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“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Thomas Jefferson to Dr. James Currie, Jan. 28, 1786
“Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.” Walter Cronkite
By Amy Rogan
Media and Communication Assistant Professor and adviser to the Pulse
I could go on and on with quote after quote about the importance of journalism to democracy. But for many, defining journalism is the most difficult part of comprehending the need for it in a functioning democracy.
You can look up a hundred definitions of journalism, but to me it is a recording of history and an educational tool for the public. Whenever one researches what happened at a particular time and place, they will most likely start with journalistic accounts of the time.
Journalism is also reporting with as much objectivity as possible. We are human and we are not computers spitting out facts, but ask any student who has sat in any of my classes and they will recognize this saying: “Paint us a picture but don’t tell us what to see.”
Why is journalism so hard to define in the year 2024? People are constantly bombarded with content. Whether it’s on our phone, tablet, computer, TV, or radio, there is a mountain of information falling on us at all times. It’s difficult to discern what is infotainment and what is actual journalism.
The UF Media and Communication department works very hard to help students and the campus community understand media literacy. And as my colleague Dr. Diana Montague likes to say, “there is no such thing as fake news. If it’s fake, it’s not news.”
Much like there is no such thing as alternative facts. There may be alternative truths due to each person’s perspective, but a fact is a fact. It can’t be changed.
I work very hard to get all of my students to understand fact-based storytelling. I try to help them get an idea of how the “sausage is made,” so to speak. The everyday journalists gets up in the morning, get their kids off to school and head to the newsroom. They look through files to find out what’s happening in court, what happened on the scanner overnight, and what legislation is making its way through the statehouse or city council before they decide on the stories that need covered for the day. They take into consideration their audience and what’s important to that audience. Then they find the right people to interview for their stories and do their best to help the audience understand what is happening.
BUT, thanks to 24-hour news networks and blogs and podcasters, factual information can get lost in the infotainment or flat-out misinformation that fills our phones and our heads.
With the importance of the presidential election this year, I proposed to my colleagues in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, that this year’s Wilkin Series explore the connection between journalism and democracy. And I wanted to highlight the ethics that surround journalism and the duty journalists have to help us maintain our democracy here in the United States of America. The chairs of our college graciously allowed me to serve as the Wilkin Chair this school year.
The journalistic duty to ethically report factual storytelling is, at times, in jeopardy. So many people don’t understand what that looks like or what it means. Journalists take a lot of heat just for reporting reality. Many times the subject at the center of the report won’t like what’s being reported. But that doesn’t make the reporting false. In fact, it should make it even MORE believable by the public. Too much denial is often an indicator that there is something to hide. (Just ask Shakespeare.)
The latest trend over the last eight years has been to call factual reporting fake news until the audience believes it is fake.
My goal is to connect our campus community and the community of Findlay with real, everyday journalists and hear how those professionals work as the Fourth Estate, the watchdogs, to preserve democracy.
Politics is not necessarily the most popular topic among college students, but that doesn’t make it any less important. This is the time in their lives when they are learning to critically think about everything: social issues, political issues, personal issues, financial issues, etc. I want to help them explore and learn and grow.
With that in mind I put together a series of events this fall to reinforce all of those ideas.
At 8:30 p.m. Sept. 10 students are invited to a Presidential Debate Watch Party, complete with Debate Bingo in the Pulse Media Center in the AMU. Food and prizes will be part of the festivities. Alex Davis, media and communication instructor and adviser to WLFC, 88.3 radio, will be our “in-house” moderator and ensuring a fun and educational time for students.
At 6:30 p.m. Sept. 16, the campus and Findlay communities are invited to hear guest speaker Morgan Trau from WEWS. Trau is an award-winning political and investigative reporter stationed at the Statehouse in Columbus. She will talk about investigating, fact-checking, and reporting to preserve democracy.
At 6:30 p.m. Oct. 14 the campus and Findlay communities are encouraged to come hear author, documentarian, and former award-winning political reporter Jim Heath talk to us via Zoom about what it’s like to report in the middle of a political firestorm. Heath and I worked together when I still worked in TV news and he has a wealth of knowledge and facts about politics. His experiences as a political reporter are fascinating.
All of this leads up to our mock election on campus on Oct. 29. This started in 2016 as “Rock the Mock,” and has continued for each presidential election. The Pulse Media Club sponsors the event but we coordinate other activities to coincide with that event. The keynote speaker at noon in the Writing Center that day is Colleen Marshall. She is an award-winning journalist, lawyer, host of political talk show “The Spectrum,” and long-time anchor at WCMH, NBC4 in Columbus. I worked with her early in my TV career and I think you’ll enjoy her insights and wit.
The Wilkin Series is not always this packed full of activities but I think each event over the next two months has something to offer different audiences in our community. I hope you’ll come out to enjoy at least one of them and get to know the facts behind the need for journalism in a functioning democracy. Educated voters are key to a successful democracy, and isn’t this the best place to do what we do every day: educate.
