U. S. Media Ethics Summit II Report

March 2007

The second "U. S. Media Ethics Summit" conference was held February 27-March 2, 2007 at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN.

The first conference was held twenty years ago, in the Boston, MA area. One of the purposes of the second Summit was to find out just what had occurred in the field over the preceding two decades.

To that end, representatives of 18 organizations told the other participants what their organization had accomplished and what they presently were working on, and another 17 "elders," some of whom had been present at both Summits, gave their views. Additionally, the participants had been provided with two major studies to inform their discussions. The first report, on media ethics education and literature, was researched and written by Cliff Christians of the University of Illinois-Urbana; the second, on public opinion toward media and media ethics (which also presented the first public results of two newly commissioned surveys) was prepared by Tom Cooper of Middle Tennessee State U. and Emerson College.

The Summit was co-convened by Christians and Cooper, hosted by Dean Anantha Babbili of MTSU, welcomed by President McGee and Provost Gebert of MTSU, and sponsored by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Scripps Howard Foundation, MTSU and its College of Mass Communication, and several other donors.

It was generally agreed that the growth in the field--represented by the establishment of organizations such as the Media Ethics Division of AEJMC and publications such as Media Ethics--made it difficult to immediately come to agreement about what the next steps should be, although a series of several dozen draft recommendations were pared down to a dozen "issues" in discussions among the participants. Furthermore, the many successes resulting in part from the first Summit had been initiated and nurtured by individuals, organizations and institutions--not by declarations from an unelected body. Accordingly, the only specific homework generated by Summit II was the opportunity for participants to voluntarily prepare a personal statement on ethics, think on what they had learned, and prepare for the future.

Another result of Summit II, in addition to the strengthening of an informal network of ethicists, educators, and professionals in the media, is the expectation that a volume of proceedings of the Summit (and associated materials) will be published in the near future. The proceedings themselves were recorded, and are presently being transcribed.

Among the 40 or so participants (some others couldn't attend)--a number twice the size of the first Summit--were representatives of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Stan Tiner), Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (Stephanie Craft), Broadcast Education Association (Tom Berg), Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation (Taryn Boatman), International Radio and Television Society Foundation (Stephen Coltrin), Investigative Reporters and Editors (Brant Houston), the Journal of Mass Media Ethics (Lee Wilkins), Media Ethics magazine (Mike Kittross), National Communication Association (Tammy Swenson Lepper) , National Press Photographers Association (John Long), Organization of News Ombudsman (Pam Platt), Poynter Institute (Kelly McBride), Radio Television News Directors Association (Stacey Woelful), Silha Center for Media Ethics and Law (Jane Kirtley), Society and the Professions (Ed Wasserman), Society for News Design (Christine McNeal), Society of Professional Journalists (Clint Brewer), and Text and Academic Authors (Chris Harris). The "elders" not named above included Ron Arnett, Tom Bivins, Jay Black, Sandra Borden, Kenneth Bunting, David Gordon, Lou Hodges, Jean Kilbourne, Ed Lambeth, Chris Meyers, Geneva Overholser, Bob Steele, Linda Steiner, and Stephen Ward. Also present for all or part of the conference were John Seigenthaler, Sr., Peggy Bowers, and Norwegian journalist Frode Neilsen.

Among the special guests who made public presentations were former vice president of the United States--and recipient of an "Oscar" only two days before--Al Gore, filmmaker Robb Moss--who presented an early version of his new film on secrecy, and Adam Clayton Powell III, director of the Integrated Media Systems Center of the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California--who presented a frightening view of the technological future.

Among the other topics presented and discussed from the standpoint of ethics (rather than law) were privacy, secrecy, First Amendment issues, media access, regulation, the protection of children, net neutrality, media ownership/concentration, manipulation of digital images and sounds, diversity, and gender.

Further information on Summit II will be available in the forthcoming volume of proceedings and, in the interim, from Tom Cooper.