BYU Professor gives Journalism a face-lift

PROVO—A journalism professor at BYU is calling for a serious revamping of the media industry, more specifically Journalists, who are responsible for “upholding equity and justice” he believes. 

Professor Joel Campbell spoke in a lecture series put on by the school last Thursday to an audience of students, professors, and members of the community. 

Campbell stated that LDS journalists have a unique perspective and have an obligation to keep the press going, thus the call for a change in the moral code of journalists. 

Campbell began the lecture by going through a history of the press, all the way back to Gutenberg’s invention of the moveable type, showing how the events have perfectly set up the press for where they are today.  Campbell believes that there is a theme throughout history of a divine intervention of most major breakthroughs of the media.

 “If the Constitution is of divine origin- what does that mean for the free press?” Campbell said.  

The world has made a significant jump recently in the number of countries that now allow freedom of information.  There are now 90 countries entitled to that freedom, when there were only two back in the 1960s.  

With this new freedom comes new responsibility according to Campbell, who listed many examples of how the journalism field can improve.  Many of these value improvements were expected, such as accountability, conscience, trustworthiness etc. that have always been problems in the media in the last decade.  However, things such as Solutions Journalism, Empowering Information and maintaining a respect for leaders were somewhat fresh topics. 

Due to the current Presidential elections, the maintaining respect for leaders was particularly emphasized in this campaign season. 

“We can disagree [with the President], but there should be no ad hominem attacks…I have been very disappointed in some of the chain emails I have received from friends in relation to this,” Campbell said.

Campbell refers to many more stories of faithful journalists, trying to educated the public about this Constitutional role of a journalist, however there is still need for a call for reform he said, where innovations in the media will help to build up their communities, not destroy them.