FEATURED QUESTION: JOURNALISM

(Each "Featured Question," an idea which I gleaned from A Republic If You Can Keep It, will remain toward the top of the blog until the next question appears. The previous QUESTIONS are HERE. Please scroll down for recent postings)

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), founded in 1909, has some 300 chapters with 10,000 members across the United States. The group brings and affects local educational programming to certain areas of our country, and also has contact with the professional media. SPJ is a member of the Council of National Journalism, an extensive list HERE, with emphasis on journalists-in-training and young professional journalists.
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SPJ's intitiatives include a legal defense fund in support of the First Amendment and Project Sunshine, both of which promote public and journalistic access to government records.

The group's mission statment begins as follows:

The Society of Professional Journalists is dedicated to the perpetuation of a free press as the cornerstone of our nation and our liberty....

Read SPJ's entire mission statement HERE.

In October 2007, at the group's national convention in Seattle, the Society of Professional Journalists passed a resolution entitled "Guidelines for Countering Racial, Ethnic, and Religious Profiling.," particularly related to the 9/11 attacks and to subsequent reporting on related events. These guidelines contain specific information as to how to report on stories involving Islam, including not using the terms "Islamic terrorism" and "Muslim extremist," as well as urging the use of preferred transliterations of certain Arabic-derived words; perhaps as expected, the definition of "jihad" does not include "holy war."

The web page is copyrighted; therefore, you'll need to CLICK HERE to read the list of guidelines.


FEATURED QUESTION: Are SPJ'S diversity guidelines of the Society for Professional Journalism conducive to accurate reporting and to keeping the citizenry well informed? Explain your answer if you so desire. You may want to consider this article in the UK's Daily Mail in your response.