Journalism education: To regulate or not to regulate?

By Kanchan Kaur

Every now and then you hear of someone, usually a minister or a bureaucrat or a judge, expressing the need for regulation in journalism and in journalism education. The events follow somewhat like this: something happens—some callousness on the part of the media, or the inauguration of a conference on media ethics—and this person (minister, bureaucrat, etc) is asked her/his opinion and that leads to statements that say ‘journalism must be regulated’ or ‘journalism education must be regulated’. A few noises are made, some debates are held and the whole thing dies down. Until the next time.

What is it about journalism that makes people want to shackle it, limit its reach and probably kill its practitioners? The fact that it speaks truth to power, points out that the emperor has no clothes?

It is only a very liberal, or liberated society that can actually follow Voltaire when he said that he might not agree with what you say, but would defend to his death your right to say it—even if it probably wasn’t really Voltaire who said that.

And, most of today’s world is far from liberal, or liberated as the last few days in Paris have brought home sharply to us.

Yet, many young people from very comfortable, quite politically indifferent backgrounds flock every year to journalism schools across the country—big and small, popular and the not-so-well known, private and expensive, and government-run. When you can’t really speak your mind (and, you’re presumably in journalism because it is the freedom to express that you value most), why would you want to take risk in a profession that does not often seek a formal qualification from you?

Perhaps that is just it—the appeal of the Bohemian in the profession. Or, is it that daily 15 or 60 minutes of fame, especially if you are in broadcast? Or, the possibility that at the end of a long career you could write a book about your times interviewing the underworld don or the president of the most powerful country in the world? Or just that adrenalin rush when you are pursuing a story and you know it’ll make splash because it is so good?

But, are all journalism schools geared to taking youngsters to a point where they understand what a news story is, are able to produce one quickly, under deadline pressure, while at the same time examine it thoroughly for fairness, balance and objectivity? I’m not so sure. Let me hasten to add, certainly not for lack of effort on their part.

Most undergraduate journalism programmes are ambitious, but most of them are mass communication programmes where journalism is only one subject amongst a host of others—advertising, public relations, films, theatre, marketing. And, because in most of these schools courses are taught by academicians, the student gets an overall view of the profession, but not really anything that will prepare her for what lies in store if she decides to work in journalism. Let me also add that a few undergraduate programmes are doing their best within their restrictive parameters to give students extra opportunities to test the waters.

The burden then, of actually preparing a student for life in journalism lies with the post-graduate programmes—diplomas or degrees. Again, several post-graduate programmes continue to deal with mass communication in the main, with very few of them focusing specifically on journalism. Obviously, the emphasis is diluted and the course, spread thin.

What then is the solution? Start a board of journalism education, draw up a curriculum and insist that journalism schools follow it? Or, let journalism education be like journalism itself—dynamic, with several good days and some off days, some moments of utter shame and some others where it rises, shining, beacon-like, for the churning might result in a cleansing?

I remember a conversation I had with a colleague after we’d both heard about the depths another journalist had plumbed. We wondered, as we often do, whether that would be the end of good journalism as we knew it, and how people who had no scruples at all could enter the profession and rise in it.  “Yes,” said D, “they might seem to rise in it, but just keep this in mind—this profession cannot entertain the completely scruple-less. They will have to go, sooner or later. Look back and see if they haven’t, in all your years.”

And, that is true. The ones you were ashamed to recognize as your colleagues, the ones who sought and gave favours, the ones who shocked a younger you with their lackadaisical attitudes to ethics—where are they today? At least the ones I can remember, nowhere really—haven’t heard of them in a long time. Isn’t that then a good parallel to draw for journalism education, too, then? After all, good journalism, and good journalism education are all about truth, and the freedom to express it in ways everyone may not like.

About the author:

Kanchan Kaur is Vice Dean, Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media (IIJNM), Bangalore.