Last Friday I heard Nick Davies present at the Association for Journalism Education annual conference in Sheffield. My piece for Journalism.co.uk is over here, looking at Nick Davies’ 11th hour call to journalism educators to be the guardians of the skills needed to “find out the truth”. This was the essence of Nick’s message:
“If we don’t teach the skills, journalism dies, and then we’re really in trouble, politically and democratically.”
A little taster from the piece:
So can we educators be the guardians of skills that the industry, and often students, see no use for? Davies, jetlagged from his recent flight from Australia promoting his book, was not optimistic.
To research the unwritten chapter he put in Freedom of Information requests to journalism schools for the student feedback they had received. The resistance, he said, was shocking: one university claimed the documentation was ‘Commercial in Confidence’ on the basis that the comments were so bad they would damage its business if they came out.
Along with my colleague Philip Young, I also presented. I’m going to post up the paper later this week–on the representation of climate change across new media.
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Thanks, Alex. Nick’s contribution was like his book – strong in parts but often flawed. As Richard Keeble said, he has done a splendid job in creating a debate (and sold a lot of books in the process) but his message to journalism educators lost impact by having so many shots off-target.
I want all my Media Ethics students to read Flat Earth – but I also want them to see where he goes wrong. Oddly he criticises journalism for its knee-jerk responses, superficiality and lack of reflexion… then what does he do?