Professor, Wayne State University
Lee Wilkins is a professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Wayne State University. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where she served on the faculty from 1990 through 2013. She is the co-editor of the Handbook of Mass Communication Ethics, and the co-author of the college media ethics text Media Ethics: Issues and Cases, now in its 8th edition. She is a member of the founding editorial board of the Journal of Mass Media Ethics (now the Journal of Media Ethics) and has served as both associate editor and editor of that publication. Her research interests focus on ethical decision making, the application of feminist ethical theory to the problems facing reporters and writers, and the potential insights that recent research in neuroscience provides on developing universal, professional norms. She earned her doctoral in political science at the University of Oregon, her masters in journalism from that same school, and holds a bachelor in journalism and in political science from the University of Missouri. She is a former newspaper reporter and editor and also served as panelist on the weekly radio program Views of the News which airs on public radio station KBIA.