David Cuillier joined the University of Arizona faculty in 2006 specializing in freedom of information after finishing his Ph.D. in Communication at Washington State University. His research has been published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Government Information Quarterly, Journalism, Newspaper Research Journal, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, and he is co-author with Charles N. Davis of The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records (CQ Press, 2010, www.theartofaccess.com).

Cuillier, who was a newspaper reporter and editor for a dozen years in the Pacific Northwest before entering academia, teaches access to government records, public affairs reporting, computer-assisted reporting and other journalism courses. He is the research chair for the AEJMC Law & Policy Division, member of the International Communication Association, and is chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee. He was awarded the AEJMC Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award in 2007, is a four-time AEJMC Great Ideas for Teaching (GIFT) scholar, and the Promising Professor Award winner for graduate students in 2004 and for faculty in 2009.

How do you define mass communication?

The short answer: Mass communication is the communication of messages to the masses. The long answer: Mass communication includes a lot — journalism, propaganda, public relations, advertising, speech, twitter, blogs, etc., but sometimes students conflate some of these areas. I come from a journalism background and teach in a School of Journalism that has no public relations, advertising or communication studies tracks. We’re just journalism (print, broadcast, online, or any other medium for that matter). While I certainly respect someone’s decision to go into PR or another field, because those areas play an important role in society, I think we need more of a focus on journalism in college education. A student will think that writing a travel piece about a cruise line while being comped by the cruise line is journalism, when it’s not. Or they think that people yelling at each other on cable news is journalism. Or they think that exploiting celebrities on TMZ is journalism. It’s all mass communication, and it is communicated on journalism-like mediums, but it isn’t journalism.

I will go to the mat and defend to the death, from a First Amendment perspective, for the rights of people to yell, advertise, spin, and publish photos of drunk celebrities, but I don’t call it journalism. We need to make sure students understand that in journalism the first loyalty is to the citizen, not to another entity that may or may not be looking out for citizens’ interests, and that journalists verify information, get as close as they can to the truth, and seek justice and betterment of the societal good. That, in my opinion, is journalism, not mass communication. [Read more...]