Summary
Contents
The SAGE Key Concepts series provide students with accessible and authoritative knowledge of the essential topics in a variety of disciplines. Cross-referenced throughout, the format encourages critical evaluation through understanding. Written by experienced and respected academics, the books are indispensable study aids and guides to comprehension. Key Concepts in Journalism offers a systematic and accessible introduction to the terms, processes, and effects of journalism;a combination of practical considerations with theoretical issues; and further reading suggestions. The authors bring an enormous range of experience in newspaper and broadcast journalism, at national and regional level, as well as their teaching expertise. This book will be essential reading for students in journalism, and an invaluable reference tool for their professional careers.
Public Interest
Public Interest
This term is used specifically in legal contexts, and in a wider sense in media contexts of ethics, communications policy and social responsibility. It can denote specific criteria by which the usual legal rights of an individual or organization, e.g. to defend their reputation, or protect confidential matters, privacy or copyright, are justifiably over-ridden by the need for information to be published to benefit society, e.g. to help it understand events or scrutinize people in the public eye.
Similarly, journalists' ethical codes of conduct (e.g. those used by Press Complaints Commission and Ofcom, and the BBC Producers' Guidelines) recognize that in some circumstances, because of the actual or potential social importance of the matter being probed, there must be public interest exceptions to ethical ...