In the context of South Africa’s democracy the media have often been given the role of facilitating this flagship of equality. But in this pursuit, and 20 years on from the dawn of democracy, journalist Sylvia Vollenhoven asks “Where exactly is SA journalism headed?” in this article published on The Journalist. Vollenhoven probes us by asking if we can, and are, developing a truly South African Journalism. And determining what exactly that even means.

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In Zubeida Jaffer’s Position Paper published in 2014 for The Journalist [i], she states:

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It is perhaps appropriate to take this 20th year as a benchmark and assess where we are as a profession. What have we achieved and where have we gone wrong?

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In South Africa there has been a number of contextual changes (in both the state and media landscape) that have impacted the discourses about journalism education. In 1994 Guy Berger explains that “what’s also important is the fact that journalism in a democracy changes the kind of training every journalist requires,” (45). These changes sit on either side of pre-1994 and post-1994. Since 1994 there has been a shift in journalism education and Banda et al. (2007) describe transformation and private-public partnership as the influential discourses that guide these shifts. This is also cast in the backdrop of major economic and technological advancement through globalisation and new (digital) media. Berger goes on to explain that the democratic era “coincides with a shift towards bi-media, multi-media and the like, again with implications for training,” (1994: 45). Student journalists increasingly needed a good grounding in the fast developing technological demands that integrated photography, sound, images, web design, moving images, graphics and text (Berger, 1994).

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“In a higher education context, journalism is located at the nexus where the twin imperatives of intellectual knowledge relevant to the field and vocational training meet – demands that are frequently reduced to a crude dichotomy of theory versus practice,” (Prinsloo, 2010; Jones, 2014: 55). But this division is not new. In journalism education and training the question of how to balance theory and practice has been the object of debate and deliberation “since defeated Confederate General Robert E. Lee proposed including it in Washington College’s calendar in 1868,” (Caldwell, 2014: 51).

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Jones explains that curricula has developed around the provisions of technical and market-related skills for future journalists rather than an education around critical thinking, ethics, values, reasoning, problem-solving, argumentation and logic; “in other words, institutions can more easily “sell” vocational skills aimed at a specific career” (Jones, 2014: 55). This instills a single-discipline thinking that detracts from the interdisciplinary capacity needed to solve complex social and human problems (Jansen, 2010). This is largely due to the industrial and commercial imperatives (rather than the civic-minded and critical approach of university-based education), “resulting in a functionalist approach to learning as ‘training,’” (Banda et al., 2001: 165).

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Between 1959 and 1990s the emphasis on journalism education was predominantly centred on a cultural and/or media studies approach (with a neo-Marxist approach, adopted at many universities). The development over the course of the history towards a more skills-based approach has been a deviation from this neo-Marxist approach that considered the socio-political aspects of journalism. This contrast is described as one of the greatest dilemmas faced by South African journalism education (de Beer and Tomaselli, 2000; Steenveld, 2006; Jones, 2014).

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However, perhaps most encouraging in the South African journalism and media context, is that there is insightful and ongoing debate about the issue of ‘theory versus practice’ and a working towards revisions in journalism education that integrates critical thinking and skills with ongoing assimilation of new media and the importance of new technologies. In Caldwell’s recommendation of a paradigm that could fuse these supposed opposite preoccupations he highlights Kant’s (amended by Marx) words: ‘Theory without practice is sterile; practice without theory is blind.’ Caldwell sees the need for a better connection between journalism theory and its practice and argues for, alongside a few other scholars, critical realism — an emergent paradigm in the philosophy of science (Lau, 2004; Wright, 2011; Caldwell, 2014).

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Read the article here.

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WHAT DO YOU THINK? 

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Although these discourses are evolving and progressing, Pieter Fourie (2014: 49) explains that South Africa’s politics, economy, society and education have further deteriorated, even alongside ongoing discussions on journalism education and after over 20 years of democracy:

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The emphasis continues to be on journalism skills training, the industry continues to complain about the lack of skilled graduates, there are less employment opportunities and most of all, the quality of journalism continues to be questioned and mistrusted by the public.

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He argues that the continuous debates and deliberations on the theory and skills debate between industry and educators does not, and has not, contributed to a better quality of journalism. Slightly differing from Caldwell’s suggestion of ‘critical realism’, Fourie (2014: 50) suggests a theoretical and philosophical education, one with a focus on the nature of journalism as a semiotic construct, rather than an emphasis on journalism skills as the foundation of South African journalism education.

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He concludes that with the aim of a more intellectually responsible journalism, “discourse, dialogue, rhetoric, meaning production and representation should form the meta-theories and epistemological and ontological foundations of journalism education,” (2014: 50).

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The urgency of these considerations are due to, what Fourie (2014: 50) describes as, the “McDonaldisation of journalism” — where reporting has become shallower because of various factors in a virtual minefield where the authenticity, integrity and values of journalism are being tried and tested (Rabe, 2014). Rabe (2014: 57) suggests a direct counteraction that incorporates teaching a new generation of journalists with the resurgence of the past:

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...to write from a layered understanding of our country’s history in order to deepen democracy, in what can only be described as a still struggling, post-colonial, post-apartheid democratic dispensation.

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Rabe (2014) says that an awareness of the nuanced complexities of South Africa’s layered past and shared history will foster an ability to think inclusively by facing inward and outward at the same time. To accomplish this she proposes a journalism curricula that has a module which focuses on journalism/media history as a necessity.

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Final thought: perhaps in the pursuit of teaching future newsmakers a focus should be on journalism’s roots — its role in democracy. It is often argued that journalism is inadequately giving a public voice to civil society and is not listening to the majority of the public which perpetuates power inequalities that inhabit multiple spheres of social order. Emphasis should begin with equality on community level up to the highest forms of democracy and democratic rights in society, according to Fourie (2014: 50) and an ethics of attunement with a focus on listening to the people, highlighted by Garman and Wasserman (2017).