religion and the need for more newspapers to do so. Furthermore when reporters do cover religion, they should make sure that they are doing it well and are immersing themselves in the story the same way they would if they were covering anything else. In a blog post by an atheist named Austin Cline, he spoke about how badly religion is covered today by most newspapers (http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/06/29/poor-state-of-journalism-about-religion.htm). He says, "Similiar ignorance would not be tolerated on the business or science pages, so why does it occur with religion?" This is a very valid point that I had never given much thought, but newspapers make sure that the correspondents that cover politics or education know exactly what they are talking about, but seem not to give the same amount of effort to the religion sections.

The other important aspect of religion in journalism is the religion of the journalist themselves. This obviously does not go away or change often, but it may be the driving force behind some of the decision that journalists make. It shouldn't get into the way of their work, but it is what makes a journalist (or anyone else for that matter) who they are. These considerations should be taken into account by editors, but it should not be used as a handicap by any means. We all know what industry we are getting into and we can handle the world around us. And even check our religious views at the door if necessary.

Oh. So that's why people don't like us.

This week I had the opportunity to check out the Mormon Media Studies Symposium which I thought was pretty good. The session I went to was called "Image and Authenticity: What We Think of Ourselves" by Sterling Van Wagenen. He started off by giving some statistics yielded by a study of 2,000 randomly sampled Americans about what they think of Latter-day Saints. 44% of those sampled thought of Latter-day Saints as family oriented, and another 27% described them as determined. Those adjectives, however, were among the only ones that were positive. The others included cultish, controlling, secretive, weird, pushy, and of course, anti-gay. These descriptions hurt my feelings a little bit, but the point of the entire lecture was not to focus to much on what people think about us, but what we think of ourselves.

Van Wagensen mentioned that most LDS people have a sort of inferiority complex because we tend to be looked at so negatively by outsiders. We almost yearn for a positive representation of Mormons in professional sports or in the entertainment world to try to "normalize" what people think about us. While there is nothing wrong with having pride in your religion and wanting to see people like you succeed, we should not do so as a result of feeling bad about who we are. We need not care so much that people see us in a negative light, if those people see us that way because of what we believe in. Our values are clearly not worth hiding or putting on the back burner for anyone else.

While I don't know why people think I'm pushy or controlling, I' okay with being looked at as weird or secretive since I know its for a reason. And its about me and no one else.

The Fourth Estate...Keeping an Eye on the Other Three

Last class we talked all about the role of journalists as watchdogs for the government and any other group that may be trying to take advantage of American citizens. In the article, Watchdog Culture: Why You Need it, How You Can Build it (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=34&aid=82985), author Butch Ward quotes Orlando Sentinel Editor Charlotte Hall who said the following, "Watchdog journalism is a state of mind for the whole newspaper: Journalism that gives power to people." I absolutely love this quote, because its so true. The government cannot do deceive the American people without having to look over their own shoulders to make sure the press doesn't get wind of it. And that's the way it should be. Government shouldn't try to deceive us anyway. The role of watchdog journalism in our culture gives individual citizens the power over them and everyone else.

Something that I feel goes hand in hand with watchdog journalism is the idea of credibility. Newspapers and journalists must do their best to stay credible so that people will continue to trust them with this huge responsibility. This goes not only for the New York Times and the Chicago Tribunes, but also the small town newspapers who have the same responsibility on lower levels. Clearly the Daily Herald is not going to uncover the next Watergate Scandal or  print the next Pentagon Papers, but they still have a responsibility to keep their local leaders in check. Every journalists has this responsibility, and I think its important that they don't forget that.

Independence. That other thing journalists have to worry about.

Last class was all about journalistic independence, and the aspect of it I found the most interesting is what I think of as the human nature aspect. It is harder for journalists to separate themselves from their stories when they involve human suffering or have direct correlation to their own lives. For example, many journalists found it hard to cover the September 11th terrorist attacks. I found an example of this in an article called Found in the Flood by Eric Alterman (http://www.thenation.com/article/found-flood) where many stories about the tragedy were told through the lens of almost government hatred. It was difficult for the journalist to be completely independent of what they were seeing because of the emotion it stirred in them. I could not even imagine what it would be like to watch that many people suffer to that extent. Furthermore, some journalists could not be independent of the racial aspect of the situation. From one viewpoint, they were covering what they were sent their to cover, and there were indeed a disproportionate number of Black people than Whites, and everyone there was poor. As journalists, however we are not supposed to let our emotion, or disdain to a slow moving government, shine through our story. Independence. Objectivity. This is truly a difficult situation to apply these concepts to, but they must become second nature for journalism to be effective.

None of the journalistic principles we have learned about seem like they will be very easily practiced, but in the context of human tragedy, I think independence may be one of the most difficult for me to deal with personally.

Transparency please.

This past week we learned about the journalism of verification, and that nothing that hasn't been verified thoroughly should be printed. One part of this is that journalists should do their best to be transparent. Readers should know as much about the stories they read in the newspapers as the journalist who wrote them; they should not withhold anything from their readers or viewers. In the article, Too Transparent? (http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4073) by Rachel Smolkin she said, "It's unfair, even hypocritical, for the media to try to play by different rules, to ignore public demands for accountability that we would insist on from anyone else." Smolkin mentioned that the growing desire for newspapers to be more transparent recently is because of the pressure papers get from the blogosphere. They demand to know why some stories were written, why they were run in a certain day and why its on front page instead of another story. There is a lot more demand for knowing the motives behind the journalists and news organizations than there have been. And even if those concerns were present in the past, there wasn't a medium as effective as blogs to communicate them.

But at what point are journalists explaining too much to the readers? Shouldn't readers be more concerned about content than motives anyway? Smolkin addressed this question in the article, but I don't see it as being much of an issue.  Journalists ask for informed readers who ask questions, and usually good journalist are willing to provide answers to them. Its journalists who have something to hide who may be leery of readers who ask too many questions.

Comfort the Afflicted & Afflict the Comfortable

Our guest speaker Don Meyers, gave us this lovely quote while telling us about the Journalism business in class last week. What I found that I liked most about the discussion we had was about the Federal Shield Laws. I didn't know too much about it, so I did some research about them. The Society of Professional Journalists have an article (http://www.spj.org/shieldlaw.asp) with some details about the bill and why we really need to have one, so I officially have a stance. There are situations, where journalists have been incarcerated for not giving up their sources, and I do not agree with it. If the public needs to know of a certain event, and the only way they can is for an anonymous source to tell that story, why should the journalist be punished for that? How can they be loyal to their citizens if they cannot tell the entire story without getting in trouble? What's worse is that Meyers said if the bill gets shot down it will probably be another five years before it has another chance at getting passed. If the next Watergate scandal happened today, would it be overshadowed by the journalist who wouldn't be willing to tell their source? I hope not, because as much as I would like to think that the government is doing everything right, I would want to be told if they weren't. And whoever exposed them would not be a criminal; as a matter of fact, they would probably be my hero.

It was also interesting to hear how sensitive Meyers editors were to his religion when the former prophet died. It was good to know that there are people who take events like that into consideration. It makes me a little more optimistic about entering the workforce. Hopefully I find myself in a similar situation. :-)

Citizens...Not Customers

But according to Trevor Cook of the Australian Broadcast Corporation, the medium makes a difference. In his 2008 article The Death of Quality Journalism (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/37220.html), Cook expressed that because many news consumers do so on the internet, journalists now have to make sure their stories are "Search Friendly." I mean what would your article be worth if it didn't come up on the first page of a Google search? I know that If what I'm looking for isn't on the first page of my search, I'd rather refine it than scroll through another page; and my guess is that I'm not the only one. For this reason, journalists may have to structure their articles to include key phrases that would most likely be searched. This, Cook argues, is leading to a lower quality in our Journalists.

I must say this is not something that I have noticed myself, but it makes a great deal of sense. Today's journalists are still working for us, the consumers, so they have to present their work in a consumer friendly way. The most consumer friendly way to present anything these days is on the internet. I definitely don't think it is as black and white as this article made it seem, but its definitely something to think about. Not every news corporation is like the New York Times, they all cannot afford to give up advertising space for important stories. I'm sure every news corporation would like to, but it all comes down to dollars and cents.

Journalists have a duty to present us with news. In the past that was via newspaper or television, but today we have to add in the internet. Just as a newspaper article presents their information differently than a news broadcaster would report it, I guess there is room for a different standard in the internet as well. Journalists are doing their job, as hard as we make it for them.

Former newscaster Nick Clooney said, "If it comes down to a question of loyalty, my loyalty will be to the person who turns on the television set..." I guess today it belongs to the person who logs on to the website.