Law

The First Amendment

One of the first things we learned in our journalism class was the importance of the First Amendment. Every journalist should learn their rights and freedoms before pursuing a story. To learn more about the amendment, I participated in many class activities including a fill-in-the-blank assignment and analysis on the First Amendment.

Ethics

Addressing Bias

A common ethical problem that has come up in all my communications classes is bias. As my comparative religion class has taught me, bias can be both implicit and explicit. The toughest type of bias to battle with is an implicit bias which is unintentional and involuntary. Since bias can also be positive or negative, we often only identify negative bias, if at all. But whether it is positive or negative and implicit or explicit, one can not produce responsible journalism if it includes bias.

After an incident in my PATV class, I started a conversation about bias. Following the death of a celebrity, a member of my staff wrote that it was a tragic death. Knowing the celebrity as only an actor from her childhood, she was unaware that this celebrity was a controversial figure due to allegations surrounding him. My advisor caught the slip-up and requested for us to change the script accordingly.

News Literacy

Citing Sources