Journalists and citizens from the United States to India used their laptops and other mobile devices to participate in the second annual journalism ethics conference, "New Journalism – New Ethics?" staged by the UW Center for Journalism Ethics.
Nearly 140 people viewed the live stream of the conference April 30 from the US, Canada, Argentina, the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, India — and Tuvalu.
Many viewers used social media to send comments and questions to the conference's blog and twitter sites. The social media was moderated by a team of student bloggers under UW Journalism Professor Katy Culver.
The ethics conference has now established itself as a leading forum for discussion and debate on journalism ethics and has established a platform for the future, according to center director Stephen J. A. Ward.
Inside the conference hall, over 125 leading journalists, media scholars, and students debated the ethics of new media. Attendees came from across the Midwest, with university faculty from Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Vancouver, Canada.
Just before the conference, the center, with partners, published one of the first comprehensive reports on the ethics of not-for-profit investigative newsrooms. The report was discussed at a special session of the conference.
Also at the conference, the center presented its first Wisconsin Commitment to Journalism Ethics award to veteran and much-respected broadcaster Tom Bier, VP and station manager of WISC-TV in Madison.
Video and pictures of the conference, plus information on the speakers, is available at the ethics center's web site, www.journalismethics.info