News Dissector: Al Gore, Journalism Teacher, Danny Schechter, MediaChannel
Al Gore's choice to teach journalism at Columbia University shows who can set the political agenda. In his weekly column on MediaChannel.org, 'News Dissector' Danny Schechter, himself a former adjunct journalism professor at Columbia, dissects Gore's recent decision to quietly enter academia. Though Schechter points out the irony of Gore's attempt at a 'low-profile, off-the-record debut as an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in the heart of media-crazed New York City,' he also acknowledges the sanctity of the classroom. He goes so far as to criticize journalists for their sanctimonious tendencies. 'We American reporters tend to wrap ourselves in the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press as if it guarantees whatever license we seek,' he writes, 'And when we are rejected or ejected from any venue, especially when a journalism school bars journalists, we scream bloody murder.'
--Sara V. Buckwitz
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