A longtime journalism educator and ethicist told an audience of mostly Penn State students this week they had many opportunities — and an overriding responsibility — to improve the quality of journalism in the United State and beyond.
Overall, Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute said it was simply a matter of making good decisions and modeling that behavior.
In an hour-long presentation to 300 people in Freeman Auditorium of the HUB-Robeson Center on Monday night, Tompkins encourage students to be critical thinkers, to be skeptical (but not cynical), to seek context, and to always exert some level of effort to find quality content.
Tompkins showed samples from a variety of media outlets to make his points about the difference of information, misinformation, disinformation and even propaganda. He repeatedly focused on an individual’s power and influence.
“Disinformation has become so well produced that it’s difficult to pick up,” Tompkins said. Still, he encouraged students to always “look for the bigger story” and he emphasized that journalists are not absolved of the responsibility to be good citizens.
He said someone is always watching, and that students — whether journalists or simply returning home for Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks — can have an influence on others. As a result he challenged them to hone their news literacy skills.
“You have the responsibility to do just the minimum amount of investigation before you put your name on something,” Tompkins said. “Don’t repeat it if it’s not true.”
Through his many examples, Tomkins showed journalists can make mistakes but that there’s a difference between a simple errors and premeditated actions to perpetuate misinformation. He said technology has made it easier to spread disinformation. At the same time, he said technology — and a bit of common sense and curiosity — can help identify such premeditated efforts to pass along propaganda and information that is not true.
Tompkins, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute, is one of America’s most respected broadcast journalism and multimedia teachers and coaches. He joined Poynter Institute after nearly 30 years working as a reporter, photojournalist, producer, investigative reporter and newsroom leader. He is the author of a textbook about multimedia storytelling and has taught in 46 states as well as a half dozen countries.
The Poynter Institute, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., is a nonprofit media institute and newsroom that provides fact-checking, media literacy and journalism ethics training to citizens and journalists.