2026 - Fall

Journalism Ethics and First Amendment Law

Course Number: JOUR-UA 502.002

Day & Time: Wed | 2:00 PM – 4:30 PM

Location: 20 Cooper Square, Room 652

Prerequisites: None

Why do conspiracy theories spread faster than facts? Why are so many people getting their news from TikTok, YouTube, and podcasts instead of traditional news organizations? Why do some people trust health influencers more than their own doctors? How did the so-called mainstream media lose its influence, and what is replacing it? Who decides what we see online, and how is artificial intelligence changing that? Will AI steal all our jobs or transform them?

This course examines the forces shaping what people know, believe, and share, and how those forces are transforming journalism, politics, culture, and everyday life. Through the study of journalism ethics, First Amendment law, media history, and contemporary case studies, students will explore how information is created, distributed, manipulated, and consumed. Together we will investigate misinformation, disinformation, and the explosion in online fakery, social media, political polarization, free speech, censorship, propaganda, the rise of partisan media, the economics of attention, the decline of social trust, and the growing influence of artificial intelligence. We will also explore the surprising relationship between comedy and news through programs such as The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, which have become major sources of information for millions of Americans. Along the way, we will examine some of journalism’s greatest successes and most spectacular failures, from yellow journalism and the Pentagon Papers to the Stephen Glass scandal, online disinformation campaigns, and AI-generated slop.

This is not just a course about journalism. It is a course about persuasion, power, technology, and truth.

Notes: Counts as an elective for the journalism major and both journalism minors.