East meets west: Refocusing communication and journalism education

Asia Pacific Media Educator Issue 16 Article 5 12-2005 East meets west: Refocusing communication and journalism education J. Herbert Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/apme Recommended Citation Herbert, J., East meets west: Refocusing communication and journalism education, Asia Pacific Media Educator, 16, 2005, 33-40. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/apme/vol1/iss16/5 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: East Meets West: Refocusing Communication and Journalism Education Commentary John Herbert Staffordshire, United Kingdom Writing, reporting, interviewing and editing remain the pillars of any journalism programme. The problem is what journalism educators put around these pillars, how they are made internationally relevant and given an intellectual foundation. The difficulty with journalism today is that it’s at the bottom of the pile in terms of what readers and viewers think of its trustworthiness. Something has to be done to redeem its credibility and social responsibility. John Herbert refers to a new book The Dao of the Press (Gunaratne, Shelton, 2005) in proposing an approach to journalism education that may reclaim the profession’s credibility. Asia Pacific Media Educator, Issue No.16, Dec. 2005 33 John Herbert: East meets West ... Most non-Western journalism programs today are judged by their proximity to the goals and standards of Western media and democratic thoughts. These principles often don’t easily relate to the principles and cultures of different national media and their views on their relationships with authority, the government and its citizens. The education offered to journalists in, for example, Europe or the United States should not become a travelling package deal for the Asia Pacific, the Middle East or South Asia. Journalism as practised in developing countries can and should have different foundations and functions that are shaped by different political philosophies that make those countries what they are. For years I have believed that journalism textbooks should be as localised as practicable, and targeted for local journalism as practised within respective cultures and nations. It’s thus pleasing to see the way journalism research is developing in Australia and Asia, where there are flourishing journals and books authored by local journalism educators every year. Even more welcome and a sign for the future is the collaborative projects between Australian and Asian journalism academics, the latest of which is a book Journalism and Democracy in Asia (Romano & Bromley, 2005) edited by academics from Queensland University of Technology and University of Queensland with chapters by journalism academics from Singapore, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, South Korea, and Japan. Then there are the increasing links with the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in Singapore. The bridging of East and West at the institutional level, however, needs to filter through to the curriculum. Local relevance is what is so often missing from journalism education. This is where a university in Hong Kong, Singapore, China and, indeed, Australia can really score. Journalism educators need to rethink the underlying philosophies of their teaching approaches to the elucidation of, for instance, the media process and democracy, ethics and freedom in the context of different cultural systems. Stop replicating Eurocentric or Americo-centric thought and practice. Develop an indigenous approach to journalism education and thereby create an indigenous form of localised journalism. This view has been strongly reinforced by a new book, The Dao of the Press (Gunaratne, 2005), which reiterates these thoughts and knits Eastern and Western philosophy to create a foundation for what could arguably be a more ethical form of professional journalism. The book poses possible concepts for journalism educators to consider. Just how difficult can be gleaned from comments by the author in the acknowledgements detailing the difficulty of even getting the manuscript read by reviewers, let alone approved for publication. This manuscript, wrote one anonymous reviewer, “ represents an ambitious attempt to propose a global press philosophy….that would synthesise a number of perennial issues ranging across philosophical, political, and even religious topics related to public communication” (Gunaratne, 2005: xiii). Another anonymous reviewer thought the manuscript was animated by “ the need to move away from restrictive Eurocentric ideas of the press and to adopt a more inclusive attitude drawing on the wisdom of the East” (ibid:xiv). 34 Issue No.16, Dec. 2005 Asia Pacific Media Educator The book points to the importance of a philosophical and ethical approach that in itself is global -- if a globalised approach to media is to be balanced with localised journalism based on national cultural journalistic morality. Because that is what is now needed, the dangers of globalisation and media convergence have to be counteracted by an underlying philosophy that drags journalism back from the depths, to which many say it has sunk, to the mountains of honesty, credibility and objectivity. Thus, the future of journalism education needs to be rethought to encompass these needs to save journalism, and bring it back to the world of responsibility and morality. To do this, more thought needs to be given to the core foundation of journalism practice and theory, and this is not the skill once so beloved of us all, but rather the foundations of ethics and honesty that arise from journalists who know, and are taught, how to think for themselves. The future needs thinking journalists, not just practically sceptical ones. Journalism has also to understand that global journalism practices aren’t necessarily the way of the future because each nation is fighting for its own continuing cultural and literary independence; what is not wanted is Coca Cola journalism all emanating in standards and approaches from the intellectual equivalent of Atlanta, Georgia. Hence my interest in The Dao of the Press, which looks at how Eastern philosophy is relevant to continual efforts to raise the standards of journalism globally and locally. Gunaratne says that his critical message is to apply the wisdom of the East to develop a “humanocentric theory” of communication, free expression and journalism: “Rather than waiting for the Occidental stamp of approval, Eastern scholars should engage in humanocentric theory building by methodically mining their indigenous literature”(APME 2004). By Eastern he is largely concerned with Indian philosophy based on Hinduism and Brahmanism. With Confucianism and Daoism, his approach, with a bit of tweaking, could apply to developing a better journalism curriculum that takes the best from both West and East, developing (...truncated)