Course and Prefix Number: Public Responsibilities

Order 100% Plagiarism free paper

For your final assignment, you will need to write an essay of at least 1250 words. Geneva Overholser, a journalist and academic, in commenting about The Elements of Journalism’s Principle Seven (“Journalism Must Provide a Forum for Public Criticism and Comment”) made the following argument:
At a time when voices are raised to such a high pitch in so many media, the demands on serious journalists to keep their wits about them are great. Yet we frequently feed the polarization instead. Think of coverage of gun control, crime and punishment, abortion, drug abuse, the death penalty. The thoughtful middle–the realm where most American public opinion lies–is poorly represented and often just plain ignored.
In your essay, please consider Overholser’s argument about the “thoughtful middle” and explore ways that journalists can make “the public forum of the future educate rather than reinforce prejudices.”
Please cover the following topics:
• What responsibilities commentators, columnists, and journalists of opinion have to the public
• The Argument Culture and its connection to the blogosphere, political websites (Huffington Post, Politico), cable television (Fox and MSNBC) and talk radio
• How the competition for audience and page-views encourages a focus on controversy and polarized viewpoints
• How the Argument Culture often drives the agenda for news coverage
• What are ways that journalism can be better connected to civic responsibility and the public interest?
Successful essays will apply concepts addressed in course readings to specific examples of media discourse. This means that you should cite specific ideas from the media and course readings (MLA or APA format preferred) and that your essay should have a works cited or references page. You may choose to draw upon additional research or personal experience, in addition to concepts from course readings.
The essay should be double-spaced and submitted as a Microsoft Word file. Please allow up to one business week for your essay to be graded.
Note that essays that do not meet the word count requirement are generally not able to respond to the question in enough specificity or detail to be effective. As a result, essays that do not meet the word count will be failed.