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Monday, November 20, 2006

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Tonight the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism will be officially launched in Oxford. I wanted to be present at the launch but a previous commitment in the House of Lords made that impossible.

I had been present at various talks about the need for such an Institute over the last few years. John Lloyd, who is one of the key driving forces behind it and I had often discussed the need for an academic approach to the problems facing journalists.

The Institute creates a partnership between academics and journalists and will I think rapidly establish itself as a centre of excellence.

A short quote from Sarmila Bose the Director of the Institute indicates the initial priorities:

"Its focus is news media and it has identified a few substantive areas in which to concentrate its research and activities in the initial years: a critical assessment of the actual exercise of freedom and the responsibilities of democratic governance by the media in established open societies, such as the US, western Europe and India; an examination of the evolution of media in societies moving from controlled to relatively free media; problems in the reporting of news in science and medicine and how to address them; issues in business and economic journalism; and the global representation of religious faith."

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1952063,00.html

The opening event in Oxford tonight will be webcast at reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk

I am very pleased to have been associated with some of the early thinking on this project and will watch its development with a certain amount of pride.