Right as I began reading the fifth and final chapter of Neil Henry’s American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media, I was immediately reminded of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Henry talks about Theola Labbe who volunteered to go to Iraq without even having foreign correspondence experience or war correspondence experience. A brave and daring move to say the least. She spent some time after the gathering the information she thought was newsworthy. The people have a right to know what was really going on.
Next he goes on to talk about the Society of Professional Journalists, which I am the University of Miami chapter treasurer. The four simple ethical categories that journalists must abide by are:
Seek Truth and Report It
Minimize Harm
Act Independently
Be Accountable
These four rules are golden in the field of journalism. In Sam Terilli’s journalism ethics class, we watched Jon Stewart mock CNBC’s economic analysis and then discussed their attempt to consider that “news”.
The media almost isn’t credible at this point. Who knows what to believe? One day Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s hit show “Mad Money”, says to buy Bear Stearns and seven weeks later, it goes bankrupt.
Media is a powerful marketing tool, maybe the most powerful. We need to find a way to tweak the norm and create a trustworthy watchdog for the people, by the people.
