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Media & Conflict Resolution:
A Report from a New Academic Frontier
By Edmund B. Lambeth
When Howard Gardner and
his colleagues interviewed geneticists and
journalists for their widely praised book,
Good Work, When Excellence and Ethics
Meet, they found distinctly disparate
professional realms. Geneticists sang
a virtual ode to the beauty of their mission,
standards, and identity. More often, journalists
bemoaned the traditional but newly bloated
profit margins of media corporations that,
in their view, kept the profession from
becoming its best democratic self.
As befits scholars of
intelligence, neither Gardner nor his colleagues
forgot the genuine triumphs of American
journalism, nor did they ignore the clouds
that could envelop genetics in a nanosecond
if it failed to successfully defend its
integrity or standards of performance. Nor
did the authors of Good Work ignore
the devastation that strikes people, nations
– and professions – by sea changes in technology,
culture or the follies of state-craft.
It is important to develop
distinctions between the news of conflict
that we ignore, soft pedal, or temporize
at our peril and the too easy habit of pandering
to the public to boost circulation or ratings.
As a current example of the former, I would
cite Eric Umansky’s “Failure of Imagination,
American Journalists and the Coverage of
American Torture” in the September/October
2006, Columbia Journalism Review.
As a case of the latter, I would cite the
timidity of the news media in failing to
document the corrosion of public entertainment
by the nightly bath of violence, sex, and
shameful exploitation of the would-be rich
and famous. Where are you now, Neil
Postman, the late author of Amusing Ourselves
to Death, now that we need a hundred
or more of you?
For 20 years, four colleagues
and I led an effort to encourage the teaching
of ethics in journalism – especially in
the form of a separate course, offered as
a means to cultivate the moral reasoning
of future reporters and editors. It
was a tiny vineyard, but we reached about
400 professors of journalism and mass communication
and increased the number of the so-called
free-standing courses in ethics by two-
or three-fold, if not more. Since the 1970s,
research surveys in the Journalism and
Mass Communication Educator – the most
recent in 2004 – have cumulatively documented
the content, practices and range of media
ethics instruction. Not surprisingly,
working editors on the firing line of media
malaise are less confident of progress in
the field than teachers are, but journalism
administrators tend, though not uniformly,
to agree that classroom instruction on media
ethics has improved significantly.
The ultimate goal is to
equip journalists to better cope with ethical
conflict within newsrooms. Another
is to foster a willingness and ability by
reporters and editors to talk about the
meaning of right and wrong as well as the
distinction between good and bad journalism
with colleagues, citizens, media critics
and, more recently, with scholars from social
sciences and the humanities. As the
circle of dialogue and debate over media
ethics has enlarged over the past 20 years,
three important things have happened. First,
media ethicists and their colleague practitioners
have begun to pay more attention to the
fundaments of professionalism. There is
more intentionality in the definition of
news and more sophistication in practices
intended to bolster credibility with the
public. Competence in such basics as interviewing,
note taking, documentation, narrative writing,
and establishing context have become the
focus of grass roots training. Cross-cultural
literacy is now a must. The dynamics of
public deliberation during the policy-making
process is not deemed a province only of
political scientists. Thinking critically
about gaps in their own knowledge of their
communities is a prerequisite for many,
if not all, editors.
Second, due to moral lapses
by business executives, clergy, journalists,
lawyers and lobbyists, conscientious journalists
have had to burnish their knowledge of the
ethical standards of other occupations.
Third, these trends have led to an awareness
by media ethicists and some editors that
they have good reason to talk with peers
in other professions. Not surprisingly,
then, amid the growing divisiveness in American
public life since the early 1980s – peaking,
perhaps, between 2004 and 2006 – the schools
of journalism and law at the University
of Missouri jointly created a new Center
for the Study of Conflict, Law and the Media
(CSCLM). Its first conference, “The Impact
of News Reporting on Democracy,” brought
together lawyers, journalists, social scientists
and other scholars with expert knowledge
of democratic journalism within other cultures.
In addition, the School of Journalism in
2005 provided an academic home for the newly
established Center for Religion, the Professions
& the Public, funded by the Pew Charitable
Trusts. Its mission, considered in somewhat
more detail below, is to foster religious
literacy in the professions as well as in
the citizens they serve – an agenda that
overlaps with its sister center housed in
the School of Law.
Leadership and Management
in Parlous Times
Because ethics and conflict
resolution are in play at the community, organizational
and institutional levels, the MU centers –
and others like them throughout the country
– have leadership and management on their
mind for their own purposes as well as a dimension
of the research, teaching and service they
are chartered to provide. The Harvard scholar
whose work in this area I much admire is John
Kotter. Using verbs, he says
leaders envision – thinking
ahead with clarity and discernment.
They, at their best, align, not
only ideas, technology, and money, but people
with talent. Thirdly, leaders
inspire. Their own energy and
commitment are contagious. Managers,
on the other hand, have a counterpart to vision;
they plan. Notice the
attention to the future. Good managers and
leaders both think ahead. Next,
managers budget, placing resources
where they will do the most good and be the
most effective – a competence akin to the
ability of leaders to align. Finally,
managers mentor, supplying the concreteness
that inspiration alone cannot supply.
Kotter is careful to emphasize
that leadership is not more important than
management, nor is it impossible for one
or more of the qualities of one to be present
in the other. Perhaps the most unifying
quality that both good leaders and managers
have in common is discernment – the ability
to understand how and why different kinds
of conflict arise in the practice of journalism.
There are conflicts of individuals with
one another, of individuals within groups,
and the dynamics of groups opposing each
other or at odds with each other within
a larger institution to which both belong.
In these and in other circumstances professional
creativity aimed at the common good can
cause tension in which, as philosopher Robert
Audi observes, truth-telling and the novelty
compete. At the extremes, these micro-conflicts
have led to the resignation or dismissal
of those who have violated clearly articulated
newsroom ethical standards.
Perhaps the discipline
of conflict resolution will become most
important to the news media if the knowledge
its researchers generate can help journalists
understand and better report the dynamics
of disputes at the individual, community,
organizational and institutional levels.
It conceivably would be easier, then, for
journalists to report how issues are resolved
– or fail to be settled. If so, there
would be less risk that reporters would
compromise their independence by seeking
to become “conflict resolvers” themselves.
Yet in another chapel of the Fourth Estate,
research might be able to equip the editorial
writers and bloggers to write more knowledgeable
interpretations and provide more solid insights
into conflicts in their own communities.
Educators in the arts
and sciences are very important in what
might, prematurely, be called the “intellectual
convergence of the professions.” Truth
to tell, the disciplines of art, philosophy,
ethics, history, literature and religious
studies in the humanities and the fields
of anthropology, political science, psychology
and sociology in the social sciences can
become a seamless part of the enterprise
sketched above if they so choose.
Whether they like it or not, the professions
will inherit either the fullness or scarcity
of the creativity and moral imagination
the humanities and social sciences bring
to the teaching, mentoring and scholarly
preparation of students who later choose
to enter architecture, business, engineering,
health professions, journalism, law, medicine,
ministry, and social work.
Is Civic/Public Journalism
Coming in from the Cold?
Academicians and professionals
of a certain age may – or may not – remember
the birth in the early 1990s of the civic/public
journalism reform movement. A virtual tsunami
of dissent struck shore as editors and reporters
of the elite press learned that Davis
Merritt, then editor of the Wichita Eagle
and Jay Rosen, a brilliant young communication
professor of New York University, gained
financial and other support for conferences,
collaboration, and a series of experiments
from the John L. and James S. Knight
Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts,
Inc. and the Kettering Foundation. Rosen
and Merrit nudged the profession to listen
more carefully to readers and reflect more
creatively on how media could better meet
community needs. As several such projects
emerged across the country, one University
of Illinois journalism professor said that
the movement was tantamount to “licking
the faces of readers.” In the sacred
halls of the University of Missouri School
of Journalism, Esther Thorson, George Kennedy,
Stacey Woelfel, I, and a legion of student
reporters and faculty editors were accurately
accused of trying to apply social science
to the practice of public affairs reporting.
Our focus was a study of
the impact of a series of explorations of
major community issues – first, the strength
and activity of neighborhood organizations;
second, the local job market and, finally,
the problems of health insurance circa 1991-92.
Three sets of in-depth news series on these
topics were prepared by three school-related
community [not campus] media – the daily
and Sunday newspaper, the Missourian;
the commercially licensed University television
station, KOMU-TV, and its public radio station,
KBIA. This was our “Community Knowledge
Project.”
Each of the three media
covered the topics independently, using
the formats and approaches customary to
their newsrooms. Using pre-tests and
before-and-after surveys, we measured the
recognition and knowledge gain and attitude
toward the coverage of their readers, viewers
and listeners, respectively, in Columbia,
Missouri. However, each medium agreed to
cross-promote the independent, week-long
coverage of the other’s work. Our
statistical analysis showed that citizens,
overall, gained more knowledge and valued
most the combination of written words and
moving pictures.
Although completed with
no outside sources, our Community Knowledge
Project had tested and demonstrated in the
field what scholars had surmised from surveys
and experiments about the strengths and
weaknesses of various media in communicating
knowledge of public affairs. It was
the best we could do until the Internet
gave us the platforms for the new convergence
journalism now emerging in the school’s
media and throughout American journalism.
Meanwhile, the Civic Journalism
Interest Group, launched within the Association
for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
in the early 1990s, is still alive and kicking,
thanks to new blood and new technology.
Having now morphed into the Civic and Citizen
Interest Group, it is deeply involved in
actually living out the meaning of the name
change. With varied levels of resources,
academic intensity, and degrees of connection
with working media, there is a new generation
of civic and public journalism educators
at work in college and university towns
across the country. They need to be
linked, I believe, to scholars from social
sciences and the humanities who are as interested
in these reform movements as their counterparts
in journalism education are. The reverse
is true as well. The fear of a reportorial
loss of autonomy was a legitimate fear,
but one that smart leadership and management
could and should avert.
The interactive journalism
and community savvy of civic journalists,
often the bane of the elite press, may now
be part of the rescue crew of certain metropolitan
newspapers and those broadcast properties
threatened by the ease, convenience, and
range of subject matter provided by the
young readers now moving to the Internet.
Melissa Ludtke, editor
of Nieman Reports at Harvard University,
put it well when in an e-mail to Nieman
alumni, she recently wrote:
“We are watching
right now as two U. S. newspapers – the
Akron Beacon-Journal is letting go 25% of
its newsroom staff, and the Dallas Morning
News, in the neighborhood of 70 to 80 buyouts
of its reporters and editors…(They also)
are cutting back their newspaper staff as
they join others in trying to find a formula
for financial success in the new media environment
while holding on to the high standards that
journalism demands.”
The Economist,
in a major takeout on the future of
the American newspaper, noted that advertising
dynamics are such that “newspapers will
need between 20 and 100 readers online to
make up for losing just one print reader,”
adding: “Even the most confident of
newspaper bosses now agree they will survive
in the long term only if they can reinvent
themselves on the Internet and on the other
new-media platforms such as mobile phones
and portable electronic devices.”
A number of Missouri undergraduates
recently returning from convergence internships
at metro dailies over the summer reported
that older editors – despite their awareness
of opportunity – were reluctant to risk
such high tech explorations – at least with
page-one news. Yet, for newspapers,
the cyberspace challenge must not only be
accepted, but eagerly embraced. It
is where the reading, viewing and listening
habits of most future consumers are being
formed.
Cyberspace Journalism and
Cultural Assimilation
The increasing religious
diversity of the American public, and the
recent and future immigration to the country
from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe,
make religious, cultural and media literacy
ever more important for the civic health
of the United States than ever before.
So is an appreciation of the value to the
country of solving the assimilation challenge
of assimilating Muslims in the wake of the
attack by radical Islamists on the United
States on September 11, 2002. Wrote
Diana Eck, the director of Harvard University’s
Pluralism Project:
“Today, we have the unparalleled
opportunity to build, intentionally and
actively, a culture of pluralism among the
people of many cultures and faiths in America.
We may not succeed. We may find ourselves
fragmented and divided with too much pluribus
and not enough unum. But
if we can succeed, this is the greatest
form of lasting leadership we can offer
the world.”
MU’s Center for Religion,
the Professions & the Public, founded
by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts
in 2003, has a mission that runs parallel
to the challenge articulated by Eck.
Its goal is to foster religious and cultural
literacy in the professions and for the
citizens they serve. With the award of a
$1.5 million renewal grant in 2005, it shifted
its academic home to the Missouri School
of Journalism. The Center is a non-sectarian,
non-proselytizing. Its faculty members
conduct research, and teach courses on religion
reporting and writing, religion and the
professions, and journalism, religion and
public life. It also offers lectures and
discussion groups to faculty and citizens
and cooperates with other centers on the
MU campus. Its new director,
Professor Debra Mason, also is executive
director of the Religion Newswriters Association.
In the first phase of the
Center’s life, it collectively explored
the dynamics of religion as an influence
within business, engineering, health professions,
journalism, law, medicine, and social work.
Research projects – broadly influenced by
the role of religion as a cultural and ethical
influence affecting professional life –
were shared and discussed by faculty from
each of the eight professions, including
religious studies.
Missouri sociologists Edward
Brent and Ken Benson – with input from other
colleagues – developed a survey questionnaire
given to 400 professionals from eight fields
in telephone interviews conducted by the
MU Center for Advanced Social Research.
It found that business managers and engineers
are least likely to report a religion-related
conflict in relation to their work with
customers and clients…with physicians and
religion journalism specialists the most
likely.” They also found that “most
professionals reported they were not adequately
trained to handle religious differences.”
More than two thirds report they are expected
to know about and consider religious differences
in their respective practices, but fewer
than one-third believe they were prepared
for that responsibility.”
Faculty of the Center,
in response, have designed courses on Religion
and the Professions for Honors College freshmen,
and the School of Journalism has adopted
a new course in Religion Reporting and Writing
and is considering a twice-taught topics
seminar in Journalism, Religion, and Public
Life. We have consulted with local
high school teachers in social studies that
likewise teach about religion in
the context of world cultures and contemporary
issues.
The renewal grant form
the Pew Charitable Trusts, Inc. renewal
grant will fund a major research project
on the future of religion journalism. Another
research initiative will use empirical measures
to assess whether and, if so, how religious
affiliations, practices, and commitments
impart coping skills to persons with long-term
disabilities from brain injuries and genetic
or cardio-vascular diseases.
An overarching goal of
the Center is to build new inter-disciplinary
and trans-professional capacities within
the University of Missouri that can help
solve some of the nation’s most challenging
social and cultural problems.
Lambeth
is a professor emeritus of journalism and
a former director of the Center for Religion,
the Professions & the Public.
This essay is an outgrowth of a presentation
on September 16, 2006 at a conference of
the MU Center for the Study of Conflict,
Law and Media.
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