I really like this quote on DanLesh.com. Very apropos of recent discussions of trust and the media.
“Trust is contingent on the evidence which one party provides the others of his true, concrete intentions; it cannot exist if that party’s words do not coincide with their actions. To say one thing and do another—to take one’s own word lightly—cannot inspire trust. To glorify democracy and to silence people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.”
— Paulo Friere
Am I ethical? I answer this question emphatically YES. But any time I think about such complex philosophical questions I immediately ask more questions. For example: What is ethics? How do we determine what is ethical? How are ethics formed?
I’m not turning the original question around to avoid answering it. Nor am I interested in obfuscating the core question. It’s just that when you start discussing such fundamental human issues you MUST take into consideration the complexity of human history and culture. There are a lot of different points of view. We can not just accept one ethical definition. We must analyze many.
Yet we must also consider what context, what frame of reference, we’re discussing these ethics within. The areas I’ve been thinking about recently are blogging, podcasting, citizens and professional journalism. Recently I was asked about my journalistic ethics during a talk about Audio Activism and podcasting. I almost immediately said, “I don’t consider myself a journalist. I consider myself a media activist. I don’t uphold myself to journalistic ethics.â€
This was half jokingly answered, “Oh so you don’t have any ethics.†I suppose in the context of this talk among young journalists there is no other set of ethics to consider but journalistic ethics. Thus by disavowing ethics in general did I cast aside the one true ethics for media making? Not really. Just like I’m making my own media I can MAKE MY OWN ETHICS.
Without succumbing to hubris I will say I have strong moral and ethical values. They’re just not the most popular values of our country right now. I refuse to use only one name for my ethics and values. I refuse to adopt only one. I reserve the right to make changes to my ethics when ever I like.
Categories for your personal philosophy or ethics are valuable. It’s hard to deny category. Our brains crave them. We identify culturally and personally with groups that have names. But because of our chaotic world, values with precise names can become corrupted and vague over time. Maybe I am a moral relativist…
So here I would like to recommend that all students and professional journalists question “Journalistic Ethicsâ€. If anything this is precisely what blogs and podcasts are helping us do. Many of the ethics journalist hold dear are valuable and important. Do not throw all of them out. Just revaluate and recreate them. Then vow to be more diligent in upholding until serious events compel you to do otherwise. The power of twenty first century media making is one of those times.
WOOO! We’re going to the ConvergeSouth conference in a few hours! Yeah! Ruby and I are excited! More later. Good Night and Good Luck! 
Fred Stutzman has been studying the AMAZING amount of information that high school and college students give away to the social networking site Facebook. It’s a website like Friendster that is only for students and is divided into areas for each university. (For example the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.) This podcast is a recording of his presentation titled, “An Evaluation of Identity Sharing in Social Networking Communities” aka The Facebook Talk. Here is Fred’s blog post about his studies on the Ibiblio blog Notes from the ‘Lab. Check out the amazing things he has learned from analyzing this data. Ah… the power of metadata.
MP3 30m 48s 14.7MB 64kbps
Who: Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales
When: 3:30 Wednesday October 5
Where: 209 Manning Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, http://sils.unc.edu/about/visit.html
What: A talk about the world’s most popular encyclopedia and news source, Wikipedia and Wikinews by the man who invented and sustains them.
More about Jimmy and Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_wales
Sponsors: ibiblio.org
School of Information and Library Science
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Scholarly Communications Working Group
During a wonderful discussion during lunch today I realized something. Podcasters are the Outsider Artists of the audio documentary/Radio world.
An outsider artist in the art world is someone who doesn’t have formal training in the fine arts, may not consider themselves an artist, and creates prodigious amounts of art work.
When I make podcasts I don’t use editing much (thus my editing training goes out the window), I don’t consider myself a journalist (but occasionally a documentarian), and I record and share lots of audio. Other podcasters are much better examples of outsider artists than I. I’ve been interested in the technical and professional of audio and video for years.
Interesting when you put things in parallel isn’t it.
Dr. West drops some serious thoughts on us. Here is only part. Read the whole thing.
In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a ‘frat boy’, making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right.
Thank you for linking to this Sally.
This post started off as just a fan boy kiss to Apple for making iTunes. Hence the screen shot there. But after watching Chuck Olsen’s newest Minnesota Stories called Minneapolis Primary [ MOV ] I just had to tip my hat to him. Watch it! It’ll make you laugh. As funny if not more so than John Stewart. Chuck, when are they going to call YOU dude and give ya a job!?!? Soooooo I must point out that iTunes not only will help you play, subscribe, and download audio but VIDEO too. WOW that is so cool! God I gota’ visit Minneapolis again soon!
Here is a very small part of Mr. Cates story. Matt Robinson, a local historian, posted more on OrangePolitics.org. Here is a bit:
James Lewis Cates, Jr., was born in 1948 in Chapel Hill. A life-long resident of the town, he was born into the predominantly African-American Northside community, and he bore witness to the monumental changes of the 1960s. He participated in civil rights sit-ins, was arrested along with hundreds of his peers, and was a member of the very first fully integrated graduating class of Chapel Hill High School in 1967.
James Cates died on November 21, 1970, fatally stabbed in the course of a knife-fight that occurred just outside the doors of the snack bar at the UNC Union. He bled to death lying on the bricks of the Pit. His killers were members of a Durham-based motorcycle gang, known as the Stormtroopers. They were notorious figures in the area, unmistakable on their Harley Davidson bikes and decked out in Nazi paraphernalia.
Last night Ruby and I went to Blood Done Sign OUR Names: The Lessons of Censored History For Our Struggles Today’ held on the UNC campus last night. It was sponsored by Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth (CHAT), CampusY, Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, Student Action with Workers (SAW), UNC NAACP, United Electrical Workers Local 150 (UE 150), Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), UNC-Chapel Hill Feminist Students United (fsu).
The place was packed with about 150 people to see the four person panel. (scheudal to be five) One panelist was Tim Tyson, the author of Blood Done Sign My Name. His words were very relevant to the students in the room because his book was a summer reading assignment for freshmen. (Called the Carolina Summer Reading Program) Yet another so called “controversial” selection. In the last few years UNC students have been asked to read Nickeled and Dimed which is about the struggle of low payed workers and Approaching the Qur’an which discuses the Muslim holy book. It’s great that these choices create such controversy. It gets people young and old thinking.
The absolutely riveting part of the night for me was when Matt Robinson told the story of the 1970 murder of African American James Cates in Chapel Hill. Matt wrote his master’s thesis on this terrible event. He gave so many details from so many perspectives. It was obvious he has spent years interviewing eye witnesses. It’s one thing when a historian reconstructs a story as fact but quite another when they provide first person accounts. I hope to bring Matt back to the AudioActivism studios and record his telling of these sad events.
All Americans need to organize and attend events like these. It is so important that all races, genders, and classes get together and discuss the difficult topics.
I first read about Pat Robertson’s call for the US Government to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez from the Bolivian Blog. Then last night John Stewart on the Daily Show opened with the quip that he can’t even say “fuck” or “Fuuuuuucccck” without it being bleeped, but if you own your own TV network (as Robertson owns the Christian Broadcasting Network) you can call for the murder of a head of state.
This morning on the BBC for colonist via NPR (aka BBC Newshour) I heard that British Home Secretary Charles Clarke claims he will begin enforcing a new “anti-terror law” that will deport any non-citizen in the UK that does things like glorify terrorism, incites violence, preaches hate, etc. Still no word on exactly what actions are on the list of “unacceptable behaviour”. They don’t seem to be able to apply the same rules to British citizens. They can’t just deport them. Fact is all the men who bombed the London tube and bus were British citizens.
Just as the BBC show was ending they read a email from a woman in Waltham, Massachusetts. She asked if Pat Robertson would be on a list of non-citizens to be deported for glorifying violence and preaching hate? I wonder if the UK will keep a list of non-citizens who are not allowed into the county who’ve preached hate? Hmm the righteous sword of anti-terrorism rhetoric cuts both ways me thinks.