Friday, September 21, 2007

Surprise Me

Which our ethical discussion over at the USF journalism ethics blog has. A student suggests -- more or less in the context of the situation under discussion, at least sort of -- that the Harry Potter books are a gateway to the occult.

It turns out some of the alumni who dropped by the blog can get a little prickly.

This is useful back and forth for so many reasons, from basic questions of blog etiquette to just what your responsibilities are in the newsroom when you have strong, unconventional, even unpopular opinions about something as innocuous as which aspects of popular culture should be written about and how and in what context.

Should you stand up as the voice of your particular point of view, if only to create balance in the news package? Should you "witness," that word construed as broadly as possible, to your bosses and your fellow news workers?

No comments: