!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> Streamline Training & Documentation: 21st-Century Journalism V

Thursday, July 06, 2006

21st-Century Journalism V

Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, and Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, published a book in 2001 that just arrived at my house yesterday. Titled The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, it's a modest-sized volume — 200 pages — that I plan to study closely.

As a start, I pass along the "clear principles that journalists agree on — and that citizens have a right to expect" that Kovach and Rosenstiel lay out in their introduction:
  1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.


  2. Its first loyalty is to citizens.


  3. Its essence is a discipline of verification. [nota bene]


  4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover. [ditto]


  5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.


  6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.


  7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.


  8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.


  9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.
Kovach and Rosenstiel did not pull these "elements of journalism" out of thin air.
...the Committee of Concerned Journalists, organized the most sustained, systematic, and comprehensive examination ever conducted by journalistts of news gathering and its responsibilities. We held 21 public forums attended by 3,000 people and involving testimony from more than 300 journalists. We partnered with a team of university researchers who conducted more than a hundred three-and-a-half-hour interviews with journalists about their values. We produced two surveys of journalists about their principles. We held a summit of First Amendment and journalism scholars. With the Project for Excellence in Journalism we produced nearly a dozen content studies of news reporting. We studied the history of those journalists who came before us.
The basic message here is that high-quality 21st-century journalism is grounded on the same foundation of ethical and professional principles as the high-quality journalism of earlier eras.

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