Interview your classmate

1. Interview your classmate An Achievement Travel story about their hometown How they dealt with the flood

2. Active vs. Passive Voice February 7

3. Active vs. Passive Voice • A sentence is written in the active voice when: • The subject of the sentence performs the action. • The person/thing performing the action is named before the verb. EXAMPLE: My grandfather took me to my first horse show. NOT: I was taken to my first horse show by my grandfather.

4. Another example • Active voice: My mother taught me to fish before I learned to walk. • Passive voice: I was taught to fish by my mother before I was taught to walk.

5. Active voice sentences • When you write in the active voice, sentences are typically shorter and clearer. • They sound more conversational. • If each word costs you a nickel, you want to write concisely and in the active voice!

6. Passive voice is acceptable … • When you choose to write in the passive voice, you are emphasizing the object of the sentence rather than the subject. • Scientific writing is a good example of passive voice writing.

7. Passive voice • The three-inch incision is made right above the pubic bone. Plastic clips are used to clamp off blood vessels and minimize bleeding. The skin is folded back and secured with clamps. Next, the stomach muscle is cut at a fifteen-degree angle, right top to bottom left. • $2.40

8. Active voice • The doctor makes a three-inch incision right above the pubic bone. He uses plastic clips to clamp off the blood vessels and minimize bleeding. He folds back the skin and secures it with clamps. Next, he cuts the stomach muscle at a fifteen-degree angle, right top to bottom left. • $2.55

9. Passive voice acceptable … • If that agent of action (the individual doing the action) is unknown or needs to remain a secret: • It was reported that … • Unizan Bank was robbed … News writers protect sources this way. They also may not know who committed the action.

10. Passive voice acceptable • Sometimes, a passive voice sentence will be shorter than an active voice. If it helps clarify the sentence by writing in the passive voice, you may choose this option. • Passive: The interviewer was told to give interviewees an electric shock each time they smiled! ($ .70) • Active: The designers of the study told the interviewer to give interviewees an electric shock each time they smiled! ($ .90)

11. WHAT IS TRUTH? & FREEDOM OF THE PRESS February 7

12. Key points from Elements • Yellow journalism • Emerged in the 19th century under Hearst and Pulitzer • Sought mass audience • Ran stories on sensational crime, scandal, celebrity • Wrote the news in plain, accessible language

13. Key points from Elements • Walter Lippmann: “News and truth are not the same thing…the function of the news is to signalize an event. The function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality upon which men can act.”

14. Journalism & Truth • “Journalism, by nature, is reactive and practical rather than philosophical and introspective” (40). • Theories of journalism are left to the academy, and many news people have historically devalued journalism education, arguing that the only place to learn is through osmosis on the job.

15. Journalism & Truth continued ... • A journalism built merely on accuracy fails to get us far enough. (42) • “It is no longer enough to report the fact truthfully. It is now necessary to report the truth about that fact.” • Accuracy is the foundation upon which everything else is built: context, interpretation, debate, and all of public communication. If the foundation is faulty, everything else is flawed. (43)

16. Journalism & Truth continued … • In the first few hours of an event, when being accurate is most difficult, accuracy is perhaps most important. It is during this time that public attitudes are formed, sometimes stubbornly, by the context within which the information is presented. 45 • Think about the flood coverage. What inaccuracies were reported? What attitudes were formed?

17. Fairness & Balance • Over the years journalists have suggested substitutes for truth • Fairness and balance • Fairness is too abstract and, in the end, more subjective than truth. • Balance, too, is subjective. Balancing a story by being fair to both sides may not be fair to the truth if both sides, do not, in fact, have equal weight (floods). • Global Warming • Scientists have argued for years that it exists, but press coverage has continued long past the time of the scientific debate to give equal weight to both sides.

18. Key points from Principles • The First Amendment • Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. • About telling the government what they can’t do, not people what they can do

19. The Limits of Freedom • Libel occurs when a false and defamatory statement about an identifiable person is published to a third party, causing injury to the subject’s reputation • No uniform law for libel. Each state decides what the plaintiff in a civil libel suit must prove, and what defenses are available for the media

20. When reporting becomes prying • Publication of Private Facts • The publication of information about someone’s personal life that has not been previously released to the public, is not a matter of public concern and the publication of which would be offensive to a reasonable person. • False light invasion of privacy • Giving publicity to a matter concerning another person that portrays that person falsely if the portrayal would be highly offensive to a reasonable person • Intrusion • Intentionally intruding, physically or otherwise, upon another person’s seclusion or solitude or another person’s private affairs • News of the World?