The challenges faced by a journalist (2)

Public Sphere

Journalism is important as it catapults discussion of information into the public sphere. This social role gives a journalist the role of reflection and practitioning news, treating it as a practiced art form, understanding that it goes beyond mere entertainment.

Brian McNair states how:

'Analysts and critics may dispute the extent to which Britain has a properly functioning 'public sphere'...but all agree that such a space should exist, and that the media are at its core.'

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries Jurgen Habermas stated how, 'the advent of a public sphere of reasoned discourses circulating in the political realm independent of both the Crown and Parliament (Allan 1997: 298).

Granville Williams argues that the concept that journalism serves an informed citizenry is undermined by the fact that that audiences are often treated as merely consumers. He believes there are constant battles between:

• Community v Globalism
• Value v Price
• Society v Market
• Regulation v Efficiency
• Need v Want
• Citizen v Community

Reflective Practitioner

Lynette Sheridan Burns (2002: 11) believes that journalists must become reflective practitioners, if they are to avoid losing the importance attached to social responsibilty:

'Professional integrity is not something you have when you are feeling a bit down at the end of a long week. It is a state of mindfulness that you bring to everything you write, no matter how humble the topic...Put simply, given the power that you have to do good or harm by virtue of the decisions you make, under pressure each day, the least you can do is think about it. It means an active commitment in journalists to scrutinise theor own actions, exposing the processes and underlying values in their work while they are doing it'.

Pat Aufderheide discusses the need to produce 'a more self - aware journalistic culture'. With regards to the US television after the 9/11 attacks, he argues  that journalists do need 'time, money and imagination to experiment with the kind of  reporting that gives viewers an understanding of large conflicts and issues in the world, before they become the stuff of catastrophe.'

The importance of maintaining curiosity

One of the main challenges in journalism is said to be the retention of curiosity.

Martin Wainwright of the Guardian states how, 'the best journalists go into a situation with an open and absorbing mind.' He continues: 'The great virtue of a journalist is curiosity - a constant interest in what makes people tick, why has this happened, what is going on?'

Jane Merrick, of the Press Association believed that modesty is an important quality to possess: 

'Never think that you know more than the lowest journalist on the newspaper or agency, or wherever you start. Take everything on board. There's a balance between giving your newsdesk  the confidence that you can do the job, and being level-headed. It's a matter of getting the balance right. Journalists will respect somebody prepared to take it all on board.'

Abul Taher feels that journalism is ' a daily ritual of moral and intellectual compromise - it is a good job, but it is hard'.

Paul Foot, a long standing reporter, investigator and columnist has some useful points for  aspiring young journalists in the 21st century:

I think people should join the NUJ and if there isn't a union where they work they should do their best to try and form one. That's the first thing. The other thing is, don't lose your sense of curiosity or your sense of scepticism. Understand the way the industry works and do your best to apply yourself against that. The last thing I mean is young people rushing in and telling their editors how to run the world, that's absolutely fatal. There's nothing worse than the arrogant young person - who knows everything - going and telling people what to do. Even if they're right, which often they are, that's not the way to behave. That's the way to get sacked. You've got to keep your head, you've got to bite your lip, and you've got to do what you're told a lot of the time. Nine times out of ten it's better to go ahead and do what you are told, but there's a tenth time when it is worth resisting. The main thing is to keep your sense of independent observation as to what's happening around you, and to try to use what ability you have to get those things into print. Whatever, you see, there's a story behind it. There is a truth and there's no doubt there are facts. Facts are facts. you cannot bend them.'

The one thing to remember then is once you have that initial foot in the door, do as your told by your editor!

Agency

Agency refers to the extent to which individual journalists can make a difference to the news. 

The political economy model has developed the idea that it is the determining role played by economic power and material factors in creating media products.

Peter Golding and Philip Elliott state how: 'News changes very little when the individuals that produce it are changed' - quoted in Curron and Seaton (1997: 277).

Stuart Hall beieves that the media have 'relative autonomy from ruling class power in the narrow sense,' but emphasises the 'relative', as he states his belief that journalism tends to reproduce societies prevailing ideology.

John O'neil believes that although agency may be limited by economic structures it does very much exist:

'Many, I suspect, find themselves forced to compromise the constitutive values of journalism,

while at the same time insisting that some of the standards be enforced...Journalists, like other workers, are not totally passive in their attitude to their own faculties.'

Harcup argues that talk on agency needs to take into account the tension of between journalists, of different identities between individual professionals, as socially responsible citizens, and as workers with a sense of a collective identity.