When Faculty Members Learn What Students Already Know: Thoughts on Objectivity and Today's Students

Abstract

In a field which worships at the altar of professional experience and newsroom seniority, there's a truism we tend forget: you can learn from your students. A Journalism 101 honors seminar held last spring at the University of Maryland, College Park, validated the old wisdom that to teach is learn twice and informed us that it's time let students do some much-needed teaching--of their teachers. Given the generally high degree of media literacy among today's journalism students, journalism educators can improve the quality of their courses by serving as facilitators of knowledge rather than pedagogues.STUDENTS SPEAK UPFor a final project, students in the honors section of Professional Orientation were asked identify the major issues facing journalism in the coming decade--the formative stage of their professional lives. Ten of the 13 papers and presentations delivered by these aspiring journalists dealt with media bias and sensationalism caused by profit-seeking. No single class session was devoted either of these topics, yet many of the themes that surfaced in the final projects revealed deep concern over the field's future. Presentation topics included:Framing the Story Before Gathering the FactsCredibility of the PressLow Growth Leads Stagnant Work ForceSensationalism: The Downfall of JournalismCan We Keep News Stories Fair and Honest?Black Men: Where Are They?Ethics in Journalism--There is No StandardCross-Cultural Coverage is InadequateOk. What's Tonya Doing Now?From these titles we learn that aspiring journalists believe balanced and fair reporting is a mythical rather than factual reality. As media consumers, they sense that journalism practice is subject bias, sensationalism, and undue dominance by white males. As their presentations reveal, this sense is reinforced by what they learn in journalism school.While 13 students in a single class do not constitute a scientific sample, their papers and discussion simulate a focus group. The reflections and concerns of these aspiring journalists offer valuable insights in an area where few are available; rarely do we have the opportunity venture into the minds of students assess existing knowledge.Recurrent themes, themes that transcend ordinary career concerns and speak salient issues in the profession, emerged from the texts of these honors seminar papers, written only weeks into the first stages of professional education:1. Students have an uneasy feeling about the state of journalism ethics, and these concerns are exacerbated when they become involved in gathering and presenting information in prescribed ways.2. They believe that sensationalism will lead professional journalism's undoing.3. They feel strongly that the newsroom as a representation of American society fails on almost any scale of racial, ethnic, or gender diversity.WHAT THE STUDENTS SAIDUnderlying their topical concerns, seminar participants ascertained a double standard in journalism practice and education: a pattern of slanted and biased reporting on the one hand and lip service balance and fairness on the other. The strongest example came from a student who related an experience that might be termed (for lack of a better phrase) pack journalism in the classroom.In a course titled Writing for the Mass Media, beginning journalists were given an in-class news writing assignment about a plant closing in a factory town. The instructor read from a prepared fact sheet and students were asked take notes. A healthy assortment of quotes from workers, merchants, and townspeople affected by the closing were conveyed the class. The only information from the other principal in the story, the company, was a dry and somewhat suspect press release. Students were then asked construct a news story in inverted pyramid style with no further input. …