Former National Journalist Teaches to "Look with More Sophisticated Eyes"

By Kara Niemi

"Information is power, and I want my students to act on this power," says Ellen Hume about her new class, "Journalism and Democracy." Appointed senior research fellow for the Media and Communication Studies Project last February, Hume is determined to bring a wealth of knowledge to UMass Boston students. "The goal for myself is that students will empower themselves with information"to understand how to read between the lines, how to watch, how to be plugged in and in the know," says Hume.

She brings to her students a wisdom drawn from thirty years of experience as a journalist and teacher. She has served as executive director of PBS's "Democracy Project," creating PBS's Debate Night, and executive director and senior fellow at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, where she also taught.

In the classroom, Hume smiles while passing out materials and announcing the direction of the class: a guest speaker"Angela Morgenstern"web designer and journalist for KQED TV in San Francisco. But first, students must take out their media journals and talk about the day's focus"navigating the media. One thing is for sure when it comes to her students: Ellen Hume is all business.

In 1988, she left the Wall Street Journal for a teaching job at Harvard University. "I left a great job because I was concerned with the direction that journalism was going in," Hume says. She believes media should help people understand what power they have, but says that today "information gets lost in the huge flood of entertainment. it'ss hard to know what to trust and where to find it."

In the class, students review articles, news broadcasts, talk shows, and radio programs and determine whether the journalist in question was writing for commercial reasons, public service, or just plain entertainment. Ellen Hume warns her students that many forms of the media are "about money and celebrity." She says, "Entertainers are using real information to entertain. How do you weigh it? Look with more sophisticated eyes at this plethora of information."

Hume is not saying that all journalism is bad journalism; in fact, she has a lot of faith in good journalists"it'ss just a matter of finding out who those journalists are. And, according to Hume, a good journalist "should be a watchdog. Their core mission is to hold everyone accountable."

As the largest and most influential democracy in the world, the United States serves as a role model for other nations, says Hume. "If our model for public discourse is just one horrific sensationalized crime after the other, then this is going to have a trickle-down effect on other nations." She advises her students to be informed with accurate and worthwhile information. She ends the class by telling them, "The moral to this is to pay attention."

Image: Ellen Hume is a senior research fellow for the Media and Communication Studies Project. She shares her expertise from her thirty years as a network journalist with her class "Journalism and Democracy." (Photo by Harry Brett)

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