Trust "is perhaps the most important asset public broadcasting carries forward into evolving public media future," writes Byron Knight.
Knight should know. He's had a long career in public broadcasting. Now, he is co-director of the Editorial Integrity for Public Media Project, a ground-breaking attempt to define public media's principles for a digital age.
Leading public broadcasters, NPR, PBS, and many stations have been drawing up a new ethics charter. At their website, www.pmintegrity.com, the project posts its draft guidelines.
Recently, my ethics center and Wisconsin Public Radio and Television co-hosted an evaluation of the draft guidelines. The project is an ambitious example of what I call "integrated ethics," the attempt to construct a new mixed media ethics.
Many other major news organizations are creating integrated ethics, from the BBC to the Canadian Association of Journalists. Within public media, there are many who believe that the future of citizen and government support rests on the successful articulation of what is distinctive and important about public media.
via www.pbs.org
Nice piece by Stephen Ward, a University of Wisconsin journalism prof who heads up an ethics institute in Madison.
I was at the evaluators roundtable in October (working as its "rapporteur"). Ward captures many of the salient elements of our dialogue there.
I like his term 'integrative ethics' because it captures the need to revise past thinking in light of new thinking. It isn't reasonable to assert past values as eternal and call it a day. Rather we need to take stock of what's primary for public media's purpose in society -- as it is today -- as it's changing.
Holding public trust is a good start.
Much more on this to come...
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