Fakes, Hacks, Fibs & Tales: Journalism Ethics
MARSHALLTOWN – Marshalltown Community College will host the second lecture of the Shear Colbert Symposium on Thursday, March 31.
The second lecture “Fakes, Hacks, Fibs & Tales: Journalism Ethics” will be presented by Dr. Michael Bugeja, Iowa State University Distinguished Professor and former Director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. The lecture will be available from 11 am to Noon via Zoom.
Michael Bugeja teaches media ethics and technology and social change. His scholarship has been published in Journalism Quarterly, Journal of Communication, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, Journalism Educator, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, New Media and Society, American Journalism, American Communication Journal, and other academic journals. Dr. Bugeja has published 24 books across genres, including three books by Oxford University Press: Interpersonal Divide: Searching for Community in a Technological Age; Interpersonal Divide in the Age of the Machine; and Living Ethics Across Media Platforms.
He has twice won the distinguished Clifford Christians Award for Research in Media Ethics. His latest work is Living Media Ethics: Across Platforms, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2019. In 2019, Dr. Bugeja received Iowa State’s highest academic title of distinguished professor for his contributions to media ethics and technology. Of the more than 225 faculty members to receive this title since 1956, fewer than 12 have been so named in the humanities.
Bugeja’s presentation explores how journalism, especially news, has eroded over time, leading to a culture of lies exacerbated by social media. Worse, journalism has resorted to talking heads rather than to reporters in the field, drowning us in a sea of opinion. This has led to a consumer world without “why.” The internet promised a global village. What we got was a global mall. We use mobile technology to such extent that ethical values—truth, responsibility, fairness, justice, dignity, et. al.—have been replaced by machine values, such as importance of self over others, boredom over attentiveness, oversharing over privacy, affirmation over information. The long-term solution is teaching media and technology literacy in the schools. The short-term solution is to restore truth in your everyday life.
The lecture series was organized by the late MCC history professor Dr. Tom Colbert in 1984 as a memorial to his predecessor, Professor George A. Shear.
The lecture will be available via Zoom at https://iavalley.zoom.us/j/94078727759 or link through the MCC calendar. For more information about the Symposium, visit the Symposium website at https://sites.google.com/view/shearcolbertsymposium/2021-2022 or contact Professors P.J. Colbert or Sally Wilson at MCC at 641-752-7106.