Intro – what the course is about, and who we are. What are “mainstream media”?
Reading:
https://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A589848353/AONE?u=cuny_baruch&sid=AONE&xid=cd8787b3
Week 2: (Sept. 3): Media Criticism: Establishing criteria for evaluation and criticism of the news media. What should we look at? How can we be fair? Building
benchmarks for balance of the semester. Guest: Betsy Morais, Managing Editor, Columbia Journalism Review.
Mills/JRN 3050/Page 5
Readings:
• https://www.cjr.org/special_report/race-ethnicity-newsrooms-data.php
o https://www.cjr.org/special_report/black-press.php
o https://www.cjr.org/special_report/as-you-like-it.php
o https://www.cjr.org/special_report/venezuela-news-internet.php
o https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/12/a-responsible-press-criticism/
o https://niemanreports.org/articles/media-criticism-journalism-vs-advocacy/
o https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/business/media/criticism-of-the-news-media-takes-on-a-more-sinister-tone.html
Resources:
o https://www.politico.com/news/media-criticism
o https://fair.org/topic/media-criticism/
o https://www.aim.org/
Week 3 (Sept. 10): Think Tanks, Lobbying and Campaign Finance
Readings:
Resources:
Think tanks
o https://guides.library.harvard.edu/hks/think_tank_search/US
o https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=496970&p=3427170
o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List of_think_tanks_in_the_United_States
Some of the best-known think tanks in the U.S.:
• The Hoover Institution: http://www.hoover.org/
• The Brookings Institution: http://www.brookings.edu/
• The Rand Corporation: http://www.rand.org/
• The Urban Institute: http://www.urban.org/
• The American Enterprise Institute: http://www.aei.org/
• The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy: http://riceinfo.rice.edu/projects/baker
• Cato Institute: http://www.cato.org/
• Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/
Lobbying
o https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/10/lobbying-spending-at-highest-levels-since-2010/
Mills/JRN 3050/Page 6
o https://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/finance-lobbying/influence-interest-groups-public-policy-outcomes/
o http://www.oecd.org/cleangovbiz/toolkit/50101671.pdf
Election finance laws
o https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/2020-democrats-stands-on-campaign-finance/
o https://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/finance-lobbying/writing-campaign-finance-tip-sheet-tools-examples/
o https://www.fec.gov/press/resources-journalists/
Week 4 (Sept. 17): Immigration Guest: Julianne Welby, WNYC
Readings:
Resources:
https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/2019/08/16/covering-immigration/
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-population/state/US
https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/immigration/
https://www.urban.org/experts/immigrants-and-immigration
Week 5 (Sept. 24) Political coverage: Guest: Greg Birnbaum, politics editor, NBCNews.com
Immigration Readings from WNYC
Questions for Juliane Welby:
• How long on this beat?
• How many reporters involved in immig coverage?
o Growing?
o Freelance as well as staff?
• What do reporters bring to this?
o Prior knowledge of immig matters
o Multilingual or multicultural backgrounds?
• Who is the competition for WNYC – is there any news org that you have a sense of competing against directly? NYT? Daily News? NY1?
Https://www.wnyc.org/story/presiding-under-pressure/
• Backlog of 900,000 cases – not enough judges? Hearings now scheduled into ‘23
• Impartial – many new judges used to work for ICE or Justice
• No interviews or direct comment from proponents of the system? Critics quoted. Is this article balanced, or of only one point of view?
(This one is third of 3 in a series. Links are provided at top of this page)
https://www.wnyc.org/story/once-separated-from-mom-now-studying-help-other-immigrant-kids
• A profile, very sympathetic. Do we get a sense of whether she is typical – like, why profile her?
• Is it balanaced? Is there another side to this story
And a couple of lighter ones that I know my reporters enjoyed creating:
https://gothamist.com/news/orange-is-the-new-black-fact-check-immigration
• Good story? Should we accept that fiction dramas are documentary-accurate?
o Newsroom
o All the President’s Men
o Breaking Bad
• Is the story weaker because it has no comment from ICE? Should publication await that comment?
• Did this story originate with the reporter or an editor?
https://www.wnyc.org/story/with-subway-ride-trump-carousel-syrian-refugees-tour-new-york/
• Humanizing immigrants – does it work?
• Does reporter speak Arabic, or is all this done through translator? Does this make a diff to WNYC?
Questions for class/Talking points
• Are there two sides to this story – do we hear both of them?
• Is immigration coverage overall fair – does a look at major news org provide a balanced picture?
• Do we hear enough from supports of Govt policies? Do we hear enough from critics?
• If you were designing and then recruiting an immigration team of reporters and editors, what criteria would you use?
o Balance
o Fairness
o Represent diff points of view
o Language skills
o Knowledge of issues
• Watch excellent video (in syll)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=aongjvQ-QCE
(from Ethical Journalism Network – only 760 subscribers?)
• If you’re reporting on undocumented people, do you risk outing them?
And this shows many good story ideas and approaches:
https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/immigration/
Resources:
https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/2019/08/16/covering-immigration/
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-population/state/US
https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/immigration/
https://www.urban.org/experts/immigrants-and-immigration
https://dartcenter.org/content/reporting-immigration-beat
long, slow, many good points – 4 white journalists talking about immigration coverage.
BRIEF DISCUSSION OF THINK TANKS
See https://www.google.com/search?q=cato+institute&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS794US794&oq=cato&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.2600j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
• Go to heritage.org and search for immigration
o Among topics under national security
o Read through this in class
▪ https://www.heritage.org/immigration/heritage-explains/what-immigration-reform-should-look
• Go to AEI.org and search for immigration
o http://www.aei.org/?s=immigration
• Go to Brookings.edu and search for immigration
o http://www.aei.org/?s=immigration
