Journalism/Works

Rem Rieder, USA Today media writer and former editor of American Journalism Review, talks with the Newseum Institute’s Gene Policinski about lingering criticism that U.S. and European news media gave saturation news coverage to the Nov. 13 ISIS attacks and deaths in Paris, but much less – if at all – coverage to bombings in Beirut and Nigeria at virtually the same time. Is it cultural insensitivity, valid news judgment, or what some are calling “empathy fatigue”?

The Newseum Institute’s Gene Policinski talks with Angolan investigative journalist and human rights activist Rafael Marques, recognized with several international awards for his courageous reporting on conflict diamonds and government corruption. He currently heads the anti-corruption watchdog website Maka Angola. This program was recorded before a live studio audience in the Newseum’s Knight TV Studio.

In little more than a week, there was the on-camera “live” killing Aug. 26 of two journalists, Alison Parker and Adam Ward; graphic video taken by Ward and by the apparent shooter; and on Sept. 4, the heart-wrenching photos of three-year old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, lifeless on a Turkish beach, who drowned trying to escape sectarian violence. Should such images be published? Are there limits, in law or in journalism? Prof. Diana Huffman, who lectures on media ethics and media law at the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, says at times there is no purpose in publishing – but at other times, there is. A conversation about what we can see – and, perhaps, shouldn’t.

From Northwestern University’s venerable Medill School of Journalism to the up-and-coming Middle Tennessee State University mass communications program, a name change is more than cosmetic. It’s recognition that the flow of information – from news to public relations to entertainment to electronic media to marketing – is dramatically different in the 21st century, and that college programs need to adapt, adopt and sometimes rename. It’s now The Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications. This episode features an interview with Ken Paulson, dean of the newly tagged MTSU College of Media and Entertainment.

Journalism and freedom of information lawyer Kevin Goldberg discusses a federal judge’s decision to toss out Idaho’s so-called “Ag-Gag” law – touted by advocates as a way to protect state agriculture business from “eco-terrorists” but criticized by opponents who believe it would limit press and advocacy group oversight.

Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, talks with host Gene Policinski of the Newseum Institute on the use of these remotely controlled flying devices by news organizations, one day after the first field test by a media consortium in cooperation with the FAA.

A conversation with Kathy Gannon, veteran Associated Press correspondent who was shot and seriously wounded in Afghanistan in 2014 in an attack by an Afghan policeman in which her AP colleague, photographer Anja Niedringhaus, was killed. On June 8, 2015, Gannon was the keynote speaker at the annual rededication of the Newseum’s Journalists Memorial.

As the Newseum opens “Reporting Vietnam,” a new exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, veteran broadcaster Haney Howell – the last CBS News bureau chief in Saigon before the city fell in 1975 – speaks with the Newseum Institute’s Gene Policinski about what it was like to report in Vietnam and in neighboring Cambodia. Howell, now journalism professor emeritus at Winthrop University, also discusses the differences, both good and bad, in reporting from today’s global conflict zones.

Tony Messenger, editorial page editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorial writing, talks about what his newspaper and the rest of the news media can take away from news coverage last August of the death of Michael Brown and subsequent protests and violence in Ferguson, Mo., and the reporting of recent protests and violence after the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

Carl Sessions Stepp, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, discusses media coverage of the violence and peaceful demonstrations for social justice in Baltimore, and shares his thoughts on how journalists should prepare in advance for such assignments. The former newspaper reporter and editor has been a consultant for news organizations around the country. He specializes in writing and editing, journalism history, and newsroom organization and change. He has written two books, “Writing as Craft and Magic ” and “Editing for Today's Newsroom,” and is senior contributing editor of American Journalism Review.