Gore to Speak at Journo Conference on 'Fabrication, Plagiarism and Confidential Sources'

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Middle Tennessee State University, more unknown than Final Four college George Mason University was two weeks ago (if you don't follow March Madness, they're still unknown), is going to host some famous journalists and one famous former vice president.

Reports the The Tennessean:

Several of America's most prominent journalists will address media ethics at a Middle Tennessee State University conference next week.

The conference, "Self-Inflicted Wounds — Fact and Fiction in Journalism: Fabrication, Plagiarism and Confidential Sources," runs Tuesday through Thursday. It will be hosted by the College of Mass Communication's John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies.

MTSU's conference will address many of the issues facing the media today, including ethical lapses, plagiarism and the use of unnamed sources, said MTSU journalism professor Ed Kimbrell.

Former Vice President Al Gore will kick off the conference with an address on media and democracy at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Tennessee Room of MTSU's James Union Building.

Later that day, Seigenthaler, a well-known First Amendment advocate and chairman emeritus of The Tennessean, will deliver the conference's keynote address, "The Self-Inflicted Wounds," at 2:40 p.m. in the college's Business and Aerospace Building.

Carl Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, will introduce a showing of the movie All the President's Men at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The film details the efforts of Bernstein and fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to uncover the Watergate scandal.