Journalists school themselves

Local journos — including all you citizen journalists out there in the

blogosphere — are invited to a Saturday morning session in which a

panel of “newsmakers” and reporters will talk about some hypothetical

yet ethically dicey news events and how they might be covered.

On the newsmakin’ side are former FBI agent Jeff Lanza, attorney Eric Vernon

and retired Marine Col. Bob Lewis. Representing journalists are Micheal

Mahoney of KMBC, Dave Helling from the Star and Chris Hernandez from

NBC Action News.

Kansas City Press Club hopes the session might be a little like the Fred Friendly Seminars. Friendly was the legendary one-time president of CBS News who, among other now hard-to-imagine feats of network-news bravery, teamed with Edward R. Murrow to expose the rotted soul of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Here’s a clip of biology professor Lee Silver and Meredith Vieira dealing with a hypothetical in which they’d lost their beloved daughter and wonder whether to clone her:

Mahoney, Helling and Hernandez, you guys better be good. The pretend ethical dilemmas pile up at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow (May 9) at KSHB TV headquarters, 4720 Oak. If you’re going, the Press Club asks that you RSVP to Bill Grady here.