are print media seen as more objective than electronic media?

did governments regard television as potentially more powerful in shaping public opinion?

did the use of different technologies raise technical problems of control and security?

ideas of natural rights and citizenship in respect of monarchy and rulers (Locke)

a legal tradition which sought to limit state power

secular views based on rationalism and free thought rather than religious doctrine

a belief in a pluralist ‘marketplace of ideas’ and diversity of information based on economic laissez-faire principles.

Lap dogs: under the control of publishers out to play civic booster and woo advertising dollars

Attack dog: conflict, violent crime,

Watchdog: 4^th estate, the watcher of public institutions (government, health care, education, justice system, etc…), intervenor between state and the individual

Guide dog: that not only gives the people news and information but also helps them do their jobs as citizens, challenges people to get involved, get engaged, take ownership of problems. It doesn't position them as spectators, but as participants

Sled dog: One that doesn't romanticize citizens but really challenges them to do serious work for their community. It doesn't let citizens off the hook any more than it does public officials

Dead dog: a metaphor for the mega-projects that we reporters pour our blood, sweat and tears into -- and that run and die on the page. They represent months of research and writing, they reveal shocking or outrageous facts, but by week's end ... they're fish wrap

Public has a right to know

Public’s right to scrutinize

Justice must be seen in order to be done

Press has a duty and obligation and a right to allow democratic process to work by supplying accurate facts and opinions on all public matters

Act as a bulwark between people and the state

Only check against bureaucrat or politician is free and independent press

Newspapers decide what public will know, and how we feel about the news as a result of how they frame news events

Gatekeeping role is unique

Are newspapers a public trust, a public service?

Media are not elected (but neither are judges or crown attorneys

Freedom is like a muscle – use it or lose it

Free exchange of information is better safeguard to truth than intervention by state, latter having vested interests but also the media?

Press are our chief information providers in our democracy, our watchdog against abuse, our way of learning about ourselves, our faces to the world

Press search out truth and set the agenda for public debate

In return for advancing democratic values, we grant it the liberty to investigate, advocate, dissent and make profit

Press is an institution whose public mandate and financial health depend on it being a mass medium, therefore it ought to reflect the society that it tries to observe and interpret

Censorship and control are enemies of democratic debate

If public institutions, e.g. justice or government system, are to work fairly, they must be scrutinized on our behalf

Because of its commercial nature, freedom of press is vulnerable freedom

One cannot be fully informed unless a wide spectrum of ideas is presented for public consideration

Freedom make money, freedom from offensive ideas, freedom to be left alone

Right to privacy: of public and of defendant

Right to a fair trial

Right to privacy of business deals

Must have a free press in a democratic society ALSO must have a democratic press in a free society

Public has a stake in how media are run and whose interest they operate

Press must behave with fairness, independence and integrity

Checks against press include defamation laws, codes of ethics, press councils and other forms of self-regulation

As responsible citizens we must hold newspapers to high standards of accuracy, completeness, scope and tone, and to social responsibility of their mission

Who watches the watchdog?

As a commercial business, are media’s interests more concerned with marketplace than with public’s right to know?

Freedom of press sometimes invoked as a shield to protect journalists who invade our privacy or protect papers that make a huge profit out of publishing information – rarely brought up as a public value

As a private operation, news outlets can be seen to have no special rights and over which the public has no effective control

Do we have trial by media instead of trial by jury?

Information has become a commodity to be bought and sold, control of information is power

Having a news agenda set by vested interests, press identifies itself with the status quo

Press will criticize and scrutinize all others but not itself

Rather than seeing the contemporary press as a bulwark of liberal democracy it is also possible to regard its monopolistic influence as a threat to diversity of expression and the free marketplace of ideas

Issues of globalisation, technological convergence and information management

Competence was measured in part by the journalists’ ability to report from an ideologically acceptable perspective, defined as ‘balanced’ and ‘objective’, free to report on what they liked, as long as their superiors liked what they reported

Journalists (like social scientists and others) rarely doubt their own objectivity even as they faithfully echo the established political vocabularies and the prevailing politico-economic orthodoxy

Journalists are creatures as well as the creators of the news they produce

If a media opinion already existed about what was important and true, it usually would shape subsequent reporting on the topic

Journalists are exposed to the same communities, schools, universities, graduate schools, popular culture and media that socialize others into the dominant belief system

They react to much the same news that inundates their audiences

They seldom look to the radical press for a different viewpoint or for information that has gone unreported in the mainstream media.

The establishment biases they inject into the news, reinforce their pre-conceived view of the world. With cyclical effect, they find confirmation for the images they report, in the images they have already created (Parenti 1986, pp. 36–37).

‘News’ are actually ‘olds’, because they correspond to what is expected to happen - and if they are too far away from expectation, they will not be registered, according to this hypothesis of consonance

News could be that which was expected, came to be predicted and then interpreted as that which the consumer wanted

This self perpetuating cycle as a further news value: that of Continuity; once something was in the news, it tended to stay there

Too often the value and accuracy of a story is judged by what the opposition is running with, that the solipsism of the newsroom might feed upon itself, so that other news organisations were seen as authoritative sources

Objective journalism should not only get the facts right, but also get the meaning right;  validated not only by reliable sources but also by the unfolding of history, journalists should take the wider view

The tradition of scepticism complemented by real investigation, a tradition of not believing authority because authority has every reason to lie, seems to be a lost one replaced by cynicism = suspicion + scepticism

It is censorship by subterfuge: the manipulation of thought and language such as labels and clichés that deceive and polarise (‘moderates’ versus extremists, etc.) and a conditioned deference to authority and the ‘prevailing view’ in the name of objectivity.