The Center for Journalism Ethics at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison
will present Renewing Our Courage on October 30, at 9:00 CT. This event will gather news media professionals, media innovators, academics, students and the public to take on the urgent ethical issues facing the practice of journalism in increasingly authoritarian times.
Co-sponsored by the WisconsinNewsMedia Association, we will explore topics such as covering protest, unrest, and organized resistance, and covering government corruption and abuse of power. We will also learn about emerging models of journalism that can help us meet the challenges of this moment.
Keynote Conversation
9:00 AM CT
BEATING LIARS WITH LIES: THE ONION IN THE NEWS ECOSYSTEM
- Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion
Collins will join Director Kathleen Bartzen Culver in a conversation about the role humor and parody play in today’s news ecosystem. Collins will discuss his trajectory from covering mis- and disinformation for legacy news outlets to The Onion, where he leads a team that tries to expose lies and hypocrisy with humor.
He will also detail The Onion’s takeover of the rightwing disinformation machine InfoWars and how mainstream journalism can – and must – resist capitulation and secure a future for fact-based information that serves public interests.
