This article, by Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at the Harvard Kennedy School, is part of a series marking the launch of the U.S. edition of The Conversation website, which features scholarly perspectives on news topics.
Recent weeks have brought a deluge of new findings about the digital media space, crowned by the Pew Research Journalism Project’s 2014 State of the News Media report.
The issue: The media plays a well-documented role shaping public opinion and policy preferences. In a democracy, it is generally important that a government have public support before engaging in a foreign ground war.
Curated below are some relatively recent research-based reports, studies, papers and essays, as well as forthcoming projects, that may provide useful perspective for journalism educators. It’s tough to keep up with everything, and so we’ve gone back over the past year or so and spotlighted some interesting arguments and insights about the discipline and industry.
Lucy Dalglish is the Dean of Phillip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. She is a leading expert in media law, having served as executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press from 2000 to 2012. She has also been an editor and reporter.
Journalism has undergone many changes over the past five decades, revolutionized once by the television and then again by the Internet. Watergate also played a role in altering the role of the press, as reporters became more aggressive and hard-hitting and increasingly critical of government leaders.
