I’ve been fortunate over the past several months to work on an agricultural journalism ethics research project with Dr. Jim Evans, a giant in the field, and Karen Simon, the newly-elected president of the American Agricultural Editors Association. Our findings will be published in an academic journal next year, but meanwhile, there’s a snapshot of what we discovered in today’s Urban Cowboy column in the Guelph Mercury (here’s another link that takes you to the column but not the full published page).
Basically, we found many ethical challenges face agricultural journalists, but that the profession is taking measures to make sure farm readers, listeners and viewers receive the news in as objective a manner as possible. We presented our findings at the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists annual congress in Texas last week.
Below is a photo taken by Cindy Zimmerman of AgWired at the congress of me and IFAJ News editor Liz Harfull from Australia, who has done an exceptional job with the publication. AgWired blogged the entire congress and has published dozens of photos about the experience.
