Research Interests
Jenn Burleson Mackay

My primary research interests are journalistic ethics and credibility.  I study ethics across multiple journalistic mediums including newspapers, television, online newspapers, and Weblogs. I currently am working to develop my own scale to measure a journalist’s ability to make on-the-job ethical decisions. I previously have studied how journalists use children as newspaper sources and evaluated the moral development of students with various degrees of ethical training.  I studied credibility issues particularly via online mediums as I strived to understand how individuals assess the trustworthiness of the news media. 

Relevant Research

Mackay, J.B. (August, 2007). The suffocating ethicist: A model of journalistic ethical constraints. Paper presented at the 90th annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, D.C.

Journalists are encapsulated by constraining forces that shape their ethical decisions.  Individual traits play a significant role in journalistic ethical choices, but additional influences come from the type of media that employs the journalist in addition to organizational, professional, and cultural factors.  This paper builds on previous models of structural constraints and proposes an empirical model of journalistic ethics.  The new model suggests that the media that employs journalists act as filters that exert control over ethical decisions.

Mackay, J. B. (forthcoming). Journalist reliance on teens and children.  Journalism & Mass Media Ethics.

This study considers the ethical implications of quoting children with particular emphasis on privacy and accuracy. A content analysis is used to examine how newspaper reporters quote children and teenagers.  The study found that youths most likely are named when they are quoted in the newspaper.  Teens who are 17 are the most likely to be quoted.  Youths most frequently appear in feature stories, and they most frequently are treated as experts who provide the reporter with factual information.  The researcher argues that journalists should consider the vulnerabilities of youths before quoting them.


Mackay, J.B. & Lowrey, W. (May, 2007). The Credibility Divide: Reader trust of online newspapers and blogs. Paper presented at the 57th annual conference of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA.

If news organizations hope to keep readers, they must remain credible in the eyes of media consumers.  This study considers how different online news formats can affect the perceived credibility of a news medium. Three news mediums were considered:  online newspaper, journalist blog, non-journalist blog. Using an experiment, the researchers studied the effects of media use, media dependency, and political interest on the perceived credibility of a news medium. This study also discusses whether exposure to a medium that is primarily institutional is perceived as more or less credible than a news medium that appears more individualistic.  Results showed that media use, dependenc,y and political interest were not significant predictors of credibility, but the non-journalist blog was found significantly more credible than the other two mediums.  The significance might be explained by the non-journalist’s blog unattachment to an institution. 

Mackay, J. B. (August, 2006). To publish or not to publish:  The Muhammad cartoon dilemma. Paper presented at the 89th annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, CA.


Newspapers inspired Middle Eastern controversy and violence after they published political cartoons depicting Islam’s Muhammad. This paper considers how newspaper editors could have used several ethical models to decide whether they should publish the cartoons.  Three types of ethics models were considered: philosophical, theoretical, and decision-making. The paper concludes with a comparison of how the models arrive at different decisions and under what conditions one theory might be more appropriate than another model.


Mackay, J.B. (August, 2005). Succulent sins, personalized politics and mainstream media's tabloidization temptation. Paper presented at the 88th annual conference of the Association for Education in  Journalism and Mass Communication, San Antonio, TX.

This study uses a computer-simulated experiment to analyze how mainstream journalism's use of tabloid writing techniques affects credibility.  Participants read four news stories online and rated their credibility using McCroskey's Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Tabloidized soft news stories were more credible than tabloidized hard news stories. Results suggest that newspapers may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership.



Mackay, J.B. (August, 2004). The media ethics necessity: Do journalism students need to study ethics? Paper presented at the 87th annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Toronto, Canada. Received the Carol Burnett Award for Best Student Paper from the Media Ethics Division.

This study used moral development research to investigate how media ethics courses affect the moral judgment of journalism students.  Journalism students at several universities in the Southeast were asked to respond to several journalistic ethical dilemmas. Each student’s answers were scored, using a technique based on the Defining Issues Test.  Results showed that students who study media ethics are more likely to use higher levels of ethical reasoning than students who have not had such a course.  Students who have taken a media law course also tend to use higher levels of moral judgment reasoning than those who have not. Other factors such as ethics courses unrelated to media, religion, politics, and gender did not have a statistically significant affect on student scores.


Other Research

Lowrey, W., Brozana, A., & Mackay, J. B. (forthcoming). Toward a measure of community journalism.  Mass Communication & Society.

Lowrey, W., Woo, C., & Mackay, J. B. (August, 2007). A test of a measure of community journalism. Paper presented at the 90th annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, D.C.

Lowrey, W., Gower, K. K., Evans, W., & Mackay, J (2006). Assessing newspaper preparedness for public health emergencies. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 83, 362-380.

Evans, W., Mackay, J. B., & Herring, L. (November, 2006). Journalists as Participants in Preparedness Exercises. Paper presented at the first Readiness Communication Conference, Manhattan, KS.

Lowrey W. & Mackay, J. B. (August, 2006). Journalism and blogging: a test of a model of occupational competition. Paper presented at the 89th annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, CA.

Lowrey, W., Brozana, A. & Mackay, J. B. (August, 2006). Toward a measure of community journalism.  Paper presented at the 89th annual conference of the Association for Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, CA.

Mackay, J. B. (February, 2003). Characteristics of colonial newspaper publishers. Paper presented at the American Journalism Historians Association  Southeast Symposium, Panama City, FL.