An Unrefereed Electronic Journal of Summaries of Papers Presented at the Journalism Education Association Conference, Christchurch, New Zealand, December 6-8, 1995
Opening Session
Richards, Ian, JEA President's Address: Avoiding Coming to Grief Over Intrusion into Grief: Teaching Ethics to Journalism Students
Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4:
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
E-mail Addresses of Participants in the Conference
This electronic journal is edited by Charles Stuart <stuartc@zeus.usq.edu.au> and put on the Internet by Stephen Purcell <purcell@usq.edu.au>. It was last updated on 18th december 1995
Avoiding Coming to Grief Over Intrusion into Grief: Teaching Ethics to Journalism Students
by Ian Richards <ian.richards@unisa.edu.au>
presented at Opening Session, Study Centre, Wednesday, December 6, 1995, as part of JEA President's Address
Sheridan-Burns' 1994 survey found that all our courses take ethical journalism seriously, and that all courses give high priority to producing ethically-aware journalists. at the same time, though this survey found a great diversity in what is taught and how it is taught -- there isn't even common agreement on what ethics in journalism actually means. Our approaches to teaching ethics fall into three fairly distinct categories -- the meta or philosophical approach; the normative approach focusing on codes and regulations; and the applied approach which gives greatest attention to case studies and hypothetical dilemma.
The reality, of course, is that none of these approaches is perfect. The philosophical approach, which makes students aware of Imannuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and rule utilitarianism, deontological ethics, and so on, gives them a framework to understand where values come from, but can be criticised for being too theoretical and too far removed from the practice of daily journalism. The normative approach focusing on codes and regulations is perhaps the most accessible to students studying journalism, and draws attention to the most common problem areas. However codes in general have been accused of many things -- Drucker's charge that they provide " figleaf for the shameless" is only a starting point -- and in Australia the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance's (MEAA) draft code has raised a considerable number of contentious points about everything from content to enforcement. Finally, the case study approach to ethics has also attracted many criticisms, ranging from the difficulties many students have in extrapolating principles from particular case studies to the charge that they don't provide students with a sufficiently developed ethical framework.
In my opinion, part of the solution to the inadequacies inherent in the various approaches is to develop our own initiatives. I also believe there are several other points that those of us who are concerned with teaching journalism ethics should bear in mind:
(1) I think it is vital for us to develop and maintain an on-going dialogue with each other on this subject. While most of our members have had extensive first-hand experience of the ethical dilemma associated with daily journalism, few of us have been trained in ethics or, indeed, have studied it at an advanced level. One of the functions of the JEA conferences is, I believe, to facilitate such discussion, and I'm delighted to note that this conference's programme includes an ethics forum on Thursday.
(2) We need to acknowledge that the ethics component is one of the strengths of our courses. Few of those who entered journalism via a different path have much awareness of these ethical issues, and few are equipped to provide leadership in this area in coming years. At the same time, the system of journalism training in Australia is in the process of being freed up, and increasingly we will find ourselves under challenge from private providers. While some of this competition will no doubt be of a high standard, I am reminded of the head of one private short course in the UK who was asked how much time he spent on ethics. "Oh, about an afternoon", came the reply. Obviously, our courses will continue to offer rather more than this.
(3) The reality is that the ethical pressures won't simply go away. There is already plenty of evidence that journalism is not insulated from the increasing demands for accountability arising in most areas of society. Not long ago Apps identified the three central areas of ethical concern for Australian journalists as being respecting confidences and protection of sources; the portrayal of violence in news and current affairs; and the different models of journalism practised in other countries in our region, from Indonesia and Singapore to Fiji and China. To this list I would add the issue of privacy, including and perhaps especially the privacy of the recently bereaved and those who have undergone major trauma.
(4) Allied to these demands for accountability are pressures on various institutions to become more accountable and ethically responsible. As a result, our universities are increasingly adopting codes of ethical practice which have implications for the way we approach both research and teaching. In some cases, these codes of practice may considerably complicate the approaches we adopt to research and teaching.
(5) In developing our various approaches to ethics teaching, it is important that we appreciate that we are not alone. Many other vocationally-oriented tertiary fields of study -- from business to medicine to accounting and physiotherapy -- face ethical dilemma, and those who teach these courses are becoming increasingly aware of the need to equip their students to tackle the ethical dilemma they will inevitably confront after graduation. There are lessons for us to learn from their experiences.
(6) We also need to be aware of the ethical complexities arising through the phenomenal expansion of the Internet. What are the implications of this development for the role of journalism and the function of journalists? Given that a reporter's sources will increasingly be electronic and that material will therefore increasingly be able to be downloaded and used without attribution, what are the implications for a host of associated ethical issues, from relationships with sources to plagiarism and accountability?
(7) Finally, we need to examine and re-examine just what it is we are trying to do. Just what is the role of journalism and journalists? Where is it all headed? And what does this mean for journalism education. Conferences such as this one provide us with a great opportunity to consider all these questions and, perhaps, even come up with some answers.
by Grahame Griffin
presented in Session 1, Wednesday, December 6
I don't want to spend this paper crawling through epistemological and ontological thickets in an attempt to answer the question I have just set myself, especially when others have preceded me (Alvesson 1995, Burrell and Morgan 1989, Chia 1995, Cooper and Burrell 1988). For example, in his survey of qualitative research methodologies, Alvesson argues that while the data collectors may believe that their conclusions are based on scientifically or objectively obtained data, the interpreters would contend that such data are dependent on the 'researcher's ideological, political, ethical and moral views and opinions as well as on the textual, narrative style used to characterise the research process....' (1995: 42). The difference is that while the collectors fail to acknowledge that their results are influenced by a host of social, cultural and ideological factors, believing instead that these have been cancelled out by the scientific method, the interpreters at least aspire to clearly and freely admitting to the more subjective nature of their inquiries and the contradictory and contingent nature of social reality, relying on the coherence, breadth and depth (thickness?) and persuasiveness of their descriptions and analyses. Incidentally, Alvesson recommends a 'personal style of wrtiing' for interpretive 'research texts which facilitate a dialogue with the reader and stimulate open and fee discussion with the research community' (1995: 52). I have tried - I hope not too self-consciously - to adopt such a style in this paper.
This debate and these issues have been around for a long time among journalism researchers who have tackled the nature of news, the upshot being that they have largely rejected or at least made problematic the 'objectivity' pardigm as it applies to journalists and journalism (Murdock 1982, Schiller 1981, Schudson 1991, Tiffen 1989). It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that so many journalist researchers investigating the practices and procedures of journalists become either 'objective' data collectors in the traditional mode or somewhat limited and unadventurous in the way they approach thier topic, content, it seems, to rely on the positivist, behaviourist and functionalist traditions of social science research as still practised in the major American schools of journalism and recorded assiduously in the Journalism Quarterly. (For a similar observation concerning health communicators, see Tulloch and Lupton 1994.)
Even those researchers who have adopted an ethnographic, participant/observation approach to the study of journalistts (Gans 1979, Rosenblum 1978, Tuchman 1978) might be classified as data collectors rather than interpreters in the sense that they have subscribed to the paradigm of the objective observer who records and reports on the 'natives' thus following in the footsteps of the classic anthropologists. Is it any wonder,then, that the anthropologists of journalism returned a 'structuralist' verdict on the journalistic enterprise, emphasising the influence of imposed regimes of routines and other 'constraints' while paying less attention to the role of journalists as 'agents' working and scheming both with and against the 'systems' that employed them. Perhaps one shouldn't blame these researchers for not rising to the challenge of the debates in cultural anthropology over the status of the objective observer and the need for a more inclusive and self-reflexive approach to field work when such debates only got started in the 80s (they are ongoing - see Jeffcutt [1994], for example). Nevertheless, these oft-quoted projects remain the benchmark for much contemporary research into journalists and their work-places.
The case I've been arguing so far arises out of some recent excursions into organisational theory which has been experiencing a series of paradigm shifts away from a functionalist systems or structuralist approach that describes how organisations 'work' towards an interpretive methodology directed towards an understanding of organisational culture and symbolism. The former relies on traditional social science methods to observe and measure organisational activities, behaviours and attitudes, including such matters as job satisfaction. The latter, taking its cues from developments in cultural theory and cultural studies, is concerned with the construction of meaning through the use and manipulation of symbols. It explores the subjective means by which organisational actors make sense out of their conditions and experiences through the cultural artifacts they produce, the stories they tell, the metaphors they employ, the rituals they perform (Eisenberg and Goodall 1993, Reed and Hughes 1992).
My own research experiences have convinced me of the productivity of these kinds of explorations. In my study of Australian press photographers I attempted to combine both traditional quantitative survey techniques with a more interpretive, 'qualitative' investigation of how and where photographers see themselves in the scheme of thigns. This involved not only the analysis of answers to open ended questions, but talking to and observing photographers at work and sifting through what photographers have said or written about themselves in photographic journals and the like. Although the quantifiable data derived from the survey questionnaire had its uses I can't help but feel, in hindsight, that a greater concentration on the qualitative side of my research would ahve provided more insight into the working world of the press photographer.
References
Alvesson, M. (1994) 'Talking in organizations: managing identity and impressions in an advertising agency', Organization Studies, 15, 4: 535-563.
Burrell, G. And Morgan, G. (1989) Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis, Aldershot: Gower.
Chia, R. (1995 'From modern to postmodern organization analysis', Organization Studies, 16, 4: 579-604.
Cooper, R. And Burrell, G. 'Modernism, postmodernism and organizational analysis: an introduction', Organization Studies, 9, 1: 91-112.
Eisenberg, E.M. and Goodall, H. (1993) Organizational Communication: Balancing Creativity and Constraint, New York: St. Martins's Press.
Gans, H. (1979) Deciding What's News, New York: Pantheon.
Jeffcutt, P. (1994) 'From interpretation to representation in organizational analysis: postmodernism, ethnography and organizational symbolism', Organization Studies, 15, 2: 241-274.
Murdock, G. (1982) 'Large corporations and the control of the communication industry
by Keith Windschuttle <kwin@ozemail.com.au>
presented at Session 1, Study Centre, Wednesday, December 6.
There are at least three characteristics of journalism which any education program in the field should uphold. First, journalism is committed to reporting the truth about what occurs in the world. Journalists go out into society, make observations about what is done and what is said, and report them as accurately as they can. Journalism upholds a realist view of the world and an empirical methodology. Second, the ethical obligations of journalists are to their readers, their listeners, and their viewers. Journalists report not to please their employers or advertisers nor to serve the state or support some other cause but in order to inform their audiences. The measure of journalists' success is their relationship with their audience. Third, in the print media, journalists should be committed to good writing. This means their writing should be clear and their grammar precise. In our society it is journalists and sub-editors who are the front line standard bearers for clarity and precision in writing.
In the vocational training in journalism that occurs in Australian tertiary education these characteristics are all upheld. In practice, they are taken so much for granted that they form an implicit background rather than the overtly stated principles of journalism education. However, in most of the media theory that is taught within Australian communications and media degrees none of these principles are upheld. In fact, they are specifically denied, either by argument or by example, by the dominant intellectual field that has reigned in media theory for the last 15 years. The methodologies and values of journalism are undermined, contradicted and frequently regarded as naive by the proponents of media theory. In those institutions that teach both journalism and media theory within the one degree, the result is a form of intellectual schizophrenia among students and staff alike. But even in those journalism schools which are fortunate enough to be able to avoid this material, it remains a completely unsatisfactory state of affairs where the practice of professional education is overshadowed and denigrated by the dominant theory about the same industry.
In this paper, I want to argue that the body of work called media theory does not deserve the academic standing it has and it has no place in professional education for the media. Moreover, it is self-contradictory and intellectually incoherent. Its success derives from academic fashions and politics rather than logic and scholarship. In fact, of the two, the underlying principles of journalism education have by far the greater intellectual and scholarly integrity.
By 'media theory' I don't mean the political and sociological studies of journalists or the media that were familiar before 1975, nor the fairly wide range of empirical studies that have been done of the economics and ownership of the media. I am referring to the body of theory that accompanies the field called 'cultural studies' and which today, as both academic appointments and the current standard undergraduate textbooks clearly demonstrate, has swept all before it.
(Windschuttle devotes the next three parts of his argument to: "Cultural studies, structuralism and the mindless audience"; "Postmodernism, poststructuralism and the fictional audience"; and, "Incomprehensibility as a sign of greatness". The final part is headed:)
Should Journalism abandon media theory?
If media theory has been so bad for so long, should journalism educators campaign for its complete removal? Should the degrees that felt once obliged to include some kind of contemplation of the nature of communications revert to teaching professional practice only, with 'theory' limited to some of the pre-1975 types of occupational studies I mentioned at the start? If there were no alternative theoretical approaches, the obvious answer would have to be yes. However, the total loss of media theory would be a great pity because the study of the media has the potential to raise some really important and interesting questions about the nature of human society and of human beings themselves. In my out-of-date and out-of-print book, The Media, I tried to address some of these issues. For example: why do people watch so much sport? why does the news focus on bizarre forms of death rather than the real threats to life? why the obsession with the deviant rather than the normal? why are soap operas so popular? how do people become popular heroes? While I would still defend the underlying methodology of that book -- empirical and non-idealist -- I now think most of the answers I tried to give to the above questions were largely misconceived. Nonetheless, I still believe that these and many other questions are worth pursuing both in the general sense of creating a better understanding of humankind and in the specific sense of producing better-informed media practice. For instance, we still don't have a good answer to the questions, what is news? Yet it is obvious that journalists and editors, not to mention readers, would all benefit if we had.
As I indicated before, one of the reasons the cultural studies movement became so powerful was that it not only offered an approach to the study of society but philosophical underpinnings in epistemology and ontology as well. While you would never know it from the interests of most academic departments in the humanities and social sciences in Australia, in recent years a movement offering a wholly different perspective on the study of society has been burgeoning that has the potential to offer a similar combination of both philosophic grounding and innovative methodology. It currently goes under the names of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology or neo-Darwinism. I should point out that this approach has nothing to do with Social Darwinism of the late nineteenth century which misused Darwinian concepts to support racism and white supremacy. Sociobiology is an inquiry into human beings from a cognitive perspective, that is, it studies the way our evolution has adapted us to process and respond to the information we get from the world. It has a number of qualities that many who are weary of postmodernism and poststructuralism will find attractive. It offers a realist rather than an idealist view of the world. It uses scientific methodology instead of textual analysis. It believes the social sciences can be integrated with other sciences instead of remaining logically separate. It accepts there is a common human nature and rejects cultural relativism. Through the work of Stephen Pinker it has already developed what is clearly our most illuminating approach to the study of language. What's more, it finds the news and entertainment media very fruitful territory in which to conduct research. For instance, one of the recent papers of the leading neo-Darwinian, Jerome Barkow, explores the links between our innate concerns about social stratification and the gossip about celebrities and royalty that dominates women's magazines and television interviews.
In mentioning this movement at the end of this paper, all I have space to do, obviously, is drop its name. My point is to add one final argument to the case against cultural studies. Media students who are set the Cunningham and Turner book as a text are likely to read it and believe that there is no other way the media could possibly be studied. It is not a book that examines competing methodologies nor, indeed, countenances any questioning of its authority. Yet, as the recent work in sociobiology shows, there are completely alternative and, in my opinion, far more viable approaches now emerging. So, in their confidence of their own monopoly of the subject matter, the members of the cultural studies movement have demonstrated yet another way in which they have got it all wrong.
Journalism Education and Modernity
by Myles P Breen <m.breen@csu.edu.au>
presented at Session 1, on Wednesday, December 6
The article 'Journalism and Modernity' which was published in the last edition of the Australian Journal of Communication makes very large claims on behalf of the cultural studies movement regarding the teaching of journalism in University departments of communication. It is not merely a theoretical piece, but, as is basic to the current cultural studies method of operation, a political one. For as Gibson (1995, p. 95) demonstrated in the same edition of the journal, "foundational claims with respect to truth are frequently substituted with a similar order of claims with respect to power". Not to put too fine a point on it, if the thesis put forward is accepted by university administration, quite a few former professional journalists who have settled into the academy will be handing over their places to former English teachers who have become experts in cultural studies. Of course, the operative phrase is: "if it is accepted".
Conclusion
In summary, John Hartley starts by describing Journalism "as the sense-making practice of modernity" and claims it is the "most important textual system in the world." He claims that "only drama competes with it."
Journalism, he goes on to claim, "is important not only because of the pervasiveness of its product, but because of its power to influence events."
He claims that it can be argued that journalism is so big, there is no such thing as "journalism" in the singular. There is no "journalism" out there because all the different things that can be called "journalism" are all different. The only thing they have in common is that they can be called "journalism."
Not only is there no such thing as journalism but there is also no journalism education. No proof is provided. The argument is circular. I think that this is a good place to leave the subject because this is where we came in.
For journalism educators, John Hartley's piece "Journalism and Modernity" is of some concern, not merely because it denigrates the whole idea of journalism education and journalism itself, but because our efforts of many years to gain credibility with the industry, should the piece be taken seriously, would suffer a setback. Should Hartley's thesis ever gain currency with industry leaders, they will be very reluctant to commit their efforts and resources to our programs.
For the working professionals, if they think we are associated with this type of material, all their worst suspicions about the legitimacy of courses in today's universities would be confirmed. And who could blame them?
Gibson, M. (1995). 'Being political' in communication and cultural studies: Theorising the Pacific Rim. Australian Journal of Communication, 22(2), 95-107.
Hartley, J. (1995). Journalism and modernity. Australian Journal of Communication, 22(2), 20-30.
How to Become a Journalist -- in 15 Weeks
by Nigel Starck <nigel@unisa.edu.au>presented at Session 2, Room B, Wednesday, December 6
It would pay many of us to prepare for an intelligent, aggressive and -- quite possibly -- damaging assault from private enterprise journalism training schools. That's my message to this conference, where representatives from the universities enjoy a certain comfort zone in terms of potential customers, and potential employers for our output.
To understand what we might well have to encounter in Australasia, I'd like to share with you my observations of privately run ventures in England. In particular, I'd ask you to look at the speed with which they turn out their product. This display advertisement has been appearing the quality British press:
Qualify as a journalist with a nationally recognised NVQ [National Vocational Qualification] Core Skills Certificate. About 92% of our trainees find work in journalism within three months.
On our award-winning 15-week journalism course. approved by the NUJ [National Union of Journalists] and Periodicals Training Council, you discover how to write news and features. You also learn interviewing techniques, media law and design...
To take your first step towards a journalistic career ... write to The Journalism Training Centre, Mill Green Business Park, Mill Green Road, Mitcham, Surrey.
Three of these 15-week courses are run during the year, with each student paying fees which -- to simplify the figures and rebates and permutations -- works out like this:
The Journalism Training Centre admits 30 students per intake. Last year, the total admission ceiling of 90 was achieved easily, with some 3000 applicants sitting the literacy-based entry test.
I was introduced to another example of private enterprise training on the south coast of England -- the Westminster Press program at Hastings. Media organisations have, for the past 15 years, sent their recruits there on a 20-week industry pre-entry course.
This journalism bootcamp places emphasis on English usage, media law, newswriting, treatment of news releases, and keyboard operating. In the 20 weeks trainee journalists also receive 225 hours of shorthand instruction and have to achieve a speed of 100 wpm.
The pressure is going to be even more intense in 1996. There's been a management buy-out of the Centre. The location will stay the same but the name will change to The Editorial Centre -- and, in line with Mitcham, there will be three 15-week courses per year.
As a practitioner, and not a theoretician, within the Journalism Education Association, I must preach some academic heresy by saying that universities, as institutions, are often at odds with the demands of mainstream journalism. University regulations and operating procedures offer:
Back home in Adelaide, there are some indicators -- minor as yet -- that we could be feeling some pressure from private providers. But would people countenance the fees which The Journalism Training Centre charges? The reply in Mitcham was:
"No-one in the UK would pay 4000 pounds for a 15-week course until we started up. But for the right service -- and that means a job in journalism, quickly -- people will pay a good price."
INTERVIEWING TECHNIQUES USED BY MEN AND WOMEN IN REGIONAL RADIO STATIONS IN QUEENSLAND
Female Journalist: Now as I was lying in bed last night thinking what I should ask the thinking man's symbol.
Clive James: I knew this was a sexy show.
Female Journalist: Well, it is, it always is.
Clive James: What were you wearing?
Female Journalist: (Laugh)
Clive James: What are you wearing now? You see I'm an alternative to sex. (Laugh). I think I'm that kind of man women are dreaming of while they are having sex, thinking there has got to be something in life more interesting than this.
Female Journalist: I don't know, I thought you might have a tip for some of the fellows up here to follow in your footsteps. (1995)
My project could be organised under three main categories:
(1) A study of the ways in which the media interview has been described and theorised in academic literature, and in particular the categories or genres of interviewing that this literature has produced;
(2) Next, making use of this study, and my evaluations and critiques of these categories and genres, I have researched interviewing techniques used on radio in regional Queensland. This has meant producing a considerable body of research material (video and audio tapes and scripts).
(3) Finally, I am going to be analysing that research material in an attempt to evaluate the ways in which interviewing techniques and practices are mediated by questions of
(a) Gender, and
(b) Interviewing Modes and Work Culture (i.e. Face-to-face or telephone interviews, and ABC or commercial stations).
In this paper I am going to be dealing with just one area of my research -- the question of whether interviewing techniques are specifically gendered. This will involve discussion of verbal and non-verbal practices, and will be supplemented by extracts from the video material I have collected.
As the excerpt from the Clive James interview suggests, there is a sense in which any media interview is going to be mediated, to some extent, by questions of gender. After all, imagine how that interview would have gone if the interviewer was male. What I want to do in this paper is to look, very briefly, at the relationship between gender, on the one hand, and media interviewing techniques and practices, on the other. Of course the gender of the talent is also going to be a major contributing factor to the interview as was also demonstrated by the above excerpt.
Sally White In "Reporting in Australia" suggests that people "subconsciously expect different communication behaviour from males and females ... a female interviewer such as television journalist Jana Wendt is seen, for instance, as a contradiction. This contradiction is articulated in her nickname, the Perfumed Steamroller..." (1991: 83-84). It would seem from this Queensland study that the traditional stereotypes such as these are no longer the reality: at least that is the opinion from the journalists themselves.
Generally my research contradicts the traditional gender stereotypes of interviewing practices and techniques. The only journalist who used the more aggressive or confrontational techniques generally associated with men, for instance, was, in fact, a woman. And while her style obviously changed to suit the different interviews, or different interviewees, her challenging style sometimes emerged even in some of the "softer" interviews.
The one area where interviewing techniques could be read as being strongly gendered was with regard to non-verbal communication. Non-verbals or body language make up a large and important part of any conversational interaction. Research on the relationship between gender, linguistics, social interaction and communication generally "credits" men with more aggressive verbal and non-verbal skills, while women are portrayed as being more supportive and polite. It was found in this study that generally the perception of the use of non-verbals or body language more closely followed the traditional gender stereotypes, and that in practice men are still more likely to use conventionally confrontational non-verbal cues, and women almost exclusively prefer to use techniques that can be read as empathic. Of course with a sample group of 16 these findings are by no means conclusive.
How can we describe or characterise women interviewers use of non-verbals? O'Connor (1970) believes "Women use (the direct stare) as well as men, but often in modified form. While looking directly at a man, a woman usually has her head slightly titled" (1970: 9). This tilted head (commonly attributed to female journalists such as Jana Wendt) was one of the few kinesetic behaviours associated only with women in the texts explored. Key laments that while she "searched for descriptions of sex differences in paralanguage and kinesics", she found "surprisingly little that is of substance" (1975:108). What she did find and document was that head tilting (to one side) was common with women, and that males favoured the head being tilted forward. This in fact, was also the finding of this study, where there were many examples of men using the direct stare without modifying it with head tilting. Some of the women in this study, however, were found to use this technique. The following example is from the female journalist who admits to using "traditional feminine" techniques, which, as will be seen, includes head tilting and smiling.
With regard to other gendered stereotypes: Gender research into conversations and interviews almost conclusively attribute women with talking less and listening more. In the interviews under study, however, this gender difference did not appear, either in the case study interviews where journalists were asked to analyse their own style, or in the actual interviews.
My research found that general perceptions of the use of traditional gender stereotypes are changing, though not perhaps in respect to non-verbal techniques. Male interviewers were still seen to be more "aggressive" with their body language, with female journalists using "feminine" techniques such as head tilting and smiling. Flirting was thought to be one technique specifically used by women, but this not apparent in my research.
What is interesting is that while the evidence of the interviews, and of the comments from journalists, indicates that there are some residual gendered techniques and practices, there is perhaps more evidence to suggest that these distinctions are disappearing. After all, the only really "confrontational" interviewer I came across was --- a woman. If there is a discernible tendency (and this is, after all, a very limited study), it is in the way interviewers, both male and female, make use of supposedly "female" techniques identified by one of the women journalists in order to get better results from the talent. - GAIL SEDORKIN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Key, M.R. (1975) Male/Female Language, Metuchen NJ: Scarecrow Press.
O'Connor, L. In B. Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.), (1975) Language and sex: Difference and dominance. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
White, S. (1991) Reporting In Australia, South Melbourne:MacMillan.
* All excerpts and examples are taken from a database of audio and video recordings, and scripts, collected in the period from July 1994 to December 1995. The database consists of interviews conducted by the journalists in this study, and from case study interviews I conducted with the journalists.
How Many Students are Graduating from Australian Journalism Courses?
by Roger Patching <rpatching@csu.edu.au>
presented at Session 3, Room B, Wednesday, December 6
This paper is based on a comparative study of the 22 vocational University-based journalism courses in Australia, including four newcomers who are yet to produce a graduate.
One area which has troubled me, since the explosion in journalism courses in the former Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs) sector in the early Seventies, and more particularly since the 'mini explosion' of new courses in the Nineties, has been how many students have been graduating from the vocational courses big and small around the country.
According to several experts there are about 300 entry-level jobs in journalism each year, many of which do not go to journalism graduates. Yet, I found that 840 students completed journalism studies of varying lengths at 18 journalism courses in Australia. Broken down State by State, it shows New South Wales with five courses graduating 275; Queensland, also with five courses, graduating 185; Victoria with three courses graduating 195; Western Australia's three courses graduating 110; South Australia's course contributing 35 graduates; and the ACT course adding another 40.
I also found that at about 2,350 students enrolled in journalism programs for the first time at the beginning of 1995. However, the two biggest programs, at Deakin and Queensland Universities, had already experienced big drop-outs by the end of the first semester.
Even erring on the conservative side, at least 4,000 students were enrolled in vocation-based journalism courses at Australian universities in 1995. None of the Course Co-ordinators I interviewed has seen a drop in their quota in recent years. For those who have a course quota (as opposed to those who take all comers), their quota has either stayed much the same in the past five years, or has increased.
Journalism courses have been very popular in the past two decade, with the number of applicants far out-stripping the available positions. The courses enjoy high tertiary entrance scores for admission. The tertiary entrance score needed for admission dropped slightly this year (and has dipped again next year), reflecting a general downturn in the numbers seeking admission to the tertiary education sector generally. This downturn could lead -- as it did at CSU this year -- to pressure to take more students into our popular journalism programs.
But are we doing anyone a favour by increasing our intakes further to help beleaguered university administrations keep their numbers up? Through the Eighties CSU (then MCAE) had a policy of restricting quota of those doing journalism so we didn't flood the New South Wales market, only to see other courses spring up to cater to the un-met demand for places.
While I'm not suggesting that the number of courses should be restricted in some way -- it couldn't be done anyway, except by direct intervention by the Federal Government or by a university administration cutting a popular course, which is unlikely -- I believe we need to think seriously about the ramifications of more than 1,000 journalism graduates a year within two or three years. More research needs to be done into journalism graduate destinations nationally, the job satisfaction levels of our graduates and alternative job prospects. We should also be looking closely at what we are teaching and the impact now, and in the future, of the so-called convergence of technologies. Is there another 'new journalism' we should be teaching, rather than relying on traditional skills?
Determinants of Job Satisfaction Among Journalists:
A Case Study of Hong Kong
by Paul S.N. Lee, Jospeh M. Chan, and Chin-chuan Lee
<PLee@csu.edu.au>
presented at Session 3, Room B, Wednesday, December 6
This study examines journalists' job satisfaction in an Asian setting -- Hong Kong. In 1997, Hong Kong will be reverted to China by the United Kingdom. After 150 years of British rule, Hong Kong has become a Westernised metropolitan city. The media system of Hong Kong basically adopt the Western journalism model. Hong Kong Journalists are now experiencing a shift of political power from the British to the Chinese government. China's influence becomes increasingly dominant. This study addresses four specific questions. The first is how satisfied are Hong Kong journalists with their job in the run-up to 1997. The second question is whether or not there is a political dimension in Hong Kong journalists' job satisfaction. Third, whether job satisfaction affects journalists' plan to stay with their organisation? Last, what are the determinants of job satisfaction?
The data came from a survey of Hong Kong journalists conducted in 1990. We had to compile our own list of journalists through informants in 25 major news organisations. The list included 1,381 journalists, covering reporters, news translators, and editors in all sorts of media. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to a systematic random sample. The response rate was 75 per cent, or 522, of which 75% came from newspapers, 14% from TV, 8% from radio, and 2% from newsmagazines.
Discussion and Conclusion
The present study shows that Hong Kong journalists are generally satisfied with their job. The more they feel satisfied, the longer they plan to stay with the present organisation.
Political variables do not contribute significantly to their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The individual's political position or attitude toward democratisation in Hong Kong, or the news organisation's political position does not make a difference in job satisfaction. But the organisation's attitude toward democratisation has some impact on the journalists' job satisfaction. However, this variable may reflect a management attribute rather than a political dimension.
The findings in this study generally support the conventional implicit assumption that political factors have little to do with job satisfaction, even in a society like Hong Kong facing political transition and uncertainty. Job satisfaction seems to be a social, economic and psychological attribute, having little to do with political conditions. However, political factors may play a role in authoritarian and unstable societies as little is known of job satisfaction in these settings. More research in Authoritarian and unstable societies will throw light on the impact of political dimension on journalists' satisfaction.
The Jana Wendt Factor -- An Empirical Study of Myths and Misconceptions Among Journalism Students
by Mandy Oakham & Barbara Alysen
<oakham@deakin.edu.au, alysen@deakin.edu.au>
presented at Session 3, Room B, Wednesday, December 6
Despite the perceptions of low public esteem and indifferent pay there is no shortage of young people willing to study for three years or so in the hope of just getting a start in journalism. As a subject for tertiary study journalism continues to attract high enrolments. We looked at first-year journalism students in 1995 at Deakin University's Geelong campus.
A five-page survey form was distributed in class. 130 completed questionnaires were returned -- a response rate of 69 per cent. The questionnaire comprised 41 questions, most of which were open-ended and designed to elicit students' attitudes to the profession and its practitioners, their views on their chances of taking their place in its rankds, and their own patter of media consumption.
Of the survey group, not all intended to pursue a career in journalism or even major in the subject. Of the 130 respondents, 107 said they intended to major in journalism and of those, 64 said they were planning a career in the profession, while 34 had not made up their minds.
If we were to extract a profile from the data gathered our "typical" student would be a 19-year-old female who wants to work in magazines or the features section of a newspaper. Our student bases her media consumption around the key consideration of ease of access. She is therefore most likely to read a tabloid paper and watche commercial television news. She listens ti Triple J for the music, admires jana Wendt and thinks Ray Martin is a "nice man".
If this is our "typical student" then what challenges does she present to us as journalism educators? to return to the language of the marketeers, one of the biggest challenges must surely be the "value added" factor. If this type of student is our raw material we must be concerned with the extent to which we can implant the potential for critical analysis, along with the other vocational skills we hope to develop in these would-be journalists. It would appear that as educators we are facing a student body awash in a sea of stereotypes and superficial understandings of the profession they allegedly want to enter.
The results of oyur survey would also seem to call for a radical re-think for those of us who deal with first-year intakes. We are dealing with students who are completely immersed in the discourse of popular culture and we would be foolish to think that they will undergo immediate transformation. If it is a choice of Bart Simpson or Laurie Oakes, Bart is going to win almost every time!
Henningham has urged journalism schools to promote the concept of journalism education for life. To do so we must all be working with a professional model capable of adaptation to changing technologies, as well as increasing sociel demands for interpretation and analysis.
Ultimately this survey may show too that this model must also adapt to the demands and influences of youth culture in order to be truly viable and if we are to fulfil our brief as outlined by Brian Toohey, to "guard the guardians".
Learning the Values and Culture by Process
by David Blackall <d.blackall@uow.edu.au>
presented at Session 6, Room A, Thursday, December 7
This paper discusses some of the thinking that underpinned the design of an experiential or process-based television journalism course that was designed "to provide advanced skills in writing, editing, producing and presenting information for television". It had a TV news focus and involved process learning with the student producing actual broadcast-television product. These edu-docos have an educational context, while the style, methodologies and values employed in their construction arise from TV new and current affairs.
Assessment required students to "demonstrate they have received advanced training in research, design and technique. The subject, Television Journalism, was designed to provide the student with the necessary practical and intellectual components of television journalism. The works are broadcast by the Special Broadcasting Services, SBS-TV, and the South-East Asia carrier ATV through distance learning known as Page (Professional and Graduate Education).
Rationale of Course Design.
The Graduate School of Journalism, in which I work, has produced and broadcast 84 SBS-TV delivered Page courses. Each 26-minute episode has had little budgetary option but to hold modest screen values with a roving camera gazing on aspects of journalism. The methodology, with its use of a verite technique, arguable places most of the programmes into the broad genre of documentary. So the term edu-doco (educational documentaries) could be invented. Clearly, the works as half-hour programmes must be succinct, accessible and educational. But they can also be documentary in nature as they document the people and processes of journalism.
The on-campus subject, TV Journalism, was designed so that we could engage students in making some of the broadcast distance programmes. It was planned that the culture in this process would hold in high regard, creative freedom and values unusual for mainstream news, current affairs or documentary. The design intended to have regular, mindful and developing discussion with attention to certain notions on representation, the subject and the position of the journalist. One notion was that the codes and conventions of TV news and current affairs have grown out of the older practices of photojournalism, journalism and particularly, documentary film.
The subject/course would see the student journalist working as journalist/director, to produce a programme that in all ways involves a journalism process. Students were to make choices, select components of interviews, write a script and research possible new material for shooting -- adding to the already burgeoning amount of material available. This is a site for actual and real television journalism and these are the processes of TV journalists. They employ similar research techniques, are working with the same high-quality SP Betacam equipment experience similar nightmares and values, held in the legal, ethical, financial and time constraints of TV news and current-affairs journalism.
For the student, outcomes were to include the acquired knowledge, skills and perhaps some values of television journalism and production culture. They were to receive a copy of the broadcast programme that they might take as a show reel to job interviews and to include in their CV.
The coda
While the process to product learning environment in television journalism is probably the only way to provide the 'real' feel for how you make television, the approach is filled with the actual doing. There is little for reflecting. The paradox being, that to reflect or to even start to be reflexive requires a thorough study of film and journalism theory. This inevitably pulls a course or subject away from the practical into the realm of theory. In journalism, the two must be heard, and yet to achieve that in a single course is impossible. Perhaps all that might be achieved is to build some subject/course values that aim at simply reflecting the importance in these issues. We might then hope that enough of those values are taken with the student into the workplace where they might always consider some notions that this paper's voices have been suggesting.
News Production for Community Television
by Errol Hodge <e.hodge@qut.edu.au>presebted in Session 6, Thursday, December 7
The expansion of community television broadcasting in Australia is giving students a great chance to get real on-air experience in television news. Not only do they get the experience, but they can also add videotapes of their on-air work to the portfolios they show to potential employers.
I see this as one of the most exciting developments in the teaching of television journalism at QUT. I'm not the only one who's excited about it.
All the QUT students who've participated in a pilot program on Briz 31 in Brisbane this year have been enthusiastic, and some have commented that they found it the most interesting and useful aspect of the entire Journalism course. Some of them see it as great practice to be the star television journalists of the future.
This is what we've been doing:
On two days a week, every Wednesday and Thursday, under the supervision of one staff member, two students, working on a voluntary and non-assessable basis, have been rostered to prepare and present QUT Journalism News - a 15-minute program of news and current affairs for the community station. It's broadcast at a quarter to five in the afternoon, and repeated late at night.
The program consists of up-to-the-minute news reports, read to camera, together with one or two videotaped reports on current affairs issues or lifestyle subjects.
Of course, because the program is repeated late at night, we have to avoid rapidly changing stories, for example reports of cricket tests still in progress. (But the more cynical among us might point out that many of the so-called news updates played late at night on the major networks are recorded shortly after the early-evening bulletins!) One of the students has overall responsibility for editing the bulletin, and the other for reading it and selecting the videotaped reports.
What kind of reports do we choose?
The news reports in the program are selected from those prepared under staff supervision for `Afternoon Report, the half-hour news and current affairs program broadcast by QUT students three days a week on 4EB, Brisbane's ethnic radio station.
The videotaped current affairs reports are selected from those prepared for assessment by students of broadcast journalism.
As Briz 31 is a community station, the stress is on local stories, and stories about minority groups that perhaps wouldn't get an airing on network television.
Last semester, a Singaporean student chose for her current affairs report a topic of concern to one minority group - domestic violence inflicted on migrant women who speak little English.
Most of our Singapore students are Chinese, but this Singapore student, Roslinah Rasdi is Malay. Maybe her story was a first in an increasingly multicultural Australia - it was the first time I've ever seen a television reporter in Australia wearing the Muslim veil.
These programs are possible only because at QUT we have a very well-equipped and well-staffed outfit called Educational Television, or ETV.
ETV has a control room and studio equipped with an autocue, and staffed by a director, a camera operator cum floor manager, an audio mixer, a videotape operator and a production assistant. The student who isn't reading operates the autocue.
As well as getting experience in television production techniques, the students learn how to interrelate with the professional members of staff. It's important experience in working with people.
Next semester, we plan to increase the frequency of the program from two to three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. These are the three days the radio program, `Afternoon Report' provides the raw material.
We'd like to run the program five days a week, but the limitation is that on Mondays and Fridays there's no edition of the radio program, because our budget doesn't provide for the staff supervision that's essential.
We're exploring the possibility of providing a program on Mondays and Fridays limited to current affairs reports of the kind I've shown you. The introductions to these packages could be recorded in the studio after the recording of the full-length program on the previous Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
Last semester and next semester, more than 60 students are preparing such videotaped reports, so we should have enough to select from.
Another improvement that we plan for next semester is to reduce the number of reader-to-camera stories - that is, the number of talking heads.
We did this in a small way last semester by beginning some stories with full-screen graphics with titles introducing the story - rather like tabloid headlines. For instance, a story about police seeking a confidence trickster who had been on a crime spree could have begun with a graphic carrying the words,
Crime Spree:Conman Sought
But that's a rather crude technique, reminiscent of the early days of television news in Australia. Next semester, we plan to make greater use of ETV's extensive library footage. We could illustrate a story of the latest French nuclear test, for example, with footage of the shock bubble at the surface of the lagoon on Mururoa Atoll.
Needless to say, we'd have to ensure that unsuitable footage was not used, as it was on an Australian network this year when a shot of a mushroom cloud from an atmospheric test was used to illustrate a story about one of the latest French tests.
I've consulted the Program Manager of Briz 31 about what the station's directors want in the program, and he's replied that, because this is an alternative news program, they want less emphasis on negative news - stories about violence and conflict.
We'll look at this request, but I believe we've already achieved a healthy balance of good news and bad news. We want to be sure that the program doesn't suffer the fate of `good news' programs that have been tried in the United States in the past, and wither because they're too boring.
We don't know how big the program's audience has been, but there's anecdotal evidence that most people in Brisbane can get Briz 31, and that the audience size is not inconsiderable. As well as providing experience for the students, QUT Journalism News is a great advertisement for the pre-eminence of QUT television journalism education in Brisbane.
But the cost is considerable. As more Journalism courses in Australia and New Zealand produce news programs on community television, universities will face the problem of how to allocate their resources. Television journalism, with its high costs, will have to compete for funds with the demands of newspapers, radio programs and, increasingly, on-line publications, including audio and video, on the Internet.
Journalists v. Politicians' Propaganda:
Is Life Harder for Media Advisers Now?
by Richard Phillipps, Coordinator, PR strand, UWS, Nepean.read by Nigel Starck at Session 6, Room B, Thursday, December 7
This paper explores that present state of political media relations in Australia. A survey of media advisers (press secretaries) is being conducted among ministerial advisers in Australia's Federal Parliament and, in 1996, among their counterparts in the New Zealand Parliament.
Are media advisers the public relations people of politics? In Britain they are called press secretaries, in America they are also called in a derogatory way, "spin doctors".
Media advisers have not been researched much in Australia. They usually have a background in political journalism, get tempted by the challenge and the higher salary of the media adviser role and, after a year or two or three in what is a very demanding job, either return to the media or land lucrative positions in government or industry as public relations managers.
Political journalists view government and opposition public relations efforts directed at them as mainly propaganda, putting the best gloss on things. The media advisers hit back by saying that journalists try to put the worst slant on things -- when it suits them, when they think sensationalising the story will sell more papers or attract a bigger audience. Journalists, they claim, are adept at taking words and phrases, sentences and paragraphs, out of context; at resurrecting old or unused stories months later and running or adapting them without checking; at attending a meeting or debate in parliament, and picking up only an emotional aside or joke. That was the type of comment often made to me by politicians, their media advisers and contacts in public relations consultancies
The Interface Between Local Government and the News Media
by John Hurst and Michael Provis <jtch@deakin.edu.au, mpro@deakin.edu.au>presented at Session 6, Room B, Thursday, December 7
This paper presents the preliminary results of an Australia-wide survey of relations between local government and the news media. It is based on replies received from 135 local government authorities and 72 newspapers to extensive questionnaires sent to them in September 1994 (the results of the second round of the survey, distributed to hundreds of other local councils and newspapers in the early months of 1995, are still being processed and will be reported at a later stage).
Conclusion
The survey demonstrates an increasing trend among local councils to employ public relations officers and/or part-time PR consultants. Moreover, some of those councils who do not have trained PR advisers see clear benefits in employing them and would do so if they had the resources.
Some newspapers also welcome the trend as a means of developing an improved working relationship with local government and a better flow of information to the public. Most of the newspaper respondents also recognise the importance of local government news, as demonstrated by the high priority they give it above other kinds of news.
The survey also demonstrates considerable dissatisfaction by local councils with the performance of the news media, whether this is measured in terms of the adequacy or accuracy of media coverage. The other side of the coin is that newspapers are often disappointed with the quantity and quality of information provided by local government. They also complain about some of the petty restrictions on the flow of information such as agendas not being made available in advance of meetings and what they claim to be unnecessary closures of council and committee meetings. This aspect needs further investigation in view of differing State laws covering local government authorities.
Local government officers are also seen as being suspicious or fearful of the media and sometimes uncooperative. On the other hand, the media are seen as being focused too much on "conflict', 'sensation", and "negative news".
These conclusions are, of course, tentative, since they are based only on data from the pilot survey, with much work still to be done. Nevertheless, the sample is sufficiently large and widespread to show what media and local government think of each other and expect of each other. Responses from the second part of the survey, soon to be analysed, will provide further detailed evidence of how both sides see the relationship.
Raskols, Eruptions and Rip-offs:
Media Perceptions and Education Trends in the Pacific
by David Robie <journupng@pactok.peg.apc.org>presented at Session 7, Room A, Thursday, December 7
Most politicians in the region defensively cling to the notion that when reporting the Pacific the Australian and New Zealand news media are merely interested in sensational crime, disasters, and economic or business sleaze -- such as the Cook Islands wine box affair --or environmental debacles, such as the Ok Tedi and Bougainville mine disputes. Many important issues and developments barely get reported.
While there is some element of truth in this, particularly in a climate of shrinking news media resources for covering the region, for the most part the Australasian news media are damned whatever they do. Even those conspicuous attempts at in-depth and sensitive coverage are frequently unfairly criticised.
In fact, frequently when criticisms are made against foreign news media coverage of the pacific they focus on semantics. Often at the heart of criticism is a misconception by governments and corporations that somehow the media should only reflect the "good news", that it shouldn't be too negative or too picky -- especially when it is news for overseas consumption.
An example of good news given by Sir Julius [Chan] is the way the PNG people have "bounced back from the Rabaul volcanic disaster" of September last year. In other words, the news should perform some sort of quasi-public relations role. This perspective doesn't accept a basic rationale for news coverage of holding a mirror to society. It doesn't accept the argument that if well informed, a society is able to benefit from genuine participatory democracy, informed debate and wiser decisions. This point of view usually argues from a limited concept of what news is really about.
The bottom line for the news media is that journalism is information in the public interest -- not information in the corporate interest. Not information in the government interest. These are the hallmarks of public relations. Unfortunately, many journalists in PNG and in some other Pacific countries swap between public relations and journalism jobs with such regularity that it isn't surprising that real journalism -- information in the public interest -- is forgotten.
This happens in other countries too. But the news media organisations usually have sufficient depth among their senior editorial staff to shrug off losses to public relations. In most Pacific countries, the loss of one or two top reporters, particularly specialists, to public relations or press secretary jobs leave big gaps that are extremely hard to fill.
Development journalism
Currently there is a debate about development journalism in the pacific. But it is defined within the narrow UNESCO context and it is if some Pacific journalists have belatedly caught up with the dogma of the Sean MacBride era two decades on while most of the developing world's media has moved on. This is because so few journalists in the region have read the literature or kept in touch with development journalism trends in other nations. For example, if you ask most journalists in the Pacific to define "fourth World" news values they would stare at you blankly. Likewise there is little understanding of the historical role of radical pro-independence radio stations in the French territories of Polynesia and New Caledonia.
This is a challenge now facing the journalists and journalism educators of Papua New Guinea and some other Pacific nations; rather than the safe topics raised by politicians about how biased and shallow the Australian and New Zealand news media coverage of the region is alleged to be, it is an issue of how do PNG and Pacific journalists make themselves more professional, reflective and far less insular about their roles than they are at present?
How do they define journalism in the Pacific? Does it continue to be a copy of the Australian and New Zealand models with all the dilemma this inevitably brings? Or does it seek other more compatible models such as in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines with an increasingly diverse regional media?
The pressures on the freedom of the press in several countries are such that these changes are inevitable.
Indonesian Journalism in Waiting
by John Wallace <j.wallace@rmit.edu.au>presented at Session 7, Room A, Thursday, December 7
The content and style of contemporary Indonesian news media generally reflect the rigidity of the current system of rule, but the institution of Indonesian journalism, like other aspects of Indonesian society, is anticipating change. This paper outlines some of the forces and processes that appear to be having an impact on the journey of the Indonesian press to greater freedom. One of these 'forces and processes' is highlighted here. This is the radicalisation of journalists.
Perhaps the most significant force for change in the Indonesian press is the radicalisation of the younger generation of journalists.
Indonesia has had its full share of journalism heroes, journalists who have risked -- and sometimes lost -- their livelihood and liberty in pursuit of press freedom. There has been no shortage of inspiration for young journalists seeking a role model, and no shortage of injustice to protest over.
But the bannings of 1994 appear to be a watershed for radicalism. possibly because things were starting to look good for journalism in a new period of openness, the younger generation of Indonesian journalists, and some older ones still with hope, took the closures as an assault on the journalism they were trying to develop, and they acted accordingly. On June 27 last year, around 1000 women and men, mostly journalists, took part in the biggest demonstration Jakarta has seen in 10 years. They were eventually dispersed by troops, but the seed of discontent was sown. Other demonstrations took place, meetings were held and protests made. much of the anger was directed at the failure of the government-recognised Association of Indonesian Journalists, the PWI, to protest against the closures.
Disappointment with the official union led to you journalists setting up their own associations, and in August 1994 they formed the Alliance of Independent Journalists, which brought out its own, unlicensed publication, Independen. Anger amongst journalists increased in March this year, when police arrested the four men who are now in jail in East Jakarta. Soon after the arrests, the government-influenced journalists' union expelled 13 members and pressured publishers not to hire reporters or editors involved with the new alliance, AJI.
AJI has grown. It now has around 300 members and chapters in 10 cities. Many members choose to keep their membership secret, and there are many more sympathisers. An informal survey of the reporting staff of a leading English-language daily in Jakarta, showed all journalists surveyed sometimes read the Independen and that 50 per cent read it regularly. In an attempt to reduce government pressure on AJI, the publication of Independen is now carried out by a separate body, which moves around Jakarta ahead of the authorities, and changes printer when felt necessary. Its post office address is in Australia: PO Box 173 Surrey Hills, Victoria 3127.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to relate my analytic approach to the way ahead.
Put simply, I would argue that, while there is a lot wrong with Indonesian journalism, the basic foundations are improving, incrementally. And if we want to help bring about change, the best thing we can do is to engage with Indonesian journalism, not reject it.
The question of how western journalism can engage constructively with developing journalism was discussed at an international forum in Washington earlier this year. It concluded, in part, that people involved in providing international media assistance should be prepared for the long haul:
Measure success or failure in their terms, not ours; and take the long-term approach -- miracles don't happen overnight.
Don't be disappointed if you don't fully accomplish what you set out to do; sometimes just raising professional consciousness and starting a public debate accomplishes a great deal.
Reach a reasonable compromise between what is possible and what is ideal in some of these countries. We are not in the business of populating jails
The Production of Overseas News at TCN-9
by Ian S. Wright <iwright@csu.edu.au>presented at Session 7, Room A, Thursday, December 7
In the mid-seventies no commercial station had an overseas bureau. While the ABC used Visnews to complement its 12 overseas bureau, Visnews was the sole supplier of international footage to the commercial stations. One imagines that the job of the foreign editor in commercial TV newsrooms was quite straightforward. Visnews provided the menu -- it was just a matter of deciding what to take up. In fact stations took up quite a lot. Stone commented that because of the costs of the feed there was pressure to make use of it while Murray Masterton, then News Director of Newcastle's NBN-3, observed, that on average, stations used six minutes of the ten-minute satellite feed every day (Minogue, 1976, p. 12).
How different is the situation 20 years later in 1995? Certainly, on the input side it is extraordinary. Today's TV newsroom (and pay TV subscribers) are inundated with overseas news vision.
This paper looks at the reception, selection and production processes of overseas news items broadcast by Channel 7 Sydney (11am and 6pm bulletins) and Brisbane (6pm bulletin) and Channel 9 Sydney and Brisbane (6pm bulletins) over a five-day period -- February 6 to 10, 1995.
There are two significant way in which this study differs from previous studies of overseas news on Australian TV. In the first place, previous studies have been based upon content analysis of what has actually gone to air rather than any systematic comparison of newsroom inputs and outputs. Hence, while they have described and evaluated overseas news coverage and inferred from the coverage the selection processes and the values and constraints that may have guided selection, they have not been able to fully explain the relationship between what has been available and what has gone to air. This study aims to achieve this by combining content analysis of inputs and outputs with a description, based on first-hand observation, of the decision-making processes involved.
Second, previous studies have characteristically been underpinned by a largely unexamined evaluate framework whereby actual overseas coverage has been negatively evaluated in relation to an (often inexplicit) yardstick of an 'ideal' bulletin which would be 'comprehensive', 'balanced' and 'independently Australian' in its presentation of world events. The present study seeks to eschew this traditional evaluative framework. the notion that free-to-air commercial TV stations have a social responsibility to provide a comprehensive and balanced coverage of world affairs and present an 'Australian perspective' on them by generating exclusively Australian reports, while taken as a given by many media researchers, has always been contentious and, in the current environment of deregulation, multi-channel availability, news globalisation and multiculturalism (what is an Australian perspective) has been seriously challenged on many fronts.
Conclusions
At both networks the satellite feeds totaled about 16 hours of news footage over the five-day period. Both networks used about 12 minutes in their bulletins, leaving all the remaining 15 hours and 44 minutes of footage to be wiped just a matter of days after its logging. Some footage is used for FILE purposes and is stored at the stations for future use.
Both 7 and 9 appear to give a very high priority in their news operations to overseas footage. The CNN feed alone costs more than $600,000 a year, so the total cost of overseas feeds must run into millions. Why, then is such low priority given to international news in the bulletins? It is often just used as fillers for slow news days. And the same overseas footage is repeated with the same voice-over from 6am to the late news. Neither channel amends the running order or rotates with other items.
Despite the mass of material that is logged, there is very little information about our closest neighbour, New Zealand -- and Asia. Does this remind us of the original Visnews feeds?
Minogue, D. (1976) "The Visnews TV Show" Quadrant, March, pp. 9-12.
Journalism Education and the Internet: Conferring in Cyberspace
by Mark Pearson <mark_pearson@macmail.bond.edu.au>presented at Session 7, Room B, Thursday, December 7, 1995
This paper analyses posting over a week in November 1994 to two electronic discussion lists to position them as communication forms to assess their potential value to journalism educators and students. The lists -- Journet and Stumedia -- were examined using both quantitative and qualitative techniques.
During the week a total of 187 messages were posted to the two discussion lists --84 on Journet and 103 on Stumedia. Sixty-two (33%) were original postings, while 125 (67%) were replies to other participants' messages. This reflects the interactivity of the medium, but only 110 individuals sent messages; or, 9.1% of the 1202 subscribers to the two lists. The participation rate was higher on Stumedia (15.5%) than on Journet (6.8%).
Conclusion
The discussion list as a form of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) offers several points of difference as a telelogic medium, noted by Ogan (1993, pp. 192-193), including: providing a specialised medium for its members; being an arena for group decision making and allowing for new uses such as personalised data bases. Ogan mentions two other points of difference which are worth elaboration and qualification. First, she proposes that the discussion list she studied "connected people to one another in a new social community defined around the interests of its members and not their physical proximity (Ogan, 199, p. 192). If one accepts Rheingold's definition of community (and no doubt some will not) then it follows that the discussion lists under examination certainly possess it. Yet the physical proximity of the participants still seemed to have considerable influence. Some of the messages and discussions, such as the organising of the New Orleans' on Stumedia were so US-centric to the exclusion of international participants. This phenomenon encourages groups of members to form splinter discussion lists based around either sub-topics or locations. One such groups was formed to discuss visual communication. Another offshoot was created for Australian journalism educators: JEANet. A relevant factor here is the time difference between different regions of the United States and the rest of the world. While the communication may be virtually instant over the Net, many participants are not reading messages until they arrive for work the next day, often several hours after the message has been posted. This may leave them well behind the debate, perhaps too late to make a worthwhile contribution. This might explain in part the low level of involvement of non-US members of the two lists.
The second of Ogan's points worth further attention is her contention that CMC "did not conform to traditional ways of confirming participant status" (1993, p. 193). To an extent that is true, with the age and social status of the participants rarely mentioned and body language and voice tone indicators absent. However, gender is usually discernible in the name of the participant and ethnicity, while not apparent unless mentioned by the participant, is open to conjecture based upon the name, country of origin or institution of origin of the member. Participants also make attempts at replicating face-to-face communication by using textual graphics and codes to indicate humour or emotion. The sideways smiling face; the frown; and the wink; positioned strategically within text are examples. Technological developments in the incorporation of audio-visuals will undoubtedly bridge this gap further.
Discussion lists have the scope to offer a level of currency in the international scholarly community well beyond the limits of other information sources for journalism educators and students such as news letters, conferences and journals which might be weeks or even years behind in the intellectual debate or the technological development. Using a discussion list or direct e-mail to a target member an educator or student can glean first-hand expert information within hours, perhaps even minutes.
Nevertheless, potential disadvantages may limit the value of CMC to educators and students. First, the sheer bulk of correspondence over the period (46,840 words in text alone, plus many more in administrative notations) would be prohibitive to some, particularly those who already know the answers to many of the questions being asked and who have already solved the dilemma being debated. Second, any community -- "virtual" or actual -- must rely upon a minimum level of participation on the part of its membership. The notably low participation rates on the two lists prompt questions about whether they have ebbed below a critical mass required for fruitful ongoing discussion. Third, the dominance of discussions by both male and US participants may cause concern, particularly to those journalists and educators who are female or who do not share the common US perception of the socio-political role of journalism. Fourth, the relatively high usage of the lists for announcements evokes visions of a junk medium similar to the traffic in facsimile press releases which has become the bane of almost every newsroom. Fifth, reading and participation in such discussion lists takes time which might previously have been spent on other tasks. The field deserves a comprehensive time and motion study of discussion list participants to help evaluate the worth of the medium.
Journalism educators and students might weigh these potential pitfalls against the demonstrated benefits of membership of such lists; Rheingold's lauded personal, social and political impacts including the social networks, knowledge base and communion of the virtual community; the scope for journalistic and scholarly co-operation with distant colleagues; and the opportunity to keep pace with the speed of innovation in an ongoing electronic idea-mart. The choice is a difficult one, bit is indicative of the dilemma facing us all in an age of technological innovation and information overload. The exploratory study of just one week's postings to two lists indicates a field of data ripe for research in a variety of ways.
Ogan, C. (1993) "Listserver Communication During the Gulf War: What Kind of Medium is the Electronic Bulletin Board", Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Spring, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 177-196
Rheingold, H. (1994) The Virtual Community -- Finding Connection in a Computerized World, London: Secker & Warburg
The Internet -- How it may affect Journalism Education by Suellen Tapsall <<s.tapsall@qut.edu.au>> presented at Session 7, Room B, Thursday, December 7, 1995 The Internet is the buzzword of the 90s. Many organisations now have a presence on the World Wide Web (WWW). I do not believe it will replace traditional news outlets, however, it has introduced a new dimension to news-gathering and information dissemination. In Semester 2, 1995, Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) Journalism section piloted a project which took student-produced copy for a thrice-weekly radio news and current affairs program, and put it on the WWW, as a text-only news service. The experiment generated a number of questions about the future of journalism and journalism education. Control of the Internet and World Wide Web Pages First, one must consider the larger picture -- who is in control? QUT's policies on web page design are still evolving. Issues such as page layout, inclusion of audio and video, and use of graphics are under the control of technicians and computer programmers. This creates potential for conflict between those concerned about presentation of information (e.g. the layout of the web page to obtain maximum visual impact) and those concerned with the process of presenting that same information. The Internet as a News Source INFORMATION: The WWW is a major source of international information. It is possible to view on-line editions of papers from all areas of the world and to visit many countries and organisations. In certain states of America you can find out who was in jail overnight or who has been convicted of sexual offenses. The same depth of information isn't yet available in Australia. However, it is possible to go to the Australian Government Home Page and check out the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, find out who the politicians are and get biographies of federal parliamentarians. As more sites are added, journalists will be able to source a significant amount of information directly off the web. SOURCES: The Internet provides access to people who, in the past, we could not have contacted. Discussion groups provide an opportunity for people throughout the world to share ideas and opinions. As well, services like PROFNET put news gatherers in contact with experts from around the world in a range of professional areas. Tools like DEJANEWS instantly search thousands of discussion groups to find out what people have been saying on specific topics -- and provide the writers' names and e-mail addresses. This provides journalists with instant access to possible sources. The availability of this large number of sources means journalism educators will have to teach their students how to use access tools like NETSCAPE, LYNX and MOSAIC and e-mail packages. Also, students must learn how to evaluate the information they obtain. They will need skills and tools with which to assess the motivations of sources, and the quality and accuracy of their information. Journalism educators will have to focus even more strongly on teaching the importance of attribution and evaluation of sources. The Internet as a News Provider DESIGN: Many webmasters in organizations like QUT are not trained in page layout and design. Most are still designing traditional pages (i.e. the A4 page layout). However, most web browsers see only about one-third of a traditional page, and even less of a traditional broadsheet or tabloid publication. Therefore, it is not advisable to simply mark-up the front page of the local paper and put it on the WWW. Home pages on the web will become the equivalent of a publication's front page. These will need to grab the netsurfer's attention and entice them in to look further. This must mean at least the introduction of additional material to the traditional teaching areas of subediting and layout. MIX OF MEDIA: It is now possible to incorporate print, soundbites, moving images, graphics and photographs into the one document on the WWW, which means that some boundaries between the different elements of the profession are going to converge. This may not present a problem for those institutions like QUT, which still require journalism students to study both print and broadcast elements, but what happens where students specialize? Can a print-only student with no sound or video experience effectively publish on the Internet? Can a broadcast specialist write eye-catching headlines and effectively lay out a web page? LANGUAGE: Broadcast and print styles are distinctly different -- although the basic reporting skills must be common to both. Traditionally, print educators teach the inverted pyramid -- whereas broadcast style teaches the importance of getting the story across in the most direct way -- but not all in the first sentence. It may be that we will again see some convergence of the styles to develop some form of web speak -- a language catering for the individual requirements of the net and its users. Conclusion Teaching journalism requires the use of considerable resources. The Internet is also a major user of resources. An effective program incorporating the Internet would require considerable equipment. It would require considerable money and it would require staff who know how to use the Internet and can teach the required skills. Perhaps, though, one of the most important questions for journalism educators is that of balance. How do you fit this new media into already full journalism training programs? Students will need a grasp of sub-editing and layout techniques. They will need to know how to write a headline and what makes good vision and a good audio grab. Journalism educators must somehow integrate this new development while continuing to teach the fundamental elements already contained in journalism programs.
E-Journals, List Servers and Fexible Delivery
by Charles Stuart <stuartc@zeus.usq.edu.au>presented at Session 7, Room B, Thursday, December 7
This presentation is not so much a research paper; it is more a report on cyber-activities at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). It covers three areas: electronic publishing, list servers, and flexible delivery of journalism units. Some of the journalism courses represented here today have adopted most of what is outlined below but, because some courses are not yet plugged into the Net, this presentation goes back to first principles.
Electronic Publishing
For those interested in catching up on the developments in electronic publishing F.W. Lancaster's article in the Spring 1995 edition of Library Trends "The Evolution of Electronic Publishing" is a good place to start. At present USQ is using one of the four stages in e-pub outlined by Lancaster -- distributing text electronically which is the exact equivalent of the paper version -- and experimenting with the two most recent stages; e-pubs with search and data manipulation capabilities, and e-pubs that use some or all of such multimedia capabilities as hypertext, hypermedia, sound, and motion. In combination with the Visual Arts courses we have been successful in getting $450,000 to set up a laboratory capable of producing the fourth stage of e-pubs. The two immediate educational hurdles we are facing with our colleagues are:
(1) The Media Studies course has the most tenuous connection of all the communication-type courses with multimedia and this type of e-pubs. Yet, uninformed administrators see Media Studies staff as the coordinators of the multimedia courses and laboratory.
(2) The priority in expenditure on equipment is the construction of an internal network of speeds of at least 100mb. This means that video, sound, and other software can be transmitted between work station in real time. The machines that can be attached to this network, therefore, can be less expensive and be adjusted to use contemporary software without being junked.
Another major foray into e-pub at USQ is, of course, the e-journal for this conference. In 1993 John Franks of the Department of Mathematics at Northwestern University wrote a four-part article on e-journals. He answers several questions such as why do we need e-journals, why not just put each paper on the Internet by itself? One of the main advantages of e-journals is their speed of publication, so how can they be refereed? Franks suggests that e-journals may introduce a new stage in scholarly publication, before the publication of refereed articles. Journals such as the one for this conference could just be dismissed as a new form of vanity press. On the other hand, as well as attracting appendaged comments from the authors' peers, these e-journals could serve several other functions, such as stimulants to other researchers, and a market place for editors of paper journals in parallel fields who would not normally know of papers published in our field.
List Servers
From their first semester all our journalism students are taught the basics of the Internet and strongly encouraged to subscribe to several relevant list servers (see Flexible Delivery). This year only a few have been satisfied by the American-dominated journalism lists. The majority also thought that the content of JEANet was inappropriate because it was aimed at their lecturers. As a result I am about to launch a list server exclusively for journalism students in the southern Pacific. It is called J-ComRm, for journalism students' common room. Details of the list and how students can subscribe will be sent to course coordinators and other JEA members during the next couple of weeks. Please, please encourage all those students who can to subscribe. They are the only people who can make a success of this list.
Flexible Delivery
Following an experiment last semester, as from the beginning of 1996 all my units will have their own list server. Students will be automatically subscribed to the relevant list as soon as their enrolment in one of the units is confirmed. My experiment found that many students used e-mail capabilities for such anticipated functions as begging for extensions, and looking for last-minute bibliographies. However, some other frequent uses were not anticipated. For instance, several students sent advice/criticisms as soon as they had access to e-mail. The complaints ranged from the speed of my delivery of lectures (and some of the more colourful words used) to the relevant weighting of assignments.
However, I will be more pro-active in the new unit-based lists. Students will receive a couple of multiple choice tests on the net (which will be automatically marked by the server), the latest journal articles etc. that are relevant to their essay topics etc., notice of the latest audio/video recordings relevant to their tutorial topics, general feedback on assignments etc. etc.. As a result the scheduled face-to-face consultancies in my office will be reduced to three single hours per week and strictly enforced. Also there will be stricter sanctions imposed on students who fail to prepare for tutorials.
These list servers will also put external students on a more equal footing with internal students. But this will only benefit those who have modems (they already have to guarantee access to a computer before they can enrol externally). To encourage more external students to join the Net, the Vice-Chancellor's Flexible Delivery committee has approved my proposed experiment to offer external students a choice in two of my first-level journalism units. They can either participate in 13 cyber-tutorials (using COSY or similar real-time software) for each unit, or attend a week's residential school. The rationale being that the cost to most students of attending a single residential school is probably greater than the cost of a computer with built-in modem. However, this experiment cannot start until 1997 because the relevant regulations have to appear in the handbook, and the decision was made after the finalisation of the 1996 handbook.
At present we are trying to solve two immediate cyber-problems at USQ. The first will be solved. This is the training of colleagues in the new technologies, particularly those who are making budgetary decisions without the benefit of such training. The university-wide courses offered by the IT and library sections are excellent but have been found to be too demanding/comprehensive for some colleagues, particularly those who have drifted into our professional area from cultural studies backgrounds. The present solution is to offer short (15 min) training sessions each week by members of our department.
The second problem is going to need a much more complex solution. This is how to provide students with sufficient access to Netscape (and its descendants) and keep within our limited budget. IT is writing a simple program for journalism lecturers so that we can switch access to Netscape on and off in the students' laboratories, from our office computers. But this is only an interim solution. Suggestions from JEA colleagues are welcome.
E-Mail addresses of those who attended the Christchurch Conference
The following also attended the conference but as yet have no e-mail address