Graduating Journalism Students to Sign Ethics Pledge at University of Nevada

[DeeDeeNY]

I assumed this was always done, but I guess not. Looks like none of these students will be working for Fox.

Graduating Journalism Students to Sign Ethics Pledge at University of Nevada

Editor & Publisher
Published: May 14, 2008 2:47 PM ET

Journalism students at the University of Nevada, Reno will sign an ethics pledge this Friday.

. . .

The pledge reads in part: "I will uphold and apply the highest standards of integrity and ethics. This includes helping others by minimizing harm and showing compassion.... I will act independently and be accountable for my actions."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003803655

[Caria]

1. I doubt many Fox employees

have training in journalism anyway. In fact, I cannot think of a single one who actually studied journalism.

[Breeze54]

2. Faux is NOT a news company!

Good for the Journalism Students! I like this idea! ;)

[Echo In Light]

3. FOX also serves as a red herring though...

As it makes people think they'll find actual, objective journalism from the other mainline sources - dead wrong. Yet those other M$M propaganda outlets are comprised of 'trained journalists,' and that's the point: for many of them, in order to be succe$$ful within their profession, there are certain views and questions one simply does not entertain. This is how Orwell's 1984 so captured the true nature of the modern state: nothing is officially true until it is officially denied.

[Elspeth]

4. Interesting thought. But what do you make of the fact that CNN, among others,

is taking on Fox's ways?

[Breeze54]

5. I understand "the Point"

But it's a knee jerk reaction to always point out that Faux Suxs sucks and is not anywhere near a news agency.

Amazing how the Pentagon propaganda program has been squashed also. :grr:

[warren pease]

6. That pretty much guarantees they'll never work in US mass media...

On the other hand, I think you can safely assume that this pledge is about as binding as KKKarl placing his hand on a bible while swearing to tell "...the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

By they time they get to their first job interview, they'll be wearing their own little highly toxic made-in-China-by-slave-labor flag lapel pin, now code for "Yup. I'm a dumb-assed BushBot and proud of it." Their car will be disgraced by a couple of "McCain for Intergalactic Czar" bumper stickers.

And one more essential wingnut totem: A brand new yellow magnetic ribbon honoring "our troops." This will occupy the place of honor right next to the little door that conceals the gas intake tube, demonstrating for all the world that swapping blood for oil is, in fact, a fair trade and a good deal -- unless you happen to be one of the blood donors.

Such are the trappings of journalistic success in these truly awful times. End o' childish fantasy, even though it's mainly true...


I never saw any such ethics pledge when I graduated, but that was in a very different era. These days, I guess it's good PR for J-school graduates to at least briefly acknowledge that journalism once served a higher purpose than its current role as primary right wing spin machine and the Bushies' very own ministry of propaganda. And its practitioners weren't all mindless, conscienceless whores who suck up to whoever has the money and power and who can fast-track their careers.

Reporters' situational sleaze is bad enough, but far worse is the rigid structural problem created by decades of unchecked media consolidation. The FCC has built a virtual Hoover Dam to withhold information that's available all over the web on the sites of serious, fact-based international magazines and papers: Le Monde (English version), The Guardian, The Observer, the Times of London (a Murdoch paper, but they covered Sibel Edmonds' story very well), various Zeitungs, The Financial Times, The Independent, Le Figaro (English again), Scoop, the Times of India, Asian Times and quite a few more.

Reading them all every day would be a full-time job, but it's good to check in with at least a couple of them each morning. Even a quick scan tells you that there's a huge disconnect between the US version of events and the version delivered in most other advanced countries.

For example, the recent Bushean rant equating democrats with Nazi appeasers was generally reported here as common oratorical hyperbole, with no attempt to place it in context.

Just another off-the-wall Bushean jaw-dropper; more senseless babbling from a lightweight who's made a career out of playing a congenial, all-American dunce. The pundits display their usual grasp of nuance and subtlety, portraying Bush as a simple man of deep conviction and, although the time and place was probably inappropriate, still you have to admire him for sticking to his guns, refusing to let democrats infringe on his foreign policy strategy by actually speaking to people who you don't necessarily like very much. So that's predictable as hell.

But then you start loading various international press websites and suddenly Bush is a dangerous lunatic who doesn't understand even the most basic concepts of diplomacy and dialog. Which is bad enough, but he also completely lacks any trace of negotiating skills. Rather, he negotiates with the nuclear launch codes in his back pocket, and clings to the simplistic claptrap about how "... you're either with us or against us."

Criticism is even more scathing in countries with relatively independent media and recent experience of fascism. In countries like Germany, France, Poland, Italy (when they're not electing a slate of new and improved fascists), Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Russia, Austria -- all the westernized countries located on the Eurasian super-continent -- the reaction to Bush's ramblings is universal outrage and further hostility toward the US.

That this incurious nitwit would dare to compare a US political party, and a pretty lame one at that, with the Third Reich is so far out of line that even the supposedly neutral reporters of the international press come unglued. Which is nothing compared to the sarcasm and vitriol and sense of dreadful wonder heaped on this colossal fool by the international community of op/ed writers, opinion shapers, policy analysts and TV pundits.

They're united in awe and disgust that any modern political figure -- much less the president (sic) of the imperial empire -- could possibly be so ignorant of history and of such inadequate intellect that these inane and insulting remarks would be uttered in public.



We live in an alternate universe constructed out of thin air by mass media to support American creation myths, cultural imperatives, corporate orthodoxy, right wing ideology and the continuance of the status quo.

Thanks to FCC regulators who don't believe in regulation and never met a monopoly they didn't like, a half-dozen ultra-right conglomerates now own almost 90 percent of US mass media outlets. They therefore determine junk news Americans see and hear on TV, radio and newspapers.

By allowing "the invisible hand of the market" to thin the media ownership herd from hundreds to a handful, the FCC has built the legal infrastructure that enables these gatekeepers to create a workable, ideologically based filtration system in which a few guardians of the orthodoxy flame can collaborate in inventing or cherry picking the "Official Truths of the Day" (tm) -- or "just makin' shit up," to be more precise.

When the culling and sorting and spinning and creative writing is finally done for the day, we have the "news." This fictional hogwash becomes part of the national narrative. Then it becomes part of American history and shows up in textbooks that your grandkids will probably be required to read and memorize so they can pass some useless conformity test. It's all about perpetuating the myth that there's some reservoir of boundless American wonderfulness out there, even though it doesn't actually exist.

But existence is irrelevant. What's important is that this imaginary pool of idealized goodness is an article of faith that doctrinaire Americans are supposed to believe. It exists because you have to believe this garbage unquestioningly so that you automatically reject the occasional granule of unspun fact that sneaks through the gatekeepers and the filters and ends up as an embarrassing factoid on the great true-color, super-plasma, back-lit, wall-mounted, thin as a starving debutante, giant screen conformity machine.

The point being... Until corporate media monopolies are smashed into small and independent pieces that, like Humpty Dumpty, nobody can put back together again, we can expect the same sorry information-free, context-free, nuance-free drivel that these disgustingly dense frauds, known as "on-air talent," peddle as news. With that giant obstacle removed, it might again be possible to go to a report from a US mass media outlet and not have to fact check every single sentence.


wp