Media Innovation John Pavlik

Why do media ethics & law matter? This episode answers that question.

Hi. I'm John Pavlik. A professor of journalism & media studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. One of the courses I teach is media ethics and law. And in this episode let’s talk about why media ethics & law matter. And they do matter very much. Perhaps more than ever.

Put simply, we learn about media ethics & law to help guide us to do the right thing. Many situations we confront in journalism and media contain ethical and legal challenges, and sometimes we may not even realize it at the time. A reporter asking a question, or choosing a word or editing a video, or a media manager making a hiring decision, or casting a tv show or movie. Any of these choices or decisions may have a moral or legal dimension. Does the word choice or video edit convey the truth? Might we be committing libel? Are we building a more diverse newsroom staff? Will the casting choices help to make the show more inclusive?

And there is another way to think about media ethics & law, a more theoretical way. It’s about the pyramid of knowledge and wisdom. As journalists and media professionals we often focus much of our work on gathering the facts, the basic building blocks of information, ensuring their accuracy. Then, we sort those facts, the data, into meaningful patterns that help tell a story and build understanding. We put the facts into context and give them meaning. This is the beginning of knowledge. Finally, and this is where ethics and law are particularly salient. We turn knowledge into wisdom by adding or applying our understanding of ethics and law. Guided by ethics and law, Wisdom is the enduring insight that enables us, as journalists and media professionals or media consumers, to act in a moral manner or to make the right choices across time, and place and situation. Such wisdom is critically important in the complex and fast changing world in which we live and work as journalists and media professionals or even as consumers of news and media and in which we act as citizens.

I hope you find the exploration into the realm of media ethics and law an exciting and meaningful journey. I look forward to getting to know you and your work and learning about what you think of media ethics and law.

Thanks for listening.


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In this episode, Prof. John V. Pavlik of Rutgers University describes his vision of journalism and media disruption and the potential for innovation in the digital realm...that is, why innovation matters.

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Prof. John Pavlik of Rutgers University interviews his friends and colleagues from the Rutgers School of Communication & Information (SC&I, or Sky) about innovation in journalism and media. The first special guest: Prof. Steve Miller, Journalism and Media Studies Dept. at SC&I.  Prof. Miller is the director of the undergraduate program in JMS and an authority on broadcast journalism, sports media and much more.


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RU Prof John Pavlik’s first podcast (April 9, 2021) using the free app Anchor from Spotify. Any user, myself included, can create podcasts from their mobile device. Anchor’s features include adding layers of music and sound editing as well as the publishing of the podcast on Spotify and other platforms. With apologies to the Navy, I titled his initial episode Anchors Aweigh because I couldn’t resist the pun, after all, I’m a dad. Much of the production is done via algorithm, so the user, even without much technical skill, can create a quality podcast simply and easily. All that's really needed is a good idea and the spoken words the user populates into the podcast. There are easy-to-use editing tools that allow the user to add to an episode, incorporate background music, and schedule when an episode goes live. There is no cost to the production, but Anchor offers various means of monetization, should that be of interest, including listener donations and corporate sponsorship. There are various metrics available on the dashboard for tracking listenership and other podcast analytics.


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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prof-pavlik/message