Reporting Without Knowledge: the Absence of Human Rights in US Journalism Education

Abstract

Journalists play an important role in the realization and protection of human rights worldwide, framing and shaping the public’s understanding of issues. In the United States, however, studies show that media coverage of human rights is inadequate and frequently inaccurate, with US journalists typically framing human rights as an exclusively international issue. This study helps to explain why this is the case through an examination of the human rights content of journalism education in the United States. Journalism education is dominated by undergraduate programs in the United States, yet data from this study show that human rights education is not part of journalism training programs at the undergraduate level (at the top 10 schools, ranked according to the number of graduates, there are no human rights courses for journalism majors) and is not a focus of most graduate-level training programs. Those schools that do teach human rights do so largely with a focus on events and violations abroad. The fact that journalists are not educated about international human rights law and standards or taught to view events through a human rights lens means that crucial opportunities are missed to frame topics as human rights issues, to inform the public, and to hold governments and other human rights violators accountable.