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This paper explores an alternative way of studying journalism in the classroom by focusing on contemporary journalists' ironic treatment of morality. The paper examines the performative character of the language of news, when the words investigative journalists use are of interest not so much for what they say but for what they do. The paper establishes an appropriate framework of irony as a rhetorical device, with emphasis on its evaluative role and the implications of that role for journalists who, as a matter of professional obligation, must eschew explicit evaluation. The paper presents detailed examination of how irony works in the work of several distinguished reporters. (Twenty references are attached.) (KEH)

A study examined news coverage by "The Saint Petersburg Times" of a local double teen suicide in August 1993. Focusing on how the story was covered, the study explored the newspaper's decision-making process, analyzing the process in relation to standard philosophical methods in ethics and recognized journalistic principles. As background, psychological research on suicide and the media was reviewed and interviews with mental health professionals and persons close to the victims were conducted. The newspaper ran headlines that read "Teens leap to death in lovers' pact at Skyway" and "Northeast High students reportedly were distraught over Marc's impending move to Cincinnati." Reporters interviewed high school friends and officials, and much space was devoted to the story. A clinical psychologist and professor who belongs to a post-prevention team that works with youth in schools where a student has committed suicide has urged caution by the press when reporting teen suicide and feels that the media must assume ethical responsibility for such a story. Suggested guidelines for journalists on how to cover a teen suicide story include: (1) sensitivity to the pain and shock of surviving friends and family; (2) self-questioning about what the public really needs to know about a suicide; (3) caution about using quotes obtained in this highly emotional situation; (4) inclusion of information on how to recognize suicidal signs and where to call for help; and (5) development of proactive stories that educate the public. (Contains 27 references.) (NKA)

The Media Ethics section of the proceedings contains the following 7 selected papers: "The Ethics Agenda of the Mass Communication Professorate" (Jay Black, Bruce Garrison, Fred Fedler, and Doug White); "What Would the Editor Do? A Three-Year Study of Student-Journalists and the Naming of Rape Victims in the Press" (Kim E. Karloff); "The Role of Questions in TV News Coverage of the Ethics of Cloning" (David A. Craig and Vladan Pantic); "Privacy and the Pack: Ethical Considerations Faced by Local Papers Covering the JFK Jr. Plane Crash" (Mark W. Mulcahy); "History, Hate and Hegemony: What's a Journalist To Do?" (Bonnie Brennen and Lee Wilkins); "The Fairness Factor: Exploring the Perception Gap between Journalists and the Public" (Deborah Gump); and "Leaks: How Do Codes of Ethics Address Them?" (Taegyu Son). (RS)

Lists of issues and research questions related to high school journalism, synthesized from survey responses of 21 journalism educators and from articles published in seven major journalism publications from 1974 through 1979, are presented in this paper. Questions are arranged according to four major categories, and questions from the literature and from the surveyed educators are listed separately. The four categories and some of their subdivisions are as follows: (1) student publications and the journalism class--publication content and format, staffing, evaluation of publications, business policies, effectiveness of the journalism program, and alternatives to traditional journalism experiences. (2) the publication adviser and journalism teacher--teaching methods and problems, adviser and teacher roles, sources of assistance, and adviser qualifications. (3) adviser and teacher training--the quality and content of training programs, and contact between teacher-trainers and advisers of teachers. (4) legal and ethical issues--the environment in which student publications are published, censorship guidelines and policies, sources of information and assistance, and the extent of legal and ethical problems. The paper concludes by summarizing concerns and research needs related to high school journalism. (GT)

This study aimed to catalog the nature of written message exchanges on a network computer bulletin board, HSJOURN, which caters mainly to high school journalism teachers and publications advisers. The study analyzed the content of messages between December 1993 and January 1995 and cataloged them in the following categories: announcements; chatting; does anybody know?; ethical matters; conducting conferences; editorial guidance; consumer information; legal matters; trading classroom material; expression of opinion; reprints from mass media; sharing problems or solutions; sharing teacher tips; maintenance; and other. A tabulation of the number of messages falling into each category shows that most message activity occurred in 3 categories: announcements, chats, and does anybody know? Another tabulation shows that October was the most active month on the bulletin board and August was the least active. Activity was fairly consistent over the 7 days of the week. Other tables show: (1) the frequency of messages by classification of poster; (2) the classification of original message leavers versus those who reply; and (3) the frequency of messages posted by individuals. The research did not intend to provide statistically significant analysis but rather to serve as a descriptive snapshot of activity on this bulletin board at a particular time for purposes of later comparison and research. (Contains seven tables of data.) (TB)

This proceedings contain 16 papers on American journalism history in the 20th century. Papers in the proceedings are: "News Suppression & Press Intimidation During the Nixon Administration" (Egbe Enonnchong); "The Persian Gulf War: Revolution in News Transmission" (Robert L. Spellman); "South Dakota's W. R. Ronald: Prairie Editor and an AAA Exponent" (Elizabeth Evenson Williams); "William H. Mason: How a Journalist's Murder Influenced Media Coverage" (Mary K. Sparks); "A Paper for Those Who Toil: The Chicago Labor Press in Transition" (Jon Bekken); "A Southern Demagogue as Portrayed through Florida Newspapers" (John Galey); "Ohio Newspaper Coverage of the 1920 Presidential Campaign" (Douglass K. Daniel); "Truth and Jimmy Carter: The 1976 Presidential Campaign" (Sonya Forte Duhe);"The Carter Presidency and the National Press: Grappling with the Process of Truth" (Kyle Cole); "Ambassador of American Journalism: Alistair Cooke" (Michael D. Murray); "Photographs, Image Manipulation, and False Light Invasion of Privacy" (Steve Buhman); "'Lou Grant': Creating Characters for a Newspaper Drama" (Douglass K. Daniel); "Eisenhower, McCarthy, and News Conferences That Fought Back: A Turning Point in White House Press Relations, 1953-1954" (Craig Allen); "Reaching for Professionalism and Respectability: State Press Association Ethics Codes in the 1920s" (Mary M. Cronin and James B. McPherson); "Penitents Brought into the Fold: Tales of Conversion, Heresy, and Contrition in 'Time' Magazine" (Richard Lentz); and "Was the Mainstream Press a Promoter of the Progressive Ideology? The 'New York Times' and the 'New York World', 1900-1917" (Elizabeth Burt). (RS)

Arguing that the news media are about to adopt digital imaging systems that will have far-reaching implications for the practice of journalism, this paper discusses how the news media is expected to adopt the new technology and explains why the marriage of journalism and digital imaging will create ethical issues with respect to photo manipulation that need to be resolved. The paper makes several recommendations for photographers and journalists. Reference citations are included. (RS)

To determine when, if ever, deceptive acts can be morally justified in investigative reporting, it is important to distinguish a deceptive act that is morally justified from an act that is not deceptive in the first place. This paper seeks to provide an account of what counts as deception and identify the kinds of journalistic practice that are morally questionable; i.e., to identify the acts that require justification by journalists as investigators, interrogators, and informers. Journalists have acted deceptively, if they have, in the course of an investigation, through intentional action or assertion, attempted to initiate or sustain a false belief, or if they have allowed another person, with whom they have a special relationship, to initiate or sustain a false belief. The journalist as interrogator has a duty to tell the source (1) that an interview for publication is taking place; (2) how the information is being recorded; and (3) if, through some misunderstanding and resultant action on the part of the source, the source becomes more likely to be harmed than he realizes. As informers, journalists have a duty to disclose information that the news organization has explicitly or implicitly promised to disclose, and that, if withheld, would lead readers to a false conclusion. (MS)

The Media Ethics Division section of the proceedings contains the following seven papers: "The Concept of Media Accountability Reconsidered" (Patrick Lee Plaisance); "Of Joint Ventures, Sock Puppets and New Media Synergy: Codes of Ethics and the Emergence of Institutional Conflicts of Interest" (Charles N. Davis and Stephanie Craft); "Constructualist Morality in News Reporting: What Journalists Owe to Story Subjects, News Sources and the Public" (Kathleen L. Mason); "Beyond Kant Lite: Journalists and the Categorical Imperative" (Lee Anne Peck); "Online Media Ethics: A Survey of U.S. Daily Newspaper Editors" (M. David Arant and Janna Quitney Anderson); "Covering the Ethics of Death: An Exploration of Three Model Approaches (David A. Craig); and "Philosophy in the Trenches: How Newspaper Editors approach Ethical Questions" (Patrick Lee Plaisance). (RS)

Intended to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework to serve as a scaffold for past, present, and future research on "scholastic journalism" (journalism in the secondary school), a topical content analysis of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Secondary Education Division research, teaching, and issues sessions for the years 1977 to 1989 was undertaken. Papers or teaching sessions were placed into one or more of 13 categories, including censorship and legal and ethical issues, electronic media/technology, established media, financial concerns, publication production, and visual content. A list of 182 primary and secondary subject headings was developed, based on indexing practices in a number of existing electronic databases, to serve as key words for a newsletter indexing program. The categories derived from the AEJMC program topical content analysis were compared to the 37 masters theses and doctoral dissertations in the "high school media" category of "Journalism Abstracts" for the same period. Results indicated that legal and ethical issues were the primary conceptual area for scholastic journalism researchers. Results also indicated that history and cultural diversity were two conceptual areas that were slighted by researchers. (Thirty-nine footnotes, five tables and four figures of data, and a figure representing a conceptual model of scholastic journalism are included; 116 references, a list of dissertations and theses, the newsletter indexing key word list, and a list of studies concerned with secondary school journalism are attached.) (RS)

The Qualitative Studies section of the proceedings contains the following 14 papers: "'Virtual Anonymity': Online Accountability in Political Bulletin Boards and the Makings of the Virtuous Virtual Journalist" (Jane B. Singer); "The Case of the Mysterious Ritual: 'Murder, She Wrote' and 'Perry Mason'" (Karen E. Riggs); "Political Issues in the Early Black Press: Applying Frame Analysis to Historical Contexts" (Aleen J. Ratzlaff and Sharon Hartin Iorio); "Leaks in the Pool: The Press at the Gulf War Battle of Khafji" (David H. Mould); "Professional Clock-Punchers: Journalists and the Overtime Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act" (Robert Jensen); "Love, Gender and Television News" (Don Heider and Leona Hood); "Tabloids, Lawyers and Competition Made Us Do It!: How Journalists Construct, Interpret and Justify Coverage of the O.J. Simpson Story" (Elizabeth K. Hansen); "The Taming of the Shrew: Women's Magazines and the Regulation of Desire" (Gigi Durham); "Communitarian Journalism(s): Clearing the Conceptual Landscape" (David A. Craig); "What 'Indians' Mean in the Media: Race, Language, and the Popular Imagination" (John M. Coward); "'It's Going to Be a Rough Ride, Buddy!' A Phenomenological Analysis of the Collision between 'Hate Speech' and Free Expression in Students' Experiences of the Khallid Muhammad Controversy" (Brenda Cooper); "Noise and Signal as a Textbook Case: Rhetorics of Mass Communication Inquiry" (Ralph Beliveau); "Implications of Audience Ethics for the Mass Communicator" (James L. Aucoin); and "Telling Lies: The Symbolic Function of Lies in Sitcoms" (Elizabeth Atwood-Gailey). (RS)

It is difficult for newspaper editors and reporters to maintain journalistic objectivity when covering a city's urban structure and development because of their traditional civic involvement and because of a civic ideology shared with urban experts and chamber of commerce boosters. News values and editorial policy are often implicit varieties of civic propaganda. The subjective metaphor is most evident in the presentation, protection, and defense of the central business district as the place for civic worship of sacred icons, relics, and ceremonies. City planning news policy combines media and civic self-interest wrapped in the ethos of social responsibility and public interest. The civic ideology affects definitions and interpretations of urban problems and sets the news agenda throughout the newspaper. Journalists tend to justify their subjective involvement (if they admit to it) as a means of promoting civic identity and consensus; but in fact it leads to the reporting of some debatable events as nonpolitical, for the common good, and closed to debate. As civic custodians of civic symbols, civic pride, and a city's reputation, the participant-observer press often blends its fate mutually with that of the community. (Author/GT)

To date, most of the scholarly research and critical articles about ethics in journalism have dealt with newspapers and television rather than with radio. To help fill this gap, a study surveyed a segment of the radio news community to determine some of the attitudes, values, and beliefs of news directors concerning ethics in their workplace. Subjects, 66 directors (out of a possible 200) of "all-news" radio stations in the United States, answered a 117-question survey dealing with ethics in broadcast journalism. Results indicated that (1) almost 40% of the stations had adopted formal codes of ethics; (2) 90% of the directors believed radio journalists should follow the guidelines contained in formal codes of ethics; and (3) most of the news directors seemed to subscribe to the"Pure Act Deontology" theory of ethics--circumstances dictate what is right and wrong. (Sixteen notes and three tables of data are included.) (MS)

A 1977 Court of Appeals decision, "Edwards v. National Audubon Society," outlined the principle of "neutral reportage": the press is not required to suppress newsworthy statements by public officials merely because the truth of those statements is doubtful. The author outlines this court case because it illustrates so well the consequences of the ethic of objectivity that has developed in journalism since the rise of the mass press in the 1800s. Originally a response to economic pressures, objectivity has become an ideal to strive for. In an effort to remain free from unrecognized prejudgments, journalists have concentrated on reporting rather than interpreting news, using themselves largely as vehicles for their sources' arguments, rebuttals, explanations, and criticisms. Nevertheless, their reporting reveals bias. In relying on official sources, reporters favor the prominent and established. Trying to record rather than interpret, journalists undervalue independent thinking as they obscure their own role in choosing and editing news. This ethic of objectivity is founded on a naive belief in a single reality derived from empirical facts. American journalism will not become truly responsible until it recognizes that facts and values are inseparable. (MM)

This section of the proceedings is comprised of 11 papers dealing with the relationship between media and the law. Papers include: "Equal before the Law: Three Media Myths of the American Legal System" (Henry Itkin); "The Role of Senator Albert Gore, Jr. in Satellite/Cable Legislation" (Michael B. Doyle); "The Law of Quotation Marks: Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, et al., 1989" (David Eshelman); "Conceptual Problems of Broadcast Indecency Policy and Application" (Jeremy Harris Lipschultz); "Invasion of Privacy: A Q-Study of the Orientations of Media, Officials and the Public" (Jeremy Harris Lipschultz); "Toward a Definition and Standard Method of Analysis for Libel by Implication" (Karen Markin); "Press Rolls Over, Plays Dead in New Assaults on First Amendment Protections" (Helen Niemiec); "Retraction: Analysis and Comments" (Louise Williams Hermanson); "The Misleading Search for Content Neutrality in Libel Law" (Ruth Walden and Hosoon Chang); "The Development of the 'Commercial Speech Doctrine' in the U.S. Supreme Court: Bright Line or Muddy Waters?" (Roy L. Moore); and "The Fairness Doctrine, the Citizens and the Radical Right-Wing: 'In re the Application of KAYE Broadcasters, Inc.'" (Timothy W. Gleason). (RS)

In the study described in this paper, 221 students in beginning and senior level university journalism and law courses read descriptions of ten cases of alleged invasions of privacy by photojournalists, gave their opinions on the ethics of taking and publishing the pictures, and indicated their degree of interest in a number of topics related to journalistic and legal ethics. After describing the methodology of the study, which involved presenting approximately half the subjects with a written case questionnaire and presenting the others with the questionnaire along with the relevant photographs, the paper discusses the issue of uncertainty in decision making and tells how it was assessed in the study. It then reports general findings, noting differences between the responses of beginning and advanced journalism and law students, the responses of males and females, and the responses of the students and a group of practicing photojournalists studied previously. Next--in its major portion--the paper provides a case-by-case analysis in which each case is summarized and the subjects' responses are reported in narrative and tabular form. The paper concludes that the differences between journalism and law students are not as great as might be expected, particularly among beginning students. It also notes that viewing the relevant case photographs made no significant differences in students' responses. (GT)

The relationship of reporters, scientists, and the public is explored in this paper. Recent issues that have triggered a demand for a new kind of science writer are noted as including society's increased interest in health care, in problems of the environment, the ethics of genetic engineering, and other issues concerning the autonomy of the individual. The need for communication about science is discussed, as are considerations of the constraints on the media and on the scientists. The analysis concludes that science writers are faced with the role of the scientific reporter as investigator and advocate rather than just a mere communicator of facts and that they should meet this new role of critic. (MKM)