Walter Cronkite

This evening I attended the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication's forum on the First Amendment, in celebration of Freedom Week. It was your basic panel discussion, with panelists from the Tuscon news media, Arizona Republic, Justice Andrew Hurwitz from the Arizona Supreme Court, and an attorney whose name I didn't quite catch except to say it was David. They discussed the first amendment to the Constitution as it pertains to journalism, specifically freedom of speech and of the press, and how it is becoming a challenge to keep up standards of ethical journalism in a time when mass communications (think blogs) disseminate much more unverified information than ever before. The basic tenet I, as an outside, non-journalism non-student took away from it was "the ends of the story do not necessarily justify the means to collect the information in it." Truth be told, I honestly think the forum, though advertised online for anyone to attend, was meant mostly for ASU journalism majors. I was hoping for more of a discussion of the original intent of the amendment and its political manifestations in modern times, but alas, I was harangued!