1. Which media function do you think is most important and why?
In terms of informing, educating, and entertaining, informing is the most important. Entertainment can be acheived in countless ways outside the media, keyword being 'imagination'. Media can be extremely useful in educating, but is not absolutely essential. Informing, on the other hand, relies so heavily on the media and a sense of public awareness and mass communication. It doesn't mean informing as a general concept is more important than entertaining or educating, but it is the media's most important role.
2. To what degree should journalists be concerned about their employer's profitability and readership/viewership figures?
Employer's profitability keeps them a job, and readership/viewership figures gets their name out there, increasing a journalist's prominence and status, and the potential for better career options. In that respect, I would say a massive degree.
3. Is it reasonable for the owner of a media outlet to direct editorial policy and to make editorial decisions on political and other issues?
Yes.
4. Does investigative journalism really matter? Does it sell newspapers or increase ratings?
Proactive journalism is probably print media's strongest weapon in competition with online news, as online news is primarily utilised for the immediate information from an event that has just happened or is happening and reactive news. For this reason taking advantage of human interest stories, exclusive interviews, and behind the scenes information would increase newspaper readership and TV ratings, and therefore certainly matters.
5. Prepare for a discussion on the following dilemma: You are the editor of a newspaper that is losing money. The biggest advertiser has been convicted of drink driving. Your newspaper has a policy of recording all such convictions. Even your own son's conviction has been published. The newspaper's general manager - your boss - tell you the advertiser will no longer advertise with the newspaper if you publish the report. The decision is yours alone, but you are told the loss of advertising could mean the paper's closure, or at least the retrenchment of several editorial and print-room staff. What do you do?
I'm not cluey on ethics, I would definitely not publish it. While the newspaper has a policy to record such convictions, I'm sure it would have a policy to keep existing, no? If we get in trouble and people lose theire jobs/the newspaper closes, we're no worse off than we would have been otherwise. Everyone knows the media has kept things out like this before. It wouldn't be the first time.
But... if that's too naive, maybe there's a way of taking advantage of such situations? Maybe publishing the DUI conviction could potentially lead to the RTA paying for public awareness messages to be included in the paper like you often see in magazines and on the side of the road etc. If they think there's a strong target readership of the paper, or that in conjuction with the published information and statistics their they should take advantage to make their message resonate, there's a big chance they'd be interested. This could fill the financial void from the lost advertiser - maybe not completely if said advertiser was your biggest sponsor, but possibly enough to tie you over while you look for other opportunities? This is all a lot of maybes, but of course if the situation was real I'd be able to cut down on a lot of them, hehe.
