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During the past two months I’ve had the privilege of teaching our Journalism Ethics and Issues class at Northeastern, in which I’ve had the opportunity to discuss the news and related issues with 10 bright, engaged young people. Our last class is Wednesday, but, for me, one of the highlights took place Monday, when we talked about the Charleston shootings.
I’m posting the slides I used for the last part of the class, but I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression. It was the students who led all but the last hour of the three-and-a-half-hour class. I could easily have let them continue, but at some point I figured I had to start earning my salary.
The issues that engaged them the most were whether the media are more reluctant to label a white supremacist such as Dylann Roof a “terrorist” than, say, they would be with an Islamist extremist, and how much coverage the media should give to the perpetrator of a notorious crime versus the victims. Although no one took the view that the media should refrain from naming Roof and reporting on his motives, we were unanimous that the media should focus as much as possible on the lives of the victims and their families.
This has been a great group of students, and I’m going to miss them.