Make Media Matter Panel at the Newseum

Yesterday, CSM staffers attended the IFC Make Media Matter panel discussion at the Newseum in D.C. Gideon Yago, host of the television show IFC Media Project with Gideon Yago, moderated the event. One of the event’s sponsors — the National Association for Media Literacy Education — partnered with the Center to create our Code of Best Practices in Media Literacy Education. The panel discussion was one event in a multi-faceted media literacy campaign.

The panel was comprised of a well-known, but hardly diverse group of journalists: George Stephanopoulos, Greta Van Susteren, John King, Juan Williams, Marcus Brauchli, Norman Ornstein and Tucker Carlson. The panelists debated the impact of traditional versus new forms of media as well as the future of news media. The Center’s white paper Public Media 2.0: Dynamic Engaged Publics, explores how new media can generate publics around problems and foster participatory user behaviors through conversation, creation and collaboration, topics the panel touched upon briefly in their discussion of representation and participation in the news.

The moderator and audience members raised questions about equal opportunities in terms of race for those reporting the news, as well as the accessibility (or lack thereof) of various forms of new media by certain demographics.. The panel also discussed what future forms of media may look like (Norm Ornstein suggested a cross between a Kindle and iTunes), and the spectrum of roles bloggers have taken while searching for an organic news writing niche—ranging from thieves to hardened reporters who have scooped many print journalists for major stories.

To read Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza’s live Tweeting of the panel, visit: http://twitter.com/TheFix