Poynter KSU Media Ethics Workshop ’08: “Whose Rules?”
Should journalists attempt to impose order in cyberspace? Would this even be possible? Does blogging ruin journalism? How has social media changed journalism and what does the future hold?
During “Whose Rules?”, the fourth annual Poynter KSU Media Ethics Workshop (Sept. 18, 2008), media practitioners, journalists and online experts attempted to determine whether ethics exist in online media. The broad topic proved highly controversial as speakers and participants, including those watching online and participating via Twitter, tried to navigate the choppy waters of media ethics as the media move online.
This year’s ethics Workshop expanded on previous workshops and focused entirely on online ethics. It offered national perspective and opened the conversation on significant industry change. The program brought together online experts like Jay Rosen of PressThink, Dawn Turner Trice of Chicago and Robin Sloan of current.com and media practitioners like Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg and Seattle columnist Jon Talton for an exciting, no-holds-barred debate about how the distribution of information is changing. The focus was highly charged on whether traditional media could help create a new infrastructure for communities and a new ethics foundation for traditional media organizations.
In the end, no “rules” were set forth for bloggers to live by. The Workshop did identify ideas about using, consuming, gathering and publishing information. Participants and Poynter faculty easily concluded that ethics issues are here to stay and that consumers need to understand the changing values of media and information providers.
The fourth annual Media Ethics Workshop took place in Kent State’s new state-of-the-art journalism building, Franklin Hall. We were able to offer live video streaming, televised recordings of the proceedings, live blogging and cyber-links for distant guests. For more information about the 2008 “Whose Rules?” Media Ethics Workshop, including complete archives and video highlights CLICK HERE.
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