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| Kelly Ogbemudia Udebhulu |
By Kelly Ogbemudia Udebhulu
INTRODUCTION:
A warm
cup of tea in one hand and a national newspaper in the other hand and many
viewers focus on television at every tea bar in the cities, towns and offices
reveal the ways people are hungry for news in the morning because it is a must
to begin the new day with. It is the handiwork of editor, news reporter and broadcaster that feed these people every
day. Thus, the art of gathering, editing and reporting news to the audience is
known as journalism.
One of
the major functions of journalism is the "watchdog" role in every
sector of our daily lives. Understanding the concept of journalism means recognizing
the functions of media which are achieved through good journalism; accuracy,
fairness, balance and thoroughness. Furthermore, good journalism consists of the
intelligent assembly of relevant facts. Getting the facts to work with is not
an easy task. Yet, it is the most important responsibility of the reporter.
News gathering therefore concerns the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘How’ of recognizing,
choosing, assembling and doling out of information for publication in the
newspaper, magazine, radio, television. To achieve all this, requires the
special skill of nosing for news.
To
highlight on the introduction to journalism as a course, goals to achieve must
be enumerated and are:
1. An
Overview of the role of journalist in the society and governance,
2. Information gathering, organization and
discrimination for print and broadcast media.
3.
Journalists as agents of change and development.
4. Journalism and the New Media.
DEFINITION:
Journalism
covers a very large scope of disciplines as a form of communication in every
country of the World. Almost 87% of the World population read, listen, take
part and disseminate information daily in order to be informed, entertained and
educated effectively. People require information about the happenings in their
immediate environment and the outside World because person cannot be here and
there at the same seconds of time. Journalism has an important influence on the
ways people behave, their attitude and thinking towards one another.
Precisely,
journalism is the art of gathering, weighing and passing of information to the
audience in order to achieve the desired goals of entertaining, informing and
educating the audience. However, Richard Rudin (August 6, 2013) argued that
relaying of real events that is pure is not journalism, he further cited
examples that the broadcasting of proceedings in parliament, unvarnished and
unadorned by any form of editing and commentary is not journalism, to him, it
is merely relaying of an event. Other examples cited were a football
commentary. In his definition, journalism involves the sifting and editing of
information, comments and events into a form that is recognizably different
from the pure form in which they first occurred.
Journalism is about putting
events, ideas, stories, thoughts and controversies into context.
Under this prefix to journalism, one needs
understand that journalism has different types, journalists pass information or
news to the people through the print, broadcasting (radio, television etc.), and
online media otherwise refer to as the "new media".
Influences
of Journalism:
Galtung
and Ruge (van Genneken, 1998) saw the major influences on journalism on both
process and product.
i)
Ownership and control:
Journalists
are likely to fix in amended information that will agree with the ideology,
interest and ambition of institution, organization and government. Ownership of
an institutional media will definitely have an agreed ideology and policy which
must be adhered to by every journalist under the institution or organization
and government.
ii)
Economic Influence:
The
amount of finance put into the industry will determine the scope of coverage,
credibility of facts from fictions and willingness of the journalist to work
effectively or not.
iii)
Time, Space and Technology:
Journalism
has to be fashioned to a fixed deadline: conversely, journalists are compelled
to produce or pass information across to the audience in a less than "unadulterated"
state and before facts and other materials can be properly patterned.
Technology affects in no small
measures the level of broadcasting news and reporting events. A coverage of event or disaster in United
States of America will be far better and effective than a coverage any event
and disaster in a developing countries for a simple reason that USA attained a
higher developed technology more than most developing countries.
iv) Bureaucracy:
An
agreed principle, policy and ideology often dictate the aftermaths of
journalism in any institution, organization or country. Journalistic works must
pass through the agreed protocols before getting to the audience under
traditional journalism which the "new media" is gradually changing.
v) Elite
People: News about people varies from one person to another. A theft carried
out by a Hollywood actress is broadcasted more than a theft incidence involving
a common person.
A) Journalism and the New Media.
Around the 21st century, journalism is taking another dimension
and facial look which is caused by the improvement of modern technology. Prior
to this time, print journalism like newspapers, was the major new medium,
gradually, broadcasting emerged and subsequent online journalism which
comprises of blogging, streaming, internet television, pod-casting, web-casting,
even other unconventional ways of
reporting, broadcasting and dissemination of news, story and advertisement to
the audience emerged. According to Richard Rudin ( 2013), around the turn of the
twenty first century, there was much thrilled
talk about information technology, especially the internet journalism-and the
media generally- into a brave new World in which the customer, citizen or consumer would be
king: access to news and current activities of all kind would be available to
all, anytime, anywhere.
It is
vital to note that media firms are investing heavily in the technology; many
nursed the fear that traditional journalism like print and broadcasting will
fade out gradually. This is so with the prospect of multimedia technology or
converging technologies.
Just as
the millennium began, we have phenomenon of the burst of the dot com bubble;
the stock market, investment fund-holder and financial institutions suddenly
lost confidence on newspaper or broadcasting firms. Undoubtedly, the new media
has really given people things to do at leisure time with the use of the World
Wide Web, to the traditional journalists; it serves as major source of
information through researches and data collections for facts from fictions and
stories. Digital technology has freed journalists from embarking on too many
craft skills to produce effective and acceptable products because the
multimedia technology serves as boost to relaying of events, facts and
information to the public.
However,
the quest to relay news 24 hours to the public has made many journalists to be
tied to the news stand for hours and repeat unverified and untested information
to the public as no time free to go out for real sourcing of pure or original
news before sifting, evaluating and publishing took place (Purdey 2000). This
has turned most journalists to "processor" because all news became
breaking news as a result that the
source of the news is mainly from calls from the scenes of crime, events and
disaster to emergency services; fire, crime, hospital and accidents on the
road.
Cultural
commentators have criticized journalism for demeaning cultural definition of
things by ways of reporting and promoting those ways of life that are
culturally wrong from one region to another. Politics and judgment are
complemented often if not replaced technologically with material of “human
note”, corruption, sexual ferocity and human peculiarities (Williams, 1998: 51).
Though many view the emergence of the new media as variation to the traditional
journalism, its coming has do more good than wrong to the advancement of
journalism today.
B). Information Gathering, Organization and Discrimination for
Print and Broadcast Media.
One of the ways of gathering news is on the geographical
foundation. News are source primarily from the environment or a location that
are nearer to the base of the organization, except in exceptional cases like
serious crime or disaster happens like the tsunami of 2004, terrorist attack of
September 11 and so on. Most times, freelance journalists report such outside
news and it depends on the organization whether it is a large organization
where they have foreign correspondents.
The news media are further gathered on the basis of specific
locations that regularly have news, stories, reports such as hospital, police
station, law court, university, market place, Government building (both local
and national) and so on. These media news gathered here are provided by
specialists who arranged ways of gathering their news from these places
professionally. There is news that requires continuity which is basically
followed by specialists like cases in the law court involving a high profile
politician or Hollywood actor or actress.
News is organized on the basis of topic. In journalism, news is
presented organizationally such as sport news, politics, economy, environmental
news et cetera. Much news have a specific department that does not deal with
day to day news but produce news or articles of human interest such as romance,
education, entertainment and psychology.
One major source of news to any news media should be its own
staff. This is mainly true of local or state news rooms where the employees
live close or in the region of the news media. They are quickly connected to
events, stories and reports in the area and pass it for dissemination by their
respective new media.
c). Overview of the Role of Journalist in the Society, Governance
and as Agents of Change and Development.
We all recognize the fact that journalism is to inform, educate
and entertain the people and no society exists without news media. Journalism
plays important role in the day to day affairs of every government in areas of
policy making, execution and implementation. Before I proceed, it is wise to
look at what government and society are. The government is a system of
institution, laws, policy and processes that guarantee transparency, popular
participation, accountability and respect for the rule of law at all people.
Governance is different from government. Governance is a system while
government is an institution of the governance system like civil society,
private organization, media institution such as newspapers, television and
radio stations including associations of journalists. Society on the other hand
is a group of people that have a general thoughts living together in a
particular place or geographical location having an organized rules, values and
regulations that bind them.
Governance can be good or bad. It is good when it adhere strictly
to the rule of law and provide for the well being of the people in areas of social amenities like good health,
education, water, electricity, good road, railway, airport and respect for fundamental
human rights of the people.
Having
looked at the concept of government, governance and society, it is cleared to
recognize the role of the media in fostering the objectives of every government
and society. In most countries of the
World, the function of journalism is to holding the government accountable on
behalf of the people. Constitutionally, all state owned news media are provided
fair opportunities and facilities for the presentation and dissemination of
divergent news and information.
Getting
the government accountable is a constitutional prerequisite so that as the administrator
of the resources, wealth of the society and protectors of life, liberty and
property of the citizen, the government will be accessed to deliver the goods
and services for which they have been elected or appointed. The importance of the
media in how best or not the government or institution will implement its roles
can best be viewed in the analysis of Joseph Pulitzer, an American, citizen of
Hungarian who staged numerous successful crusades against bad governance in
government and business in USA in 1904, writing in The North American Review in
support of his proposal for the founding of a school of journalism, Pulitzer
summarized his credo as thus:
“Our Republic and its
press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited
press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can
preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a
mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as
base as itself. The power to mound the future of the Republic will be in the
hands of the journalists of future generations.”
From the above quotation, it implies that the media can build
and break a society depending on the part it plays in its functions.
Looking at the accountability from the functions of media
simply identify accountability as the process of taking responsibility for
actions and decisions by governments and public organizations as well by the
individuals working in such organizations. How these individuals manage the
resources or whether there is fairness and accurate dissemination of
information or news to the public come into mind for evaluation of performance
results in relation to constitutional rights, values and plans?
Media
make the people to be informed about decisions, policies and developmental
plans the government have embarked upon and their roles, responsibility and
effects to be realized easily. Hence, the society and the government do all it
takes to have transparency as a watchdog in the governance. They make sure that
easy access are granted to the media practitioners to gather, evaluate and
disseminate news to the people in order to acquire the aftermath effects
accordingly.
To bring a clearer picture for the roles of journalism in
the society, government and the people, the words of Swedish minister
summarizes it all this way.
“It upsets us when we read about politicians
who are forced to resign because of corruption. But at the same time we should
also be grateful that such information is published and reaches the public. In
1974 the so-called Watergate scandal eventually forced American president
Richard Nixon to resign. This, as you know, was mainly the result of efforts by
two journalists at the Washington Post. What if they had lived in a country
where they had not been allowed to pursue that story? What if, during their
investigative work, they had been told by their editor-in-chief that they should
stop their work immediately because the president is above criticism? Democracy
and poverty reduction can never be guaranteed by politicians alone, whether
they are elected or self-nominated. In the end, it is a question of people’s
opportunities to influence their situation, claim their rights and being able
to voice their concerns. But to exercise these rights presupposes that citizens
have access to information that has not been filtered, censored or distorted.
How can I claim my rights if I don’t know what they are? How can I voice my
concerns if I risk being prosecuted for doing so? These are a few examples of
why the role of media is crucial to the development of a country. The quality
of the information an individual is able to access will, by necessity, greatly
influence his or her ability to participate in the political process. In other
words, journalists have a responsibility towards their fellow citizens to
provide correct and analytical information.”
Madi Jobarteh (World Press Freedom Day symposium
on 3 May 2012 – TANGO Conference Hall)
To summarize in brief, introduction of journalism as a
course reveals the meaning of journalism, functions of the media and media
institutions, the “dos and don`ts” of journalism as a professional, responsibilities
of journalism to the society, government and economic organization. Skills to
arrive at qualitative information were highlighted. At the conclusive note therefore, journalism
promotes and enhances peace, justice, development and respect for human rights
in every nation internationally.
References:
1) Introduction
to Journalism: Essential techniques and background knowledge. By Richard
Rudin, Trevor Ibbotson (CRC Press, 2013)
2) The Birth of Broadcast Journalism: Turning Points in History By Edward
R. Mucrow and Bob Edwards. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. USA, 2004)
3) Mass Media Research: An Introduction - 4th ed. By Wimmer, R. and
Dominick, J. (Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, CA, 1994)
4) Allan, S. (2005) Journalism:
critical issues, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
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