This book offers a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible introduction to journalistic transparency. Pulling from historical and theoretical perspectives, Transparency and Journalism explains the concept of transparency and its place in journalistic practice, offering a critical assessment of what transparency can and cannot offer to journalism. The author also reviews the key theoretical claims underlying transparency and how they have been researched in different parts of the world, ultimately proposing a communication model that can be used to study the concept of transparency across journalism research. Other topics discussed include the use of algorithmic forms of transparency, the limitations of the transparency myth, and suggestions for future avenues for research. Transparency and Journalism is an important resource for students and scholars in the field of journalism and media studies, as well as for journalists and researchers interested in delving into an ever-relevant topic for the field.

This book is about media transparency and good-faith attempts of honesty by both the sources and the gate-keepers of news and other information that the mass media present as being unbiased. Specifically, this book provides a theoretical framework for understanding media transparency and its antithesis--media opacity--by analyzing extensive empirical data that the authors have collected from more than 60 countries throughout the world. The practice of purposeful media opacity, which exists to greater or lesser extents worldwide, is a powerful hidden influencer of the ostensibly impartial media gate-keepers whose publicly perceived role is to present news and other information based on these gate-keepers’ perception of this information’s truthfulness. Empirical data that the authors have collected globally illustrate the extent of media opacity practices worldwide and note its pervasiveness in specific regions and countries. The authors examine, from multiple perspectives, the complex question of whether media opacity should be categorically condemned as being universally inappropriate and unethical or whether it should be accepted—or at least tolerated—in some situations and environments.

Increasingly governments around the world are experimenting with initiatives in transparency or 'open government'. These involve a variety of measures including the announcement of more user-friendly government websites, greater access to government data, the extension of freedom of information legislation and broader attempts to involve the public in government decision making. However, the role of the media in these initiatives has not hitherto been examined. This volume analyses the challenges and opportunities presented to journalists as they attempt to hold governments accountable in an era of professed transparency. In examining how transparency and open government initiatives have affected the accountability role of the press in the US and the UK, it also explores how policies in these two countries could change in the future to help journalists hold governments more accountable. This volume will be essential reading for all practising journalists, for students of journalism or politics, and for policymakers.

Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the law as a powerful tool for journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens to pursue the public good, FOIA is beset by massive backlogs, and corporations and the powerful have become adept at using it for their own interests. Close observers of laws like FOIA have begun to question whether these laws interfere with good governance, display a deleterious anti-public-sector bias, or are otherwise inadequate for the twenty-first century’s challenges. Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad—how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved. Contributors investigate the creation of FOIA; its day-to-day uses and limitations for the news media and for corporate and citizen requesters; its impact on government agencies; its global influence; recent alternatives to the FOIA model raised by the emergence of “open data” and other approaches to transparency; and the theoretical underpinnings of FOIA and the right to know. In addition to examining the mixed legacy and effectiveness of FOIA, contributors debate how best to move forward to improve access to information and government functioning. Neither romanticizing FOIA nor downplaying its real and symbolic achievements, Troubling Transparency is a timely and comprehensive consideration of laws such as FOIA and the larger project of open government, with wide-ranging lessons for journalism, law, government, and civil society.

Featuring a new code of ethics for journalists and essays by 14 journalism thought leaders and practitioners, The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for the 21st Century, by Kelly McBride and Tom Rosenstiel, examines the new pressures brought to bear on journalism by technology and changing audience habits. It offers a new framework for making critical moral choices, as well as case studies that reinforce the concepts and principles rising to prominence in 21st century communication. The book addresses the unique problems facing journalism today, including how we arrive at truth in an era of abundant and unverified information; the evolution of new business models and partnerships; the presence of journalists on independent social media platforms; the role of diversity; the meaning of stories; the value of images; and the role of community in the production of journalism.

Engaged Journalism explores the changing relationship between news producers and audiences and the methods journalists can use to secure the attention of news consumers. Based on Jake Batsell's extensive experience and interaction with more than twenty innovative newsrooms, this book shows that, even as news organizations are losing their agenda-setting power, journalists can still thrive by connecting with audiences through online technology and personal interaction. Batsell conducts interviews with and observes more than two dozen traditional and startup newsrooms across the United States and the United Kingdom. Traveling to Seattle, London, New York City, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, among other locales, he attends newsroom meetings, combs through internal documents, and talks with loyal readers and online users to document the successes and failures of the industry's experiments with paywalls, subscriptions, nonprofit news, live events, and digital tools including social media, data-driven interactives, news games, and comment forums. He ultimately concludes that, for news providers to survive, they must constantly listen to, interact with, and fulfill the specific needs of their audiences, whose attention can no longer be taken for granted. Toward that end, Batsell proposes a set of best practices based on effective, sustainable journalistic engagement.

This timely book presents a detailed analysis of the role of law and regulation in the utilisation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the media sector. As well as contributing to the wider discussion on law and AI, the book also digs deeper by exploring pressing issues at the intersections of AI, media, and the law. Chapters critically re-examine various rights and responsibilities from the perspectives of incentives for accountable utilisation of AI in the industry.