By Simon Elfrink
JMC student
Despite retiring in 2021, former Murray State professor of advertising Robert Valentine got the opportunity to watch more fruit of his labor bloom at the Inaugural Doc McGaughey Lecture on Press Freedom and Responsibility.
Dozens of media enthusiasts poured into Lovett Auditorium on Tuesday, Feb. 14, to witness the lecture, which was established through the McGaughey Fund for Excellence in Journalism and Mass Communication. The fund’s namesake and creator, Robert “Doc” McGaughey, had a vision that was predicated upon ensuring faculty and students in the department of journalism and mass communications stayed on the cutting edge of the industry.
The event featured distinguished attorney and political cartoonist Marc Murphy. Murphy’s creative work,which is published in the Courier-Journal and other Gannett-owned papers, focuses on presenting social and political realities in a way that informs, but doesn’t inflame. This mindset mirror’s many of Doc’s philosophies and embodies the theme of this year’s lecture: the value of dissent. The hope for this lecture series is for a greater understanding of the industry at large and what it takes to excel within it.
These are the kind of efforts Doc strove for all throughout his life, dedicating many decades to developing the department of journalism and mass communications on Murray State’s campus. Even after his passing in 2019, Doc’s vision lives on, with people like Robert Valentine carrying the torch for him in an effort to help Murray State students grow into the best communicators they can be. Valentine is a former professor of advertising at Murray State and was a close personal friend of Doc’s. Valentine has been working extensively in his retirement to cultivate Doc’s Fund for Excellence and he had a massive role in coordinating the event.
“If you want to be a great communicator, you’ve got to remember two things,” Valentine said. “First, you have to listen. And second, no matter how bad it gets, never ever lose your sense of humor. [Murphy] said ‘you’ve got to pay attention to what your reader knows or thinks. You’ve got to listen to understand what you’re talking about.”
Valentine was thrilled to have Murphy as the guest lecturer at Lovett Auditorium and especially appreciated his emphasis on the importance of listening as an informer. Murphy pointed out the growth of The Murray Ledger and Times, a local newspaper that has defied national trends by increasing subscribers in recent years. Valentine credited this success to an editorial staff who listened to the feedback of the newspaper’s target audience and reported on what they wanted to know about.
“Local journalism is the most important brand [of journalism],” Valentine said. “Someone is going to tell us what happened in Washington, and why. But who is going to tell us what happened at the Murray City Council meeting last Wednesday?”
Valentine also appreciated Murphy’s emphasis on the responsibility journalists have to inform the public without intentionally inciting it. A key point in Murphy’s address was the importance of crafting a message based in fact, not opinion.
“A fact is an expression of reality,” Valentine said. “It’s not subject to opinion. Whether or not that fact is a good thing or a bad thing [is] a value question. That is subject to opinion.”
To Valentine, there’s no getting around it: people are going to gravitate toward content that confirms what they already believe. This human tendency puts a lot of pressure on the journalist, who can either play to that tendency for the sake of building an audience or strive to accurately and fairly report the facts.
Listening to Murphy speak about these concepts reminded Valentine of a criticism he’s developed for many editorial pieces in contemporary news, which is an affinity for the facts to be presented through an opinionated lens.
“When we say ‘don’t lose your sense of humor,’ it’s another way of saying ‘don’t lose your sense of balance and perspective,’” Valentine said.
As pleased as Valentine was with the event, he and the lecture’s steering committee are already working to evaluate the event and determine what steps ought to be taken to ensure an even more memorable evening next year.
