JOUR 625 Lecture Notes - Lecture 31: Social Responsibility
10 Jun 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Social responsibility
The Hutchins commission report was published in 1947 and it wasn’t by accident.
The two world wars showed that propaganda was a very powerful tool for food and for bad.
So, people were slightly hesitant about having those powers fall into the hands of a few
companies, especially just in one country.
The commission concluded that the freedom of the press was in danger.
In the report, they tried to explain why and emphasize the social responsibility that the news
media has in informing citizens about the things that are going on.
It wasn’t necessarily that the freedom of the press was in danger in 1947, the commission
explained that the freedom of the press is always in danger.
There’s always a chance that opinions are suppressed through government or powerful figures
in the media world.
This tried to make this case to explain why these media organizations are so important in the
structure of leading a good society. There is a social responsibility to this, which founded the
social responsibility theory.
The descriptive idealistic view that news media are there to do good and should avoid any bad
backlash through what they do.
This is basically what the task could be for the press… the needs of the citizen for adequate and
uncontaminated mental food is such that it’s really a duty for human rights to get that from
media organizations.
It also means that those news organizations should be accountable to the public in case they
aren’t performing on that high level.
It also means that the news media, should not only feature the voices that they agree with, but
also other more marginalized views to express on a larger scale.
There were five recommendations:
1. A truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which
gives it meaning.
2. A forum for the exchange of comment and criticism.
3. Means of projecting the opinions and attitudes of the groups in the society to one
another.
Document Summary
The hutchins commission report was published in 1947 and it wasn"t by accident. The two world wars showed that propaganda was a very powerful tool for food and for bad. So, people were slightly hesitant about having those powers fall into the hands of a few companies, especially just in one country. The commission concluded that the freedom of the press was in danger. In the report, they tried to explain why and emphasize the social responsibility that the news media has in informing citizens about the things that are going on. It wasn"t necessarily that the freedom of the press was in danger in 1947, the commission explained that the freedom of the press is always in danger. There"s always a chance that opinions are suppressed through government or powerful figures in the media world. This tried to make this case to explain why these media organizations are so important in the structure of leading a good society.
