COMM 150: Friday in class

The WikiLeaks story we've been following is turning into one of those high-tech action-adventure novels like Tom Clancy used to write, as this BBC News story doesn't quite say but certainly suggests (at least to me).

Most of the main themes we've studied this semester pop up in this story. So let's unpack some of them, relating to:

• Ethics
  
• Media and government
  
• Worldwide media
  
• Entertainment vs. news (Neil Postman)
  
• (This bullet left blank because we'll think of something else.)

At your suggestion, I want to use today's class for us to revise the final exam questions so they'll reflect all this new stuff.

Here they areL

1. A 50-point essay: An NYU professor named Neil Postman said "Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world" because the mass media blur the line between information and entertainment. How can the media balance their need to entertain viewers -- and thus make the profits they need to stay in business -- and their function as "watchdogs"/"zookeepers" in a democracy?
   
   
2. Question 2A. The same self-reflective essay you get on all my finals.
   
   
3. A 25-point essay: How do artists use the convergence of new and old media to get around the "gatekeepers" and exercise more creative control?

So let's get started.

One thing I want to focus on is this: How do WikiLeaks and the newspapers that are publishing its documents take journalistic ethics into account? In other words, how do they balance "seek the truth" and "minimize harm?" That'll do for starters.