Principles of Journalism 1: Gathering Sources

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

English for Journalism

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University of Pennsylvania

English for Journalism

1141 ratings

Welcome to English for Journalism, a course created by the University of Pennsylvania, and funded by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Office of English Language Programs. To enroll in this course for free, click on “Enroll now” and then select "Full Course. No certificate." This course is designed for non-native English speakers who are interested in developing the skills needed for a career in modern journalism. In this course, you will explore print and digital media through authentic readings and video lectures, while expanding your vocabulary and increasing your ability to read, research, and develop local and global news stories. Unit 1 will provide an introduction to the history and principles of journalism. In unit 2, you will learn how to research, pitch, and interview. The next unit in the course will focus on the language needed to write newspaper and magazine articles, while unit 4 will cover the basics of broadcasting the news. In the final unit of the course, you will analyze the growth, impact, and challenges of digital news, while completing a reflection assignment that allows you to think about and discuss the recent changes to the field of journalism. Unless otherwise noted, all course materials are available for re-use, repurposing and free distribution under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution license. Supplemental reading materials were provided by Newsela, which publishes daily news articles at a level that's just right for each English language learner.

From the lesson

Unit 1: Introduction and Principles of Journalism

In this unit, you will first learn about how the course works. Then we will explore the history of journalism, as well as important principles, or ideas, that make good journalism possible.

Principles of Journalism 1: Gathering Sources6:49

Principles of Journalism 2: Telling the Story5:31

Language Focus – Word Families6:26

Principles of Journalism 3: Impacting People6:11

Language Focus – Phrases for Agreeing and Disagreeing6:00

Meet the Instructors

John Cotton
Manager of Instructional Staff Development
English Language Programs
Eve Litt
Language Specialist
English Language Programs

Welcome to unit 1, the Principles of Journalism: Overview and

Gathering Sources.

In this video, we will define the idea of principles, present

an overview of the 10 principles of journalism, and look at all the principles

that a journalist needs to think about when they are gathering sources.

First of all, it's important that we understand what a principle is.

A principle is a fundamental,

really important truth that is the basis of something.

So the principles of journalism are the things that journalists have to

remember to do all the time.

There are 10 fundamental principles of journalism.

We'll cover these principles over the next three videos.

The first two principles, verification and objectivity, are important for

journalists to remember when they are finding their sources or information.

The next four principles, originality, completeness, transparency,

and fairness, are the principles that a journalist needs to remember when

they are telling the story, meaning when they are actually writing their article.

The final four principles include restraint,

humanity, accountability, and empowerment.

These principles are about how journalism can impact people,

meaning how people are affected by the articles that a journalist writes.

Don't worry if you don't understand these words right now.

We'll cover all ten of these principles in detail in the coming videos.

Let's start by talking about the principles that journalists need

to remember when they are gathering sources,

meaning they are talking to the important people in a story.

For example, if there was a car accident,

a journalist needs to talk to the people who actually saw it happen.

We call these people eyewitnesses.

When the journalist is talking to these people, they are gathering sources.

Another example is when a journalist wants to know more information for

a story, and so they go to a library or research online.

This is also gathering sources.

Okay, so now we know what principles are, and

we also know what gathering sources means.

Let's talk about some of the important principles that a journalist needs to

remember when they are gathering sources,

verification and objectivity.

The first important principle is called verification.

This is when journalists make sure that the information they get

is accurate or true.

How can they know if their sources are true and accurate?

Let's look at these two ideas.

Being accurate means always having the correct facts,

such as names, dates, places.

When a journalist gathers sources by speaking to a witness or

researching documents, they should always make sure that they write down the correct

information so that it's accurate when they use it in their article.

We'll talk about how to take accurate notes in future videos.

How can journalists verify a source

to know that the information they get is accurate and true?

It's not always easy, but they can consider these things.

Is the source primary, meaning is it original?

If we consider the car accident we looked at earlier, an eyewitness is a primary

source, while someone who just heard about the accident is not.

Does the source have expert knowledge?

For a car accident, an expert on road safety or

an automotive engineer would be a good source of information.

The second principle is objectivity.

This means reporting the facts without favoring one side or another.

However, objectivity can be difficult to define.

A journalist must think about the weight of evidence,

meaning that they should gather many sources.

And if most sources say one thing and very few say the other,

they should give more importance to the majority view.

A journalist should not give equal time or

weight to an opinion based on facts that are clearly not true.

So in this video, we learned what a principle is, and

that there are 10 principles of journalism.

We looked at the principles of journalism that have to do with gathering sources,

verification and objectivity.

In the next videos, we'll learn about the other remaining principles of journalism.

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