cc  >> Welcome, everyone.  My name is Gary Berger.  I'm with the Wisconsin Alumni  Association.  I want to welcome you to this  session.  This is Media Ethics, and it  will be a great program, I'm  sure.  We want to welcome you, but we  also want your evaluations.  So you would have received an  evaluation as a document as you  came in.  Put them in the cardboard  container on the table up here  as you leave.  We would really appreciate that.  We want to keep our programs  sharp and continue to improve  them. 

 This is Media Ethics.  And it is my absolute pleasure  to introduce Professor Steve  Ward, who has been on the campus  four months.  He came to us from the  University of British Columbia  in Vancouver.  Stephen is the James E. Burgess  Professor.  And incidentally, his bio  is in your materials, so you  can read it.  >> There'll be a test after.  (laughter)  >> I've seen the test.  It's really rugged.  Steve is from Canada, and brings  such an interesting perspective,  both as a journalist and as  an ethics scholar.  So please help me welcome  Professor Stephen Ward. 

 (applause)  >> Thank you.  Thank you, everyone.  First of all, you all get an  extra mark for showing up on a  chilly Friday afternoon to  listen to me.  That's terrific.  I'm glad to see so many of you  here.  One of the things we will talk  about is journalism ethics, I  call it more than media ethics.  You can ask me what the  difference is if you want.  And what I'd like to do is  rather than just talk at you for  an entire 45 minutes, what I'd  like to do is also ask questions  and make it a little more  interactive as we go along.  Hopefully, you'll play along  with me that way.  And I've heard all the jokes  about journalism ethics. 

 It's an oxymoron, you know, if  you're writing a book about  journalism ethics, it's going to  be a very short book.  I've heard them all.  Let me first of all begin by  saying a little bit about, if I  can find the right adapter, a  little bit about who is this  guy, anyway.  Myself.  It's not because I have a huge  ego that I want to talk about  myself, though I do.  I actually just want to give you  a little background on where I'm  coming from and what I've been  asked to do here at the  university.  Yes, I'm a Canadian, but I come  from eastern Canada originally,  where we're used to winter.  So I've just come from Vancouver  where we don't have anything  that Canadians would recognize  as winter.  Lots of rain like Seattle.  And I've got to get used to  winter all over again. 

 And tomorrow, I'm going to my  first Badger football game.  And it's going to be cold.  So my origins in very snowy New  Brunswick will be tested to see  whether I can hang in there for  a while.  So that's where I come from.  Basically, I'm a philosopher who  fell in love with journalism.  I love journalism and I try and  put the two of them together in  my work.  Basically, what happened was, I  was finishing my PhD in  philosophy on some arcane topic  which none of you will care to  talk about.  And I didn't want to be the  unemployed taxi driver with a  PhD in philosophy.  I was not going to be a  stereotype.  So I'd done a bit of writing. 

 I come from an Irish family.  As you can tell, I love to talk.  And I love literature.  And I thought, hey, what's so  hard about journalism.  I can write.  I can make a bit of money.  I started.  I went back to my home town.  I went into this little, really  bad local newspaper.  I walked up to the editor and  said I'll write you one piece a  week. 

 He says, yeah, but you're a  philosopher.  You'll write like Thomas Aquinas  coming down from a cloud.  I said, no, I come from here, I  know how to talk the talk of the  ordinary stuff.  I can swear with the best of you  here.  So he gave me $15 to write this  piece.  And it was a big piece  of humble pie.  They kept saying, you're  covering City Hall, aren't you  the guy with the PhD  in philosophy?  But I didn't care.  I loved it so much.  And my jobs kept changing so  much that I stayed with it.  I went on to be a legislative  reporter, in other words,  covering the state legislature,  in a sense, in New Brunswick for  the provincial newspaper, their  top political reporter. 

 I got a job with the Canadian  Press News Agency, which is your  AP, your Associated Press.  I went from Halifax, Nova  Scotia, does anybody know  Halifax, Nova Scotia?  Okay.  I jumped to the only wire guy on  the rock.  And who knows where the rock is  in Canada?  Newfoundland.  And it is a rock in the middle  of the northeast Atlantic.  After that, they offered me the  job of a foreign reporter for  CP, the only staff reporter for  the Canadian Press Wire Service  in all of Europe, in London,  England.  And I said, zippy-do-dah-day.  I'll be, you know, having fries  and, you know, fish and chips,  and beer.  No, two weeks before I left  Halifax, or Newfoundland, for  England, Suddam Hussein invaded  Kuwait.  And they said when you get  there, don't even touch down,  just keep going. 

 Because the Canadians were  amassing some people down there  in the Gulf.  And so, my first assignment was  a war correspondent, which was  covering Canadian ships, the Air  Force, and so on.  And so that was my first  entrance into what I thought was  going to be writing about funny  little English people and the  English countryside.  After that, wouldn't you know  it, I'm really a hex, and maybe  this is a bad omen for the  United States.  Everything started falling apart  all across Europe, wherever I  went.  So Yugoslavia started falling  apart.  I was in Croatia.  I spent a lot of time in  Sarajevo with the Bosnian  problem, because the Canadians  were opening up the airport and  playing a central role there.  And so on and so forth.  And I just kept up, about 80% of  my time ended up to be  conflicts, Northern Ireland, and  so on and so forth. 

 And then they said, well, what  are you going to do when you  come back to Canada.  Why don't you be the bureau  chief in Vancouver for the Wire  Service for all of British  Columbia?  I said no, I want to be a  reporter.  They said here's what you'd get  paid.  Here's the increase in your  salary.  And, have you ever been to  Vancouver?  I said, no.  They said, ask your wife just  how nice it is.  So I went there.  And while I was there, I was  hired to a brand new program,  School of Journalism at UBC,  University of British Columbia.  I was the first hire.  And with me and the director,  the director hired me, and the  two of us built a School of  Journalism from scratch, which  was fun to do. 

 It gave us a free hand to do it.  And then I picked up on ethics  as something that bothered me,  something that I thought needed  to be taught much better, and  talked about in much more ways.  Because in my own reporting, I,  myself had struggled with a lot  of ethical issues.  And so, it fit with my  philosophy very much so,  my philosophical background.  And I started doing it.  And wouldn't you know, by  serendipity, this became the  hottest topic in town, in the  field.  Everybody wanted to talk ethics,  and has wanted to talk ethics  for the past ten years.  I'm not sure it's getting us  anywhere, but at least people do  want to debate it, and so on.  And so what happened was, ethics  became my research area.  I published books, have  published books, and so on and  so forth. 

 And I ended up sitting there, as  director of this school, when I  got an offer from UW, saying  they had a chair in ethics, and  would you throw your hat into  the ring.  I hate that phrase, but yes, I  did throw my hat into the ring.  And they did a job interview,  and the wonderful director said  you've got the job.  My wife said, we're going to  America?  I thought this was just like  you're trying this out just for  fun.  Okay, all right.  And so I actually brought her  down here to see Madison,  because she wasn't sure if she  wanted to live here.  She didn't know what this place  was like.  But she loved it.  Everybody loved it.  So I ended up here. 

 So my job is, yes, I'm a  professor of Journalism Ethics,  a fancy title.  I'm the Chair of Ethics here.  And they want to start teaching  ethics much more seriously in  the School of Journalism, and  across the curriculum.  But they also want me, in  addition to research, writing  and publishing, that whole  thing, they want me to start a  Center for Journalism Ethics.  And again, I'm really blessed.  They said, you know, you're the  expert, what do you think a  Center should be like.  And so, I've had this freedom  over the past couple of months.  I've been here three now.  I started thinking about how we  could make a difference with a  Center.  So that's where I come from. 

 That's where I am now.  And today's topic, I picked out  because, you know, a couple  months ago.  And I thought it might stimulate  you, because I'll get to it a  little bit later, but the topic  basically is where journalism  ethics has to go in the future  to be relevant today, a more  global type of ethics.  Before I get to that, let me  figure out who the heck are you  guys, anyways.  Are you all from Wisconsin?  Anybody not from Wisconsin here?  Where are you from, sir?  Chicago, of course.  (inaudible)  Ah, ha!  (inaudible)  Ah, excellent.  Back here?  All right.  Anyone else?  (inaudible)  How many people here have ever  had anything you might want to  call journalism experience?  Wow, okay.  Is anybody a journalist right  now?  A couple, okay, that's great.  That should make it interesting. 

 So I've got a sort of grasp on  you guys, a little bit anyway.  I want to ask you, first of all,  where you get your news.  The Pew Center divided it.  They did a study of how people  get their news.  They've come up with four types  of categories.  Let me first ask, where do you,  put your hands up, those who get  most of your news from  newspapers.  I know, most of it.  Wow, that's quite a few.  This is really interesting,  because as I go from group to  group, it changes.  It depends on the age group,  obviously. 

 Okay, radio and broadcast?  Radio and TV?  I'm trying to put broadcast in  one category.  You're all saying it's not fine  grained enough, it should be  radio or TV.  Also, let me talk about  Internet.  Who really relies on Internet?  Less so, okay.  Now, these four categories, the  traditionalists has a quick  description.  They're usually older people.  I'm not sure what that means.  It includes me, I guess.  And they like having visuals.  And they like TV. 

 So you can ask yourself whether  you're in that category, a  traditionalist.  Integrators.  You're better educated.  You're more affluent.  And you like to supplement your  TV with the Web, so integrators.  Net-newsers.  Well, you can guess from the  name.  Well-educated, affluent and  young, and gets most of it  online.  And the disengaged.  They're just not interested in  watching the news anyway. 

 So I'm not sure it's anybody  here.  So, these are the movements that  are going on in journalism.  I'd like you to do a little  psychological test for me right  now, okay.  I'm not going to ask you to  close your eyes and think of  something.  But I will ask you, give me the  first word that comes to your  head when I say journalist.  Yes, ma'am.  What else?  What came into your head?  >> On-the-spot reports.  >> What else?  (inaudible)  Sorry?  Camera.  Not objective, okay.  We can go there. 

 Yes?  Opinionated, yes, like me.  What else?  Anything else?  Yes, sir?  (inaudible)  Isn't this funny.  Not objective.  Ideologue.  What did you say sir?  Opinionated.  That's precisely some of the  things that are going on in  journalism today.  All right.  So, the point is that our image  often isn't that positive.  I take -- as sort of a positive  image for you.  And in fact, if you look at the  history of movies, journalism as  portrayed in Hollywood movies,  you actually see it moving from  the hero, the Bohemian, the  individualist versus government,  to the insider, say where the  journalist is trying to fight  back against corporate  pressures, and so on. 

 You do see a declining public  trust in the media.  That's been documented in a lot  of studies.  Let me just say, before I launch  into my global ethics, what I  mean by the term journalism  ethics.  And of course, you can take out  any textbook on this and get it.  But there's the boring  definition, which is basically  right out of the dictionary.  It's correct conduct, you know,  according to a set of rules  of a certain group.  But simply, you can find that  definition for ethics in general  anywhere.  I would add just a bit more to  that, saying it's responsible  practice in journalism and news  media by individual reporters  and news organizations.  So you have two levels, as it  were, the individual journalists  themselves, but also the news  organizations themselves.  And the ethical question  is this. 

 How should journalism fulfill  its role of informing citizens  on essential issues?  My view is that we all are wary  or critical of journalism that  it is so important that it gets  constitutional protection, that  in fact, it should be the sort  of lifeblood of a democracy.  And often, over the centuries of  its development, it has failed  that job.  And perhaps you think it's  failing right now, today.  But ethics has to do with  questioning what values actually  promote our democratic role,  what sort of principles we  should follow to fulfill our  civic duty.  That's not to be confused with  economic reasons to do  journalism or all the other  factors that come into play.  But ideally, that's what  journalism ethics is looking at.  The next question, as you know,  is whether journalism ethics is  something that only journalists  care about, or should care  about.  And I think that we're way  beyond that.  It has been a sort of in-house  professional topic for  conferences and workshops among  journalists.  Or inside the newsroom, editors  would sort of argue and debate a  point over a story. 

 Now, everyone is potentially a  public communicator.  I wouldn't say a journalist, but  a public communicator, with a  laptop and a modem.  You are the media now, whether  you are the journalist is  another matter.  There are citizen journalists,  or people who call them that.  So, we have to start thinking  about, you know, not just what  do we journalists want to do so  we gain your favor, or we meet  your expectations as a public.  Because you, too, are out there  doing journalism also.  And I think you know, that  causes huge problems, because  now newsrooms want to know, what  are the standards and protocols  for dealing with material that  citizens send us via all sorts  of email, all sorts of alleged  truths or stories.  And we need to talk about that.  That is one of the areas where  the public, I think, has to be  brought into this whole ethical  process.  Why in ethics?  Why am I asking that?  Well, because I was at a free  press offensive speech  conference in Halifax, Nova  Scotia, a week ago. 

 For about three-quarters of the  meeting, everybody defended the  right of journalists to offend  others, to shout from the  rooftops, or across the  Internet, anything they wanted.  And the implication was that  ethics is either dead, or it's  not relevant, to the point where  I have to remind people why I  think journalists, freedom is  not enough.  It's a very important value,  free speech.  Oh, why I think there is  something called a journalism  ethics.  First of all, the social role.  Historically, journalists have  been given freedom,  constitutional protections, on  the assumption that hopefully,  they'll provide you with some  essential information for making  decisions, politically and  otherwise.  Also, the second reason would be  that if you've got a lot of  public impact, so with it comes  responsibilities.  Just like any other institution,  any other group, if you're  having influence on the public  sphere, then you can't just say  I don't have an ethics.  If it holds for other groups out  there, and we journalists are  really fond of holding other  people accountable.  We have to hold ourselves  accountable. 

 Let me show you, journalists can  do great substantial good,  do public good,  or great substantial harm.  Let me start with the negative.  We can destroy reputations.  We can deal in malicious rumors.  We can demonize minorities.  We can plagiarize and fabricate  stories.  And some do.  We can doctor images.  We can intrude on private lives  unnecessarily.  We can add to the trauma of  vulnerable people. 

 We can manipulate elections,  sometimes.  Spark racial tensions.  Accept kickbacks for doing or  not doing stories, which happens  quite frequently.  They can sensationalize and  misrepresent issues.  Do I need to go on?  In times of tension, they can  support the removal of civil  rights, support unjust wars, act  as a megaphone for demagogues.  And freedom to publish is a very  necessary, but not a sufficient  condition for democratic media  in my view.  The public good that it can do,  and this is the positive side  that often ethics is taken to be  a sort of wagging your finger at  people and saying don't do this,  don't do that.  But the positive side might be,  are we actually contributing to  democracy, that ethics is not  just about restraints and what  you shouldn't do.  It's also about what you should  do.  I think we have an ethical duty  to do certain things,  positively, such as act  independently, report without  fear or favor. 

 All these sorts of ideas that  we're actually not only supposed  to not do stuff.  If we're not doing certain  things positively, we're not  doing the sort of journalism  that we should be doing.  And so, ethics encourages  journalism and journalists to do  this.  So my argument at this  conference was that just because  you're journalists, you don't  get ethical immunity.  You don't get a get-out-of-jail  card just because you're a  journalist.  And that we need to talk about  what our ethics should be, even  though it's pretty complicated  these days.  What does journalism ethics  actually look like?  What I mean by that is there  are, the last time I counted or  tried to count, about 450 codes  of journalism ethics in the  world, local, regional,  national, international.  Belonging to journalism  associations, belonging to  actual news organizations,  belonging to whatever out there.  And so there are many, many  models of what it would look  like.  The one thing that is common,  say, to North America, between  the Canada and America is that  your code of ethics, if they  exist, and lots of news  organizations don't have them. 

 If you have a code of ethics,  they tend to be, and I've  written a couple, so I can tell  you I have the experience of  writing them.  The actual preamble usually  talks about what I've just been  saying.  You know, we have a duty for  freedom, equality, justice,  democracy, in very high  language, which is appropriate  for a preamble in such a  document.  And then you get, for example,  with the Society for  Professional Journalists,  different types of principles,  and under which, certain rules  follow, more specific rules.  For example, the SPJ's code  talks about seek truth and  report it.  Then they try to say what that  means in terms of verifying your  stories and making sure they're  accurate, and so on and so  forth.  And then the second principle  is, act independently, which is  a huge problem today, how  journalists can actually be  independent.  And that includes not, you know,  taking bribes, not putting  yourself in a conflict of  interest, and so on and so  forth.  Then, you get principles that  say, well, how are you going to  use that freedom and  independence.  How are you going to use that?  One of them that's common and  often used is something called  minimizing harm. 

 And this is where in certain  circumstances, we try to do it  where we can limit the amount of  damage that reporting does, we  will do it.  Which, for example, if we were  to report something that we  thought, in a hostage taking  situation, might trigger the  hostage taker to kill the  person, we might want to think  about minimize harm.  There's lots of situations where  we want to, for example, the  children, or vulnerable people,  try to protect the way we deal  with them, and deal with them in  a more compassionate,  sympathetic manner.  Doesn't mean we don't do the  news.  It means the manner in which we  do the story, you want to think  about how you could show some  respect for these people.  And the fourth type of principle  in the SPJ code  is accountability.  Be accountable.  This is a really, really fraught  idea.  Because although it sounds like  everyone should be accountable  if you're in the public service,  as it were.  How you are accountable. 

 How a free press can be held  accountable is a really  difficult idea.  In Canada, and the United  States, also, we've got things  like press councils, where you  can go and complain about a  story, get, hopefully, some  retraction or a published  article saying the story was  wrong, or whatever.  We have some, I think we've got  three ombudsmen, like readers'  representatives in the news  organizations, where you can  complain to and seek re-address.  The CBC public broadcaster has  two.  One for English and one for  French.  There's one at the Toronto  Star.  I'm not sure any more exist  after that.  They were clipped in the '80s.  We had more.  They were clipped in the '80s  and '90s due to cutbacks. 

 And so those are the seminal  ways that in fact, you might  want to say, well, we've  replied.  There's other ways you can  actually do that.  I won't go on too long about  this.  So that's what, formally, when  you look at the principles on  paper, these are the sort of  things that journalism ethics  is.  Although, I don't think  journalism ethics is about those  rules.  I think it's much more dynamic.  I think ethics is something you  do.  It's something, the activity,  the dynamic activity of trying  to figure out how to apply those  rules in really, really  difficult complex situations.  And that requires more than  simply knowing, act  independently.  Because everyone will say, okay,  smarty pants, what does act  independently mean in this  situation. 

 And so what we want to do in our  classes, and all that, in  ethics, we go through real life,  real world scenarios, with real  journalists.  We try to get the students to  think about their ethical  framework that they believe in,  and what would they do in that  circumstance.  We try to improve their  reasoning and ethical reasoning  ability in that circumstance.  It's not me saying, memorize  these rules and go out into the  world and be ethical.  It is saying, keep in mind your  goals.  Keep in mind your principles.  But have the practical wisdom to  try to figure out how to apply  these.  And I'm going to talk about  that.  That's the sort of thing that  comes under this.  That's how we teach it also. 

 I tend to teach, I don't lecture  very much.  It's more case-based,  problem-based.  I really get the students  involved.  They have to write their own  reports, group reports and  circumstances.  Often, we'll just take  situations that are happening  immediately, right today, and we  discuss and analyze them.  So that's what I mean by this  very amorphous thing called  journalism ethics, which goes  over a lot of different things.  The current context, I simply  want to say is that you can  trace the history of journalism  ethics back to the 17th century,  believe it or not, with these  little news blips, the very  first sort of running off the  new press, Gutenberg's Press.  And even in England in the 17th  century, where they first  started to develop a weekly news  press, editors would say,  we print the truth.  We are impartial.  And we try to screen our biases  in our reports. 

 Even though this was one of the  most partisan, most partial  periods with wars and religious  wars raging everywhere.  This language was used.  I call this the invention of  journalism ethics.  As journalists start to use the  vocabulary, whether we're  sincere or not, whether it's  unrealistic or not, we start to  use these words.  We take them back, we take those  concepts from the surrounding  culture.  What was part of it?  We took it from science.  And law concepts.  Like what, you say.  Matter of fact.  Matter of fact is first, a legal  notion, coming up in the 14th or  15th century. 

 English judges started to tell  juries that you had to look at  the problem as a matter of fact,  impartially.  So that concept was out there.  And emerging early science was  talking about facts and  impartiality.  And journalists sort of latched  onto this, and said, well, our  reports are also about facts,  and ever has been the case, has  it not.  So these are some of the stages  of ethics that we've  gone through.  We've had liberal theories.  We've gone through social  democracy theories.  I'm not going to go into them  all.  I'm just going to say we now  have come up to the age of mixed  media.  By that, I mean not only that  you, yourself, are getting news  through a mix of media, a real  mix, Internet, whatever, TV,  anything you can possibly  imagine is out there right now. 

 Also, journalists are being  asked to write across what we  call platforms, right?  All different types of media  formats.  In our school of journalism  ethics, in Vancouver, from day  one, the students write for all  formats.  They learn to blog.  They learn to write for the  Internet.  They learn to do video.  They learn to do TV.  They learn to do print.  We don't stream them into print  or Internet right from the  beginning and say, well, you're  just print, you don't have to  learn all this over here.  It's a model.  It's an interesting model. 

 And one of the driving forces is  that if you want to get a job,  you better be able to do all  these different types of things.  Also, the problem with mixed  media is that it really asks  whether our traditional media,  the sort of code of ethics I  mean, that I just talked about,  which was constructed for a very  traditional media, newspapers,  at the turn of the 20th century,  is actually adequate for this.  What we have in the media  culture influences what people  think about journalism.  So what are some of the values  I hear from say, my younger  students, or younger people?  To hell with objectivity.  It's impossible.  It's a myth.  Just be transparent about your  biases.  Just start your article off  by saying, "I'm biased  and here it is."  Just be transparent.  Verification?  No, just get it out there.  And warn the people,  "I'm not sure this is true."  (laughter)  No, put it out there,  caveat emptor. 

 Reader beware, you know?  I'm using extreme cases,  but there's a sense that speed,  transparency, and opinion  are just facts of life in  journalism.  And the old style, which meant  check your story before you  actually print, the sort of  pre-publication verification and  worrying about a variety of  other concerns is actually less  important.  I wouldn't say--  They don't think it's  unimportant.  It's less important.  This is not the students at our  school.  I'm not trying to characterize  all of them.  But there is a fair amount who  take this perspective.  For example, this puts  traditional media in quite  a bind.  About two months ago,  a few or four months ago--  I was there, so it was longer  than that.  Six months ago, we heard that  there was a lockdown in the  biology building because a guy  was rumored to have a gun and  going around the building. 

 Hello, right.  Okay, that'll get your  adrenaline going, sitting there.  What happened was the CBC was in  downtown Vancouver, a long ways  away, a hell of a long ways from  the BBC.  They were getting emails from  people, purporting to be inside  the building, saying we're in a  lockdown situation.  But they couldn't find, and you  never will find in journalism,  an official to verify anything  on time.  You know, the cops couldn't be  reached for official comment.  I guess they were busy with the  situation.  I'm not trying to be hard on  them.  But it always happens this way.  And so the CBC editor was in my  class telling us about this. 

 The top of the hour is coming  up.  Big newscast.  Citizen blogs and citizen  journalism Web sites are  starting to have that on their  Web sites.  What do we do?  Our traditional values, our  traditional standards say no  way.  We have to get an official  confirmation.  And our reporters are not there  yet to visually verify.  Do we go or not?  They decided not to go.  And so, in this age of speed,  they looked pretty  old fashioned.  Actually, I'm not being  critical.  So now, they're in that  newsroom. 

 They're starting to sit down and  try to figure out, where  everything is so fast, and  breathless, how do we maintain  the sort of values that the CBC  stands for, which is verified  information.  And so, that's just an idea of  how there's a tension.  Right now, there's no consensus  in my view of what journalism  ethics should be.  It's a real period of complete  and utter disagreement.  I'm not particularly worried  about that.  I guess I actually like the  disagreement and the challenge.  But it's not easy for people  in newsrooms trying to sort this  out.  The other thing I want to talk  about is, of course, global  media, and how that changes how  we look at journalism ethics.  I've got my phone rather than  the remote here.  (laughter)  I'm losing it!  So what is this thing called  media ethics beyond borders?  Right now, it's a concept and  idea I'm working on with a  handful of other scholars who  are trying to figure out what  this might be. 

 Why we're interested in it is  interesting.  But in my view, there is no  global journalism ethics.  There is no adequate code out  there that would specify what  journalists should do with  respect, not only to their own  citizens in their own country,  but whether in fact, they have a  responsibility to citizens  outside their own country when  they consider doing stories.  This is a particularly difficult  area, because right now, we're  faced with so many conflicting  things.  Let me first of all just say why  I think this might be something  we might want to consider, at  least theoretically.  The big idea is the history of  journalism ethics can be  characterized as parochial.  Parochial, I mean coming from  within the parish.  That most codes of ethics in  journalism have been developed  for a particular news  organization in a particular  town.  And in most cases, at most, a  nation, a code of ethics for  media, for say, all broadcasters  in the United States, or even  all media in the United States,  maybe the Society of  Professional Journalists would  be an example of that.  So, I mean by parochial that  when you read the codes, it  doesn't say a lot about what  happens, does ethics just stop  at the border?  Does your responsibilities as a  journalist, and the impact of  your stories, you just consider  the impact on your own country,  and to hell, you know, the rest  is not as important, or not  important at all. 

 Is it, or is it not?  Or do we have to start  considering what goes beyond  that?  Well, consider if, in fact, if  you can write one story for one  Danish newspaper, you're getting  my example?  In 2005, was it?  Danish cartoon of Muhammad.  And violence will ripple around  the world from it.  Media ethics across borders  means if we have influence  across borders like that, what  do you do about it?  In this particular case of the  Danish cartoons, you can say,  well, it's not the journalist's  fault.  You know, they shouldn't have  reacted violently.  How can you control people like  that.  But I use this simply as an  example.  Now that we have global reach as  journalists, and can influence  foreign policy to how wars, and  how long wars are fought, and so  on and so forth, maybe what we  have to start thinking about is  what's our priority when you  cover international affairs.  The reason I'm into this, and  why it's interesting, is because  I experienced this, personally,  as a journalist.  Many times when I'm asked, as a  foreign reporter, to cover  Bosnia, to cover events like  that, what it meant was, I could  be objective to Canadian  standards, but to the hell with  the rest, it didn't really  matter.  More importantly, I'm supposed  to be patriotic and uncritical  of what the Canadians were  doing. 

 And I'll tell you who was saying  these things to me.  And I was supposed to look at it  from only a Canadian interest  point of view.  Or, there was resistance to why  don't we open this up and look  at the other side.  Let's look at this much more  broadly, as a global problem,  where the Canadian view may not  be the only problem.  Sometimes it will even denigrate  when you're a foreign reporter,  to people asking you to simply  write fluffy pieces about  Canadian soldiers watching  hockey on Saturday night,  through the marvels of satellite  TV.  That's fine.  I mean, I don't mind writing a  good feature like that.  It's fun to write.  But when I wrote stories that  quoted Canadian soldiers who  said they didn't know why they  were in this war, they were  badly equipped, they had ships  and armor--  I had better flak jackets, and  stuff, than they did.  They were roaming around the  gulf in ships built for the  northeast cold climates, which  as a reporter already pointed  out, I also reported the good  stuff, too. 

 I was persona non grata.  No one would talk to me for  days.  At the Canadian capital.  They got over it.  Eventually, they see that you  were fair.  And the next day, you write  something positive, I guess, in  that sense, and you get over it.  So it started to bother me.  What the hell am I doing here?  Right?  Is my ethics Canadian?  Is my journalism ethics  significantly Canadian?  Is it?  What happens, in fact, and I'll  use Canada, so I don't have to  get into the American.  I've only been here three or  four months.  I mean, what happens in fact, if  Canada starts engaging in  economic policies or supporting  companies in a very poor African  country, and you know, I want to  report on this. 

 It would seem that, you know, it  might be the unpatriotic thing  to report on it, but I think  that's my duty.  Because I have sort of a more  global set of principles.  And that is, I start globally,  my fundamental principles are  universal human rights, and the  right of the attempt to promote  a human community around the  world that is more just and  equitable.  I started very broad, very  idealistic principles.  Often, my national patriotism  for my country, or this new  country I've adopted, doesn't  impact, there's no conflict.  But where they do conflict, I'm  going to opt for the more  universal principles.  I don't know if you follow me.  But it's a matter of what  principles I give the highest  priority.  So I'm global in that sense,  that I give highest priority to  these global issues.  I think there's many reasons, I  guess, I could try and persuade  you why I think this is  important. 

 It's simply a matter of us as  journalists expanding our  consciousness, our awareness of  the world, and expanding our  ethics so we actually don't  forget that there are other  points of view out there.  And we need to try and report on  them, not only because of those  people, because you people as a  public need to hear about it.  So I think it's also important  that I include in this sort of  global effort, the attempt to  educate journalists in a way  that is sympathetic, not  sympathetic, knowledgeable of  other cultures, without simply  saying, you now, political  correctness, or they're right,  or I'm not going to criticize  them.  In Vancouver, we have a  microcosm of this.  We have students who know  nothing about the Aboriginals,  or the Aboriginal culture.  And they're not Aboriginal.  They feel very difficult  reporting on another culture  like this.  They know so little about them.  As a result, many of the  reports are very bad.  It's not that they're vicious,  they're just incorrect or  incomplete. 

 The same way in Vancouver,  we have, I remember we had  a dispute at a Sikh Temple.  And they were arguing over what  seemed to, a white middle-aged  person like me, it didn't make  sense.  Should they have tables in the  temple, and chairs, or not.  And there was violence over  this.  And what I didn't understand,  and we had to educate ourselves,  is why would that be a possible  dividing line between  traditionalists and what they  considered progressives.  And it is a very touchy subject.  Now, to explain that to the  public in a way that doesn't  make this dispute ridiculous  is a real challenge.  You have to know stuff about the  world.  The same thing with respect to  other cultures or other lands.  I hasten to say there are a  range of forces against what I'm  talking about. 

 Foreign journalism tends to be,  can be more and more, simply  parachuting people into  countries.  And we get the foreign  journalism we deserve.  But there are counterbalancing  forces.  So I'm not going to go into all  the reasons why I want to talk  about a global ethics.  I think, because it doesn't  exist yet, I don't want to make  it too idealistic.  In terms of concepts, yeah, I  don't mind thinking about this.  I'm paid to sort of think about  ideas, and sort of extend the  envelope, where is ethics going,  and so on and so forth.  But all I would say right now,  is what I would like to do,  especially journalists, is we  have to start thinking about  these broader issues of the  world.  That means a lot of our current  concepts might have to be under  question and modified in some  way.  That's what I mean by that. 

 Let me see if there's anything  left.  These are some of the reasons  why I do this.  If I just might add one more  point, a Canadian, Marshall  McLuhan is responsible for  saying, he's well known for  saying we live in a global  village.  And as much as I admire him, I  hate that phrase.  Because what I want to say is we  don't live in a cozy.  It's not cozy.  It may be a village  electronically, but it sure as  hell ain't cozy, where you know,  everybody knows each other in  villages.  In fact, I don't like villages  anymore, because it's not that  cozy.  (laughter)  If you really know.  My view is that what's happening  is we have a media bringing the  entire world together, people  with different views, different  traditions, different religions,  different ethnic groups. 

 And maybe a better role for  journalists to play, one role we  can play globally, is the  translator of these cultures, a  bridge of understanding between  different cultures, not just a  spark, trying to spark  misunderstanding, which I've  known some journalists to do.  So all of these things are in  flux right now.  All of these things are trying  to figure out on the global  scale what that would mean.  And on the Internet side, the  new media side, where ethics is  going.  I'm going to stop just about  here, because I think I've  funneled more than enough to  spark, hopefully a good  discussion.  So there we go.  Questions, comments.  Yes, sir?  >> What magazines and newspapers  do you think, I'm not sure of  the language, your idea of  global ethics--?  (inaudible)  >> If I had to, although I  disagree with their editorial  policy, I enjoy the Economist.  And the reason I do is that I  sometimes disagree with their  editorial line.  It's a little right of center  for me, but that's okay. 

 But I do think they do a pretty  good job every week of sort of  wrapping up what's going on  around the world.  There are some good newspapers  that do a good job.  I think the Guardian in the UK,  and the New York Times are still  pretty good newspapers.  Despite some problems.  Yeah, it's going online, right?  But that doesn't mean it's not a  good paper.  (inaudible)  There are a lot of global,  online areas you can go to, but  you wouldn't know what they are,  so I'm not going to mention  them.  But among the mainstream, you  have to also look at  broadcasters.  I think public broadcasters in  Canada, like the CBC, do a  pretty good job of bringing the  world to Canadians.  Although they've been cut back  at every stage.  I think CTV and CanWest, the  other two private companies do a  horrible job of doing that, and  so on. 

 So I'll just throw those out.  Maybe you've got some better  suggestions than I have.  (inaudible)  It does and it doesn't.  What happened is that we've had  breakdowns, obviously, in the  editorial control process.  And people have violated those  rules.  But to their credit, the Times  set up big committees, big  investigations, and have tried  to sort some of those problems  out.  What I'm saying, that in fact  this should be what we strive  for doesn't mean that it's not  going to be violated at every  turn.  Every day, when I look around  the media, I can give you  examples of people who are  violating the sort of things  that I believe in.  It doesn't mean that that  newspaper is all wrong all the  time.  But I think, for example--  Let me give you an example of  how this plays itself out in the  New York Times. 

 It was a year and a half ago,  they set up a special eight- or  nine-editor committee to figure  out the difference between news  and opinion.  That's how, they want the  readers to be clear, when they  read something, they understood  what side of the line it was on.  And if you read their report, my  report is that boy, it really  struggles to make that  distinction.  But I think that's another  point.  Yes, sir?  (inaudible)  >> ...It's very easy  to pick on the media.  There are a lot of examples  in media, particularly now,  where there's a lack of  reference or accuracy,  and authenticity, particularly  in the blogs on the Internet.  But you know, I think it's  overdone.  Most of the reporters I've  ever known tried very hard,  worked late at night,  to get the story right.  >> Good point.  >> I found myself wondering, and  I don't know if you can clarify  this. 

 Is the United States the only  country where print media,  newspaper, the print media,  simply don't seem to be able to,  are having a hard time standing  on their own anymore?  >> Oh, God, no.  >> Is it happening elsewhere in  the world, and why is that?  >> Yeah, well, there's a number  of reasons.  Yes, the economic downturn  right now, of course,  that's hurting them.  But this was happening.  (inaudible)  Yes, absolutely.  What's going on is basically,  there's so many more people who  are providing information and  news, that's one of the reasons  that will affect your  readership.  You're battling now, for very  small segments of a once large  market.  Secondly, lots of readers,  especially young, are going off  to the Internet.  If you're talking about  newspapers, which are  particularly.  They're going off to the  Internet. 

 And the hope was they'd come  back to the newspaper when they  actually grew up and got  mortgages.  But no, they're not.  (laughter)  The economics also, is that  newspapers are inordinately  expensive.  I love newspapers.  But what, it's 65-cents out of a  dollar goes to just producing  the damn paper, and getting it  trucked around.  So that model in economic hard  times is going like this.  Secondly, we had journalism,  major news organizations,  overtaken, over the past ten  years, taken over by people who  are business people.  And they want to see results.  They want to see profits.  And more and more. 

 And shareholders expect  quarterly reports with more  profits.  There's huge economic pressure  to slash and burn.  CanWest, which is the biggest  news organization in Canada,  private, just cut 650 people.  I don't know the numbers, 5,000  to 6,000 journalists have been  laid off in America in the past  few months alone.  So there's a very gloomy feeling  out there.  I mean, from the past year, as  director of the School of  Journalism, I had really great  journalists calling me saying,  can I come and teach for you.  I've got to get out of this  business.  I hate it, and I'm going to get  fired or let go anyway.  I felt so sorry.  So the traditional side, it's a  bit of a mess. 

 It doesn't mean newspapers are  going to disappear.  But we are going to  retrench.  Sir, yes?  >> One of the major problems  that happened a few years ago,  and they looked at the newspaper  business.  They made reasonable profits.  They also sorted out, and lo and  behold, we can cut staff, we can  turn that 15% profit into 25%  profit.  And these are people who didn't  read the newspaper.  They were spread out across the  world and just looking for a  profit.  My question to you is, should  not newspapers, if you had the  power to do so, go back to  family ownership, and perhaps  non-profit ownership?  With a profit of 4% is perfectly  reasonable.  The grocery store has a 2%  profit.  >> That's true. 

 >> You can pay all your bills.  You can pay your high-paid  executives and still come out  with money.  >> I agree with that.  I don't think we're going to go  back to that family ownership,  for newspapers anyway.  But I do think that one of the  ways, one of the things you can  do is find alternate economic  models for doing journalism.  And there are some out there.  One, if you go to one online  site, propublica.org, it's set  up of investigative journalists,  a team in New York doing  investigative journalism,  sponsored by a foundation, not  by, you know, a newspaper or a  news organization.  That's one model.  But we're not going to have  100,000 foundations come forward  to do that.  But we could have a fair amount. 

 People are still struggling over  what we're going to do online.  In fact, how do we make money  online?  For example, Vancouver Sun, just  to give you an example.  People would say, online we're  making money, we're making more  and more money.  Yeah, but it's not covering what  you're losing elsewhere, in the  print section.  I used to live in Vancouver, a  very desirable part of  Vancouver.  And I used to open up the  Vancouver Sun classifieds, and  there's be lines, and lines, and  lines of people selling their  homes in this area.  And now it's this.  Craigslist and online services  for real estate property have  eliminated thousands of dollars.  And guess what?  It ain't coming back.  So the Sun is trying to figure  out, how do we do this online?  Excuse me?  You had ten years to figure this  out. 

 This thing was coming.  The train was coming right down  the track.  And you didn't see it?  Well, they saw it, but it's like  a big ship in the St.  Lawrence River, it's like how do  you get the damned thing turned  around.  It's almost like saying, how do  you turn around a journalism  school, right?  Let's say you've got a bunch of  faculty who want to teach.  I'm going to riff now.  You want to turn journalism  around to the new age, right?  Guess what?  All your faculty are from the  old age.  How are you going to get that  sucker turned around, eh?  You can do it, but it's  difficult.  The same thing with newspapers.  The problem with the journalism  culture, sometimes, speaking as  a journalist, is that we're our  own worst enemies. 

 And lots of my friends fought  online media like crazy.  They weren't journalists.  I ain't doing it.  I ain't going there.  Well, see you later, you're  unemployed.  I'm being provocative.  I'm simplifying.  But I'm trying to provoke you.  Yes?  >> On the global theme, I wonder  if you have any fear that at  some point, you're going to find  that there are incommensurate  fields of value when you try to  look at a global perspective.  That at the end of the day,  there will be different  understandings of what  constitutes right and good. 

 And in a global environment,  it's going to make it very  difficult.  >> Yeah, there already are,  you're right.  There are already sort of  different models of journalism  around the world.  The variety is there.  And I would be happy, if in fact  we just got the codes of ethics  and the ethical debate to move  in a more global direction.  And I don't expect everybody to  agree.  I don't ever expect, maybe to  answer your question, some day  down the road that all  journalists are going to stand  up and say we all agree on these  universal principles of  journalism.  Because even if I were to pick  you a possible candidate, like  free speech, you know, there are  many countries in the world  where that value in journalism  is not held as highly as here or  in Canada.  Let me talk about social  responsibility.  Everybody wants to talk about  social responsibility of the  corporations and news media. 

 That term means completely,  well, almost completely  something different in China.  It means something different in  India, or wherever.  So there are cultural  differences.  All I'm saying is that we can  still talk about, I think we  need to talk about these big  principles.  But be very sensitive that they  are realized and valued in  different ways in different  cultures.  I went to South Africa.  I held two workshops in South  Africa to talk about just about  this.  What we put out in front of  everybody was, is there such a  thing as universal values in  journalism.  That will always spark a really  good debate.  We had journalists and scholars,  and ethicists from around the  world come in. 

 Basically, we started off by  saying you guys are western.  You believe in freedom and you  don't care about the community.  And I wasn't, but other people  were saying, yeah, but you're  too communitarian, you don't  care about individual freedoms.  And it was sort of unproductive  for about 20 minutes, or a half  an hour, or an hour.  Then people realized that  although we used terms in  different ways, we're all still  concerned about good journalism.  And then although we had  different sort of cultural  models of how these values work,  that in fact, we still needed to  talk about how we do this.  Why?  Well, if a journalist or a set  of journalists is prosecuted in  some tyrannical regime right  now, and as journalists, we  don't agree on general values,  what journalism is or what  general values we have at all,  how can I criticize what that  country does to their  journalists.  So there's a sort of motive to  try to be able to talk in  general terms, so that we can  come to the defense of  journalists in different  countries.  With that, I'm aware of the  complexities you raise.  It's a tough one. 

 Yes?  >> I listened to NPR yesterday,  I'm not sure of the program  or host, but he was talking very  similar to what you're saying,  referring to the politics, and  that people will no longer,  especially young people, they're  moving away from identifying  themselves in the classic ways,  conservative, etc.  There are certain issues, just  as you're saying, that each  country believes strongly, and  this is the direction they seem  to be going in.  >> My students will say to me,  "I don't like politics."  It might different now that  Obama has come on the scene.  But pre-Obama, they would say to  me, if I mention politics, their  eyes glaze over.  If I mention, what are we going  to do about the environment,  they're on it.  They're on to specific issues,  and the politics of it, too.  But they associate the word  politics with old-fashioned,  traditional party politics, you  know, my party, right or wrong,  or whatever.  And that just bores them into  tears.  Many of the politicians don't  really speak to that.  No one really speaks to them. 

 >> Old-style politicians.  What is the direction it's  moving in?  The issues that belong to  everyone, rather than dividing  them up into sort of groups.  >> I've seen, for example,  do you know that Alberta has a  huge project, it's called Tar  Sands, up in northern Alberta,  which has the potential  to take all our progress  on the Canadian, on Kyoto,  although we disagree with Kyoto  now because of our wonderful  Prime Minister,  and to really very heavily, and  environmentally friendly, if I  can put it that way.  And I've seen lots of national  newspapers and national reports  that take the attitude that  this is in Canada's interest  that we develop these things.  There will be benefits for  Alberta, and certainly for the  economy across Canada.  And my view is you've got to  take a more global view of this  thing.  Who's going to get all this  pollution?  Some other countries.  We don't care?  Ethics stops at the borders?  No.  And so my view is that at least  journalistically, we need to  raise Canada's responsibility in  this, with respect to the rest  of the world.  And you know, I'm arguing a  minimalist position here. 

 I could be much stronger and say  you have to do it.  I'm trying to say, let's at  least consider it.  >> It's even in our own  interest.  Someone said we're all on a  spaceship, going through space.  >> If gas prices decline, we'll  all get our SUVs out again.  That's what I'm afraid of.  But anyway.  Go ahead.  (inaudible)  I hate it.  I'm bored with it. 

 I will not, I rarely watch it.  To watch the screaming heads on  one side and the other on TV is  like watching the screaming  heads in football.  I think it's a sports metaphor.  Somebody'd come up with this.  Yes, I know why they do it.  They figure drama and argument  will capture readers more than a  more sedate, rational account.  But I don't know.  I'd rather ask you what you feel  about that.  My view is that we've got lots  of that.  We've got so much talk. 

 We've got so much hot talk.  We've got so much opinion.  Opinion, my father used to say,  is a dime a dozen.  The only one that's really good  is what is informed opinion.  And a willingness to listen to  each other and engage in  discussion.  We have a media that believes  in, and in many ways, shouting  and not listening is what we do.  In my view, and I'm a wild-eyed  idealist, I guess.  But I would like to see us  retain at the core of our media  system, still room for  deliberation, and not shouting  at each other.  There's not a big market for  that.  So that's where the public's  responsibility come in, is  whether you guys, you guys, me  too, actually are going to  support. 

 For example, I love telling  people.  And by the way, other forms of  journalism go begging, forms of  journalism I think are way more  important than screaming at each  other on TV.  I get fun.  I enjoy hot topics every now and  then.  But what about investigative  journalism.  What about really good reporting  and good analysis, and so on.  My views, democracy really needs  a balance between all these  forms of journalism.  And when it gets kilted to one  side, you get an ideological  press and I think that's not  good for democracy.  Yes, sir?  >> Don't you feel that so many  outlets between all the Web  sites, Fox News, MSNBC, all of  them, we have more choices now  more than ever.  >> That's the battle that's  going to be fought out, as to  who survives this battle. 

 >> How can a newspaper like the  Chicago Tribune and Sun Times  survive by putting the whole  paper on the Internet, and then  putting articles from the other  paper to their own link?  >> Well, we'll see.  I think what we're going to do  is that even major papers, maybe  not the Tribune, are going to go  to publishing twice a week like  the Cap Times here, or online.  Yes?  We're running out of time,  sorry.  >> I'm wondering about your hope  for establishing a global code  of ethics.  When you consider that the  students you teach, the students  that all journalism professors  teach, are a very small part of  the total census of journalists  around the world, many of whom  are opinionated, many of whom  disregard many of the codes you  hold dear.  How do you get that global  sensitivity permeating the  entire world of journalism?  >> What keeps me from jumping  off a building every morning is  that it's not just my young  journalists.  It's young people, lots and lots  of young people have that  attitude, increasingly have that  attitude.  There's lots of agencies, groups  online, lots of people pushing  for this more global perspective  on the world.  You know, I don't know.  I can't promise this is going to  happen. 

 I'm going to do what I can do.  I can develop a conceptual  scheme where it actually makes  sense, you know, in terms of  ideas.  But in terms of practicality, I  don't know.  I mean, at some point, it may  just be that the economics of  journalism are strictly against  what I'm talking about and I  lose.  But you know, it doesn't help if  I shut up and go quietly into  the dark, so I'm going to keep  pushing for this.  I'll stop here, and then we can  talk after.  I know some of you want to go.  Thank you very much.  (applause)