Some SMITHsters* and I went to a New York Society for Ethical Culture panel last night called “Ethics and Journalism: Should We Trust the Media?” The evening was in honor of magazine legend Clay Felker, founder of New York magazine, and a wonderful man who welcomed me into his home three years ago so I could show him the prototype of SMITH (the print edition). If you’re a magazine junkie, Clay’s your Michael Jordan. And I cherish the generosity he offered me with his time and advice.

The panel had an all-star cast (albeit one missing someone born in, say, the ’70s) that included legendary journalist Helen Thomas, CBS correspondent Randall Pinkston, Time mag’s managing editor Richard Stengel, NY mag’s Adam Moss, and Buzz Machine’s Jeff Jarvis.

The discussion took a few random directions, but the through line was: Is the media more or less ethical than in the past? That essentially became a discussion on whether bloggers and a more participatory reader/user experience is a force for good or evil. No one had much new or of note to say. As much as the crowd was applauding Helen Thomas’s every word  (and personally I was stoked to hear her speak, which I hadn’t before), she restated the obvious about the lameness of the press surrounding Bush and the war, and offered some grumpy old words about bloggers. By far the most interesting speaker was Jeff Jarvis, a former old-media guy (TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly) who’s become one of the biggest thinkers about our media future. Jarvis encouraged the assembled to quit trying to hold on to the old models (objectivity, as well as print newspapers, for example) and get excited by the new ones (user-generated content, in whatever shapes and forms and twists and turns it takes, and also bloggers).

He said that if you don’t believe in the power of the group to suss out the truth as well as to force quality to float to the top, then you don’t really have much faith in democracy. (I’ll blog to that!) “The media’s job is to let people judge the truth,” he said. “The natural state of media is not one institutional voice, but that we all have a voice and report together.”

Plus, you gotta love a guy who’s been watching Weeds on his ipod. (Note to fellow Weeds lovers: Click here for a great MySpace situation.) If I find a transcript of the event I’ll post it.

Speaking of the power of bloggers, here’s a word from the one who broke the Mark Foley scandal.

*We need a better name for people who write for SMITH: SMITH People? SMITHspacesters? The SMITHS? Whoever comes up with it wins one of our groovy limited-edition T-shirts, modeled here by my niece—despite my sister’s concerns that Foley will somehow now find her.