Teaching Journalists: What a professor hopes his students have learned

What a professor hopes his students have learned
Teaching Journalists
By Luis V. Teodoro

I CAME to the teaching of journalism armed with both practice as well as a degree in English Literature, which once upon a time in the University of the Philippines (UP) required having a “concentration.”  My “concentration” was on creative writing and journalism. Perhaps the Department of English allowed this concentration because it believed journalism and fiction writing to be related; I don’t know.  But years later I would have occasion to say in my journalism classes that learning about and writing fiction prepared me both for the practice of journalism as well as its teaching.

I wasn’t always being facetious.  The language skills that creative writing hones can be as crucial to journalists as to poets and novelists. Indeed, the sense that writing is writing regardless of its intent or the form it takes helps explain why teachers of literature are often made to teach journalism. Though not completely right, this view is not wrong either.  Many creative writers also do journalism, and do it very well, as experience in the Philippines and elsewhere shows.

But journalism is not only about writing skills.  While the same discipline, skill, and care in writing a short story must inform the writing of a feature story, an editorial or an investigative report, creative writing is a world apart from journalism in that, while both are concerned with providing fellow human beings information about, as well as interpretations of the world, each discipline does it differently.

Explaining the world
In performing the essential task of helping explain the world, journalism deals with literal truth, while creative writing is “about” essential truth. In aid of the task of understanding the human condition, for example, a writer of fiction can create a character who is a composite of several people he or she has met, known, or knows. A journalist simply can’t do that, and future journalists must understand that while the skills of creative writing have served many journalists well, the “characters” in their stories must be real, living people, and every detail about their lives and the rest of the story verifiable.

I mention this because this is an important point to make in the journalism classroom. It is essential to the appreciation of journalism as a discipline of fact and verification.

Indeed the teacher of journalism has to untangle the many misconceptions about journalism and related callings like creative writing and public relations that students  in the basic course—in UP, Journalism 101—bring to journalism class. Public relations, for example, is obviously not journalism, but because it uses such journalistic skills as writing a news release, for example, students often find it difficult to distinguish between the two.

These distinctions must be made because of one crucial fact: the failure of the journalist to do so once he or she is in practice can lead to ethical confusion and the kind of professional ambiguity that allows such practices as reporting and commen-ting on the public figures one does “PR” for, or dressing up supposedly direct quotations to suit the demands of “style.”

But certain courses in other colleges of UP where I teach don’t help make the task easier.  Courses in “literary journalism” tend to celebrate the literary at the expense of the journalism part by emphasizing the “need” to be “creative” in one’s writing to the extent of tampering with the facts.

Students are for example told to find substitutes for “said”—a nice neutral word—for the sake of variety.  So students are made to say “noted,” “emphasized,” or “pointed out”—which are not substitutes for “said” because these words imply what the source said was true, he’s just noting, emphasizing, or pointing it out. Some students also end up so taken with the writing of Nick Joaquin that they ignore the factual inaccuracies in some of his journalistic pieces in the chase for that turn of phrase worthy of the late National Artist.

Respect for facts
Journalism teaching is about teaching skills, but it is also about teaching the kind of respect for the facts that drives the best journalists to scour musty  libraries and go over crumbling government archives, to spend hours surfing the Net, and to interview dozens of people to obtain information—and then to double-check its accuracy.  Writing well does matter—but it’s not the only thing.

In the Philippine context, a sense of outrage—over injustice, suffering, brutality—is as crucial for journalists as skills and a decent respect for the facts. The journalism teacher can help impart and nurture that outrage, but can’t do it alone.

While it is possible for the teacher of journalism to impart some understanding of the social, political, and economic realities of the Philippine setting—the “context” of both news and commentary—teaching the skills and ethics of journalism requires time, and enough practice by students to make these meaningful.

That means that the teacher of journalism has to rely on profes-sors in the other disciplines—in the social sciences, the arts, and the sciences—to impart the knowledge and understanding that lead to the outrage at injustice and other ills journalists need. In UP, that’s what the general education program and the electives in other disciplines are supposed to be for.

Not just a job
No institution is perfect, however, and few journalism students actually come to journalism classes armed with the depth of understanding of the context in which the journalist has to function that he or she needs. In that case, the journalism professor must fill the gaps himself, especially if he’s teaching the ethics of the profession.

The social context in which it has to be practiced as well as the ethics of the profession are the key pre-requisites to the teaching of the skills and values of journalism. The student thereby learns that journalism is not just a job to put food on the table, but primarily a responsibility that can help free men and women take control of their lives through the information that journalism provides.  Professional commit-ment and ethical compliance, on the other hand, make journalism practice humane as well as useful to others, and fair as well as relevant to the public journalism serves.

Many of the students I have had are today in the media professions as reporters, editors, researchers, feature writers, etc. While some may be faulted for professional or ethical failings, or both, in general the education they received at UP seems to have made them into the responsible professionals both the country and Philippine journalism need. It’s compensation enough for this long-time teacher of journalism. n

Luis V. Teodoro is a professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication. He is also a member of the board of trustees of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and a columnist for the BusinessMirror.

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