COMM 317: Howard Kurtz on Fox News, Sarah Palin

Howard Kurtz' column in today's Washington Post has a couple of items that will be important for your papers due Nov. 30. With so much going on now that relates to the topic, by the way, you'll want to be following the news so you can keep up and sound intelligent when it comes time to write the paper.

But you want to keep up with the news, anyway, right?

Here's what Kurtz adds today:

• A fair and balanced profile of Fox News 'caster Shephard Smith, who is, well, fair and balanced. Money quote (which is actually a quote within a quote): "To Smith, the recent White House attacks on Fox as a wing of the Republican Party are off base -- and have clearly backfired. 'We're at the top of every blog and every newspaper every day," he says. "You know what that does? That raises our profile.'"
  
• A roundup of commentary on Sarah Palin's book tour, which goes back and forth on her claims she's been unfairly skewered by the mainstream media, especially the Associated Press. Also: Today's book tour story in the Anchorage Daily News is objective, and it links to a sidebar in which the AP stands behind its stories. Her initial blast, in which she said AP did partisan political "opposition research" on her, got less ink but was picked up by the liberal Huffington Post blog, which loves to hate Palin.

With so much discussion of the subject(s) of your papers, I'm going to run the questions on the assignment sheet again to help you stay focused. They read:

Here are some related questions to get you started thinking: How well do Fox specifically, and the cable networks in general, fulfil their role as an "incubator of civilization" and political discourse in a society that has a strong free-market, libertarian streak? Do they promote community? Should they be expected to? How well, specifically, do different elements of the media live up to their ethical responsibilities? How might Aristotle, Immanuel Kant or John Stuart Mill react if they could come back and watch Fox or MSNBC? What would they say to the media execs? Do the codes of ethics have any wisdom to offer - i.e. the Society of Professional Journalists' for news coverage and the Public Relations Society of America's for commentary? (Most of the on-air talent probably are not members of those societies, but they do set standards for the profession.) What do Fox, MSNBC and CNN get right ethically? Where do they fall down? How might they do better? How much do you think the networks are driven by ideology, and how much by other factors?

In writing your essay, you'd go crazy if you tried to answer all of these questions. Instead, decide which ones you want to focus on and narrow your ideas down to a clearly stated thesis you prove by citing evidence in support of it. (See? It's like I keep saying: English 101 never goes away!) Here's the central question I want you to consider, no matter how you focus your thesis: How well does the "marketplace of ideas" analogy hold up? How well do Fox and the other media live up to their responsibility to maintain a free market in ideas?

See? It gets back to this: Under the social responsiblity theory of press-government relations, the media have a responsibilty to tell the truth, get the facts out and maintain a free marketplace of ideas. How ethically do they carry out this responsbility?