1.1 What is a journalist? Part A

Hello.

Welcome to this first lecture in our Citizen Journalism course.

My name is Margaret Simons.

I'm a journalist of 35 years experience and also Director of the Centre for

Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.

We put this course together partly because journalism is,

without a doubt, probably the fastest changing profession on the planet.

And one of the things that is definitely happening is that citizens,

increasingly armed with mobile phones and

other communication tools, are committing acts of journalism.

It's a good time to ask this fundamental question, what is a journalist?

And also to think about what the important principles of the profession are, and have

been, at a time when just about everything about how it's practice is changing.

And so in this first lecture,

I'm going to talk about some definitions of journalism from various sources.

If you like, the highest aspirations or principles of the profession.

Now here's one statement of those high aspirations.

This is drawn from the Media, Entertainment, and

Arts Alliance Code of Ethics,

which is the code of ethics that applies to journalists practicing in Australia.

But you'll find very similar ideas in just about every code of principles or

ethics right around the world in journalism.

As we'll see, you'll see the same ideas recurring again and again.

First up, respect for truth and the public's right to information.

Now, we could run a whole philosophy course on what we mean by truth.

As we'll see, journalists mean by truth a very practical

sort of truth rather than the philosophical truth.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.

The next idea is that notion that the public actually have a right

to information.

And Western democracies, of course, the idea of citizens being

informed goes hand in hand with the ability to cast a sensible vote.

But there is encapsulated in all sorts of documents of human rights, the notion

that people have a right to communicate about issues of common concern.

And journalists are key to the information chain.

The next little bit highlighted there is a phrase that's particularly powerful,

I think, and one of my favourites.

Journalists describe society to itself.

Now that's a really interesting idea, isn't it?

And it gives you some idea of the range of different ways in which it's possible

to be a journalist, obviously reporting public events, and politics, and so on.

But also entertainment, lifestyle,

the enormous array of things which make up a complex modern society.

Journalism is one of the ways in which society knows itself.

And therefore, is able to make decisions about itself and

about how human beings are going to live together.

Journalists convey information, ideas, and opinions.

A whole, again, a big range of things and this is a privileged role.

One of the things that arises because of the ways in which journalism is changing

is with that privilege is now becoming more broadly held or

more thinly spread across society.

Journalists search, disclose, record, question,

entertain, suggest, and remember.

All very powerful words, each one complex in their own right.

Journalists inform citizens and animate democracy.

Now, obviously, it is possible to have journalism without democracy.

Many countries in the world would fit under than heading including, for

example, China and other countries, as well.

But even there, the journalist's role in informing citizens is really

important to the ability of the country to be governed.

If you don't have an informed citizenry,

it's pretty much impossible to govern a big, complex, modern country.

Journalists give a practical form to freedom of expression.

And then, the important idea, that although journalists work in private

enterprise, their main duty is to the public, that they have these public

responsibilities, also that journalists scrutinise power but also exercise power.

And, therefore, should be accountable, which is part of the point, of course,

of having a code of ethics.

So that journalists can measure themselves against it, but also though so what

the public knows what it should be able to expect from professional journalists.

So, that's an Australian statement of these aspirations,

but they're not just limited to Australia.

The American journalists, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel,

interviewed dozens of journalists in search of ten elements which

constituted the heart of the professional, the principles of good journalism.

And again, we see that idea occurring; that a journalists first obligation

is to the truth.

Now, it's a down to earth kind of truth.

And as we'll see in our later principle, it begins with the idea of assembling and

verifying facts.

So we don't just report things which we believe to be true or

things which we've been told are true.

A journalist will do everything they can to actually verify the truth

of what's published or broadcast by talking to people,

by observing events, by accessing documents.

And that's the difference between somebody putting up a rumour on Facebook,

if you like, and publishing something as a professional piece of journalism.

Again, the idea of recurs that journalism's first loyalty is to citizens.

And that the pubic interest and the truth must come before the journalist's own

self-interest or indeed, that of their employers.

And again, the idea of verification.

Journalism's essence, these journalists said, is a discipline of verification.

Now, interestingly, Kovach and Rosentiel found that being impartial or

neutral was not necessarily a core principle of journalism.

It was the method that was objective, not the journalist.

Now, what that means is that the journalist may well start with

some opinions or some preconceptions about an issue, and

they may end with a strong point of view on an issue.

But in order to research them, in order to research a story,

they must go out into the world in an objective fashion, seeking truth, and

prepared to change their minds in the light of the evidence.

So it's the method which is objective, not necessarily individual journalists or

even the final result of the journalism.

This is an idea where we'll turn to later in this course.

Journalists must maintain an independence from those they cover and, indeed,

from their employers.

And so, journalists should not be captive to one faction in politics or

one part of business.

And this, of course, is one of the key differences between journalism and

public relations.

Public relations can be a perfectly ethical profession.

But, its first duty is, obviously, to the client or

the organisation which is employing the operative.

And then, the skills set can be similar between journalism and public relations.

The thing which divides them is the idea of journalists

remaining independent in order to serve citizens first.

Journalism has always served as an independent monitor of power.

It's not the only independent monitor of power.

Increasingly, we're seeing social media, for example,

also independently monitoring what powerful people are doing.

And that's if you're like the crowd or

ordinary citizens operating in that fashion.

But traditionally, journalism has been one of the main ways in which people

have been informed and been able to keep a check on powerful governments,

powerful business, and other people in society.

The idea that journalists form a watchdog, if you like on society,

and we'll report on corruption, on abuses of parents, so on.

This is one of the main ways which people are safe-guarded against tyranny.

Journalism must also provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

In other words, journalism and, perhaps particularly now when

we have social media and journalistic use of social media, media organisations can

provide a town square, if you like, where citizens can come together and

discuss issues of common concern based on the facts and work out ways forward.

That is a really important function of media, always has been, but

perhaps is newly powerful now in the social media age.

Now, journalism doesn't do all these things in

a way that is highly technical or difficult to read.

Journalists are not academics.

They don't publish in journals which only have a few readers.

They're reaching, or trying to reach, a mass audience.

And part of the role of a journalist is to try to keep the significant stories

interesting and relevant to the audience.

It is storytelling.

Storytelling is one of the most basic things that human beings do.

Journalism, though, is storytelling with true facts and with a purpose.

So one of the things that divides journalists from others,

who describes society to itself, is that journalists try to do it clearly and

in a way that is interesting and relevant to the audience.

Now here, is another idea or

principal of journalism which is related to that idea of truth.

Journalism must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.

This is also related to that idea of objectivity.

The American Journalist and Scholar, James Rosen,

who suggested that good journalism is like a map.

Now when we make a map, we bring all sorts of decisions to that process.

We could map all sorts of different things.

We can do a road map, or a map of waterways, or a map of population flows,

or a map of key buildings, which map we make is a value judgement.

But a map which is distorted, which leaves things out,

or which is out of proportion is really useless.

And so, again, journalism has this very practical relationship to the truth.

Journalism must reflect the world as it is, rather than,

as the journalist wishes it were or thinks that it aught to be.

Otherwise, it's not going to be useful to people.

And, the discipline of journalism is that good journalism should enable citizens to

navigate society.

It's a useful thing, good journalism.

And that is, again, about really a discipline and

an art of verification, a slavishness to the evidence, if you like.

Journalists must also be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

Again, this is related to independence.

They shouldn't be seduced by their sources.

Sometimes easier said than done.

They shouldn't be intimidated by power, and

they shouldn't be compromised by self interest or by taking bribes.

They should be independent, curious, and open-minded.

I actually think curiosity is, perhaps,

the core qualification to be a good journalist.

I often think I'm one because I'm fundamentally nosy.

And here is an idea, which has fresh power in the social media age,

in an age when most of us are armed with mobile phones,

with Internet accounts which allow us to publish to the world,

sometimes within seconds of deciding to do so.

It means that citizens too will be going out into the world and

reporting on it, describing society to itself.

So newly important, citizens, too, have rights and

responsibilities when it comes to the news.

And increasingly, more than ever before in human history,

ordinary people can and will commit acts of journalism.

That's one of the fundamental reasons for this course.

And we're going to look in the next segment about how the role

of the journalist emerged, how it's changed through history, and

perhaps think about how it might be going to change in our own lifetimes.

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