2025 - Spring

Journalism Ethics and First Amendment Law

Course Number: JOUR-UA 502.002

Day & Time: Wed | 5:05 PM – 7:35 PM

Location: 20 Cooper Square, Room 700 (Library)

Prerequisites: None

What does it mean to be a journalist at a time we can’t agree on the basic facts and truth itself is contested?

In Journalism Ethics and First Amendment Law (JOUR-UA 502.001), we’ll dive into the essential issues shaping modern media. We’ll explore the evolution of the First Amendment and the early American press and survey real ethical dilemmas involving privacy versus the public’s right to know. We’ll study libel, defamation and learn about the major court cases that have shaped our society. We’ll weigh the consequences of disinformation and malinformation in an era of relentless news cycles and shine klieg lights on the realities of the media business. We’ll discuss the narrative fallacy and the dangers of confirmation bias–and how our addiction to stories and storytelling can alter our sense of reality. We’ll analyze why mainstream media is shrinking and survey newly launched independent media, which is thriving. Along the way, we’ll examine scandals–Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, the fallout from Rolling Stone’s retracted campus sexual assault story, and analyze how social media algorithms and rogue actors can skew public perception. Finally, we’ll tackle AI head on and work on our own AI-inspired projects so that we learn some of these new and important tools.

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to report with integrity in a chaotic media landscape, this course is your front-row seat to the greatest dilemmas and challenges facing journalists today.

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