[Peace-discuss] Fwd: online course: Critical Issues in Journalism

[Morton K. Brussel]

FYI.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Robert Jensen Updates" <robertjensenupdates at thirdcoastactivist.org>
> Date: May 11, 2011 10:45:59 AM CDT
> To: brussel at illinois.edu
> Subject: online course: Critical Issues in Journalism
> Reply-To: "Robert Jensen Updates" <robertjensenupdates at thirdcoastactivist.org>
> 
> 
> For the first time in two decades at the University of Texas, I will be teaching a class online this summer. It’s the introductory course in the School of Journalism, “Critical Issues in Journalism.” Below is the course description. 
> 
> Students enrolled at UT can register for it as they would any other course, but I’m also offering it through University Extension, which is open to anyone. 
> For more information, go to:
> http://www.utexas.edu/ce/uex/robert_jensen
> and to register, go to:
> http://uex.webhost.utexas.edu/coursedetails.cfm?OutID=2757
> 
> 
> J310/Critical Issues in Journalism/Professor Robert Jensen
>   This course is designed to (1) survey the various forms of contemporary journalism, with an eye toward helping students make career choices, and (2) critique those same forms, with an eye toward helping students become better journalists and more engaged citizens. 
>   I would subtitle this course “developing the tools needed for intellectual self-defense in the United States,” an especially important task for journalists. The underlying goal of this course is to help us sharpen skills that our society tends to dull -- the ability to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, analyze systems and structures of power, and generate knowledge that can lead to a more just and sustainable world. 
>   In this course we will engage in critique, which is not a solely negative enterprise and is not synonymous with complaining, whining, or mean-spiritedness. To critique an idea, practice, or institution is to examine it to determine its nature so that we can understand its possibilities and limitations. Critique can result in criticism, which sometimes justifiably can be harsh. But critique also can reveal the strength of an argument. Critique is a thoughtful enterprise, the goal of which is to deepen our understanding of an issue or problem. 
>   The most common critique of news media (“journalists are liberal”), as well as journalists’ defense of their trade (“we’re neutral”), tend to be diversionary and unproductive because of a lack of clarity about the nature of democracy and fundamental misunderstandings about the way news media work. In this class we will pursue a more productive evaluation of contemporary news media and the larger society in which journalists operate. In the first part of the course, we will rethink the culture’s ideas about democracy, looking not only at conventional politics but also at crucial economic and social aspects. Students will begin to form their answer to a simple question: “What is democracy?” From there, we will move to a critical examination of the contemporary news media, looking at the ideals behind, and realities of, journalists’ work. Students will begin to form their answer to another simple question: “What are journalists for?” In the final weeks
>  of the
> course we will evaluate the work of one contemporary journalist to help test our answers. In all these investigations we will focus on three crucial aspects of our lives: institutional structures that shape our thinking and behavior; everyday routines and professional practices that usually are taken for granted; and ideological assumptions that typically go unchallenged. The goal is for students to come to their own evaluation of the problems and promise of journalism in helping build a truly democratic society.
> Textbooks:
> --Dahl, Robert A., On Democracy 
> --Bennett, W. Lance, News: The Politics of Illusion
> --Pilger, John, Freedom Next Time
> 
> 
> ................................................................
> To unsubscribe, visit http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html and click the "unsubscribe" button.

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