By
Professor, Mass Communications Department,
Moorhead State University,
Minnesota 56563
Abstract: This paper (presented at the 20th General Assembly & Scientific Conference of the International Association for Mass Communication Research in Sydney, 18-22 Aug. 1996) argues that the emerging concept of public journalism in the United States is very similar to the concept of developmental journalism that the West denounced during the debate on the New World Information and Communication Order. Many of the ideas of the MacBride Commission (1980), as well as those of the social responsibility theory of the press associated with the Commission on Freedom of the Press (the Hutchins Commission of 1947), have sneaked into the writings of those who advocate public journalism (e.g., Anderson, Dardenne & Killenberg 1994; Merritt 1995, Charity 1995) to rejuvenate American journalism that has failed to excite the readers. Just like during the NWICO debate, scholars are questioning the validity of the conventional news values based on what Galtung & Vincent (1992) call "occidental cosmology." Participatory communication and cultural identity are integral to both public journalism and developmental journalism.
Since the late 1980s, a public journalism movement in the United States has attempted to explain the faltering confidence in the mass media in terms of the media’s failure to connect the public with participatory democracy because of a dogged adherence to detachment. The movement has, inter alia, sought a redefinition of news values, questioned the value of objectivity and the ethics relating to it, pushed for greater involvement of journalists as active participants in the community, called on journalism to truly reflect the multicultural composition of the American society, and suggested that journalism should place itself within the discipline of communication. While the movement has the appearance of an intra-national development, the debate relating to it has clear international and global implications.
The background relating to the emergence of this movement pertains partly to the dwindling per capita circulation of daily newspapers. While the U.S. population rose 82.1 percent from 1946 to 1993, the country’s daily newspaper circulation rose a mere 17.4 percent. Circulation has dropped from 38.2 copies per 100 people in 1946 to 23.3 in 1993 (Gunaratne 1996). The Yankelovich Monitor survey reported that between 1988 and 1993 people’s confidence in television news dropped from 55 percent to 25 percent; in newspaper news from 50 to 20; and in magazine news from 38 to 12 (Merritt 1995a: xv). Commenting on this phenomenon, Merritt (1995a: 5) posits:
· Journalism in all its forms ignores its obligations to effective public life.
· That failure has been a major contributor to the resultant malaise in public life.
· Journalism should be – and can be – a primary force in the revitalization of public life.
· However, fundamental change in the profession – cultural, generational change – is necessary for that to occur.
While Merritt seems to place too much blame on the traditional practice of journalism, thereby ignoring the more vital obligation of the educational system to promote effective public life, his observations reflect the general recognition of the failure of the press to attract a wider audience through other solutions: readership research programs, new promotional programs, massive re-design efforts, as well as other efforts to mimic television.
The public journalism movement generally associates itself with a wider movement in several walks of life to address the central question of what makes democracy work or fail. That wider movement mirrors the writings of Benjamin Barber (1984), E. J. Dionne (1991), John Gardner (1990), the Harwood Group (1993), David Mathews (1994), Robert Putnam (1993) and others. However, the most influential among journalists was apparently the work of Daniel Yankelovich (1991), who shows "how insights into the way people make decisions can be turned into concrete newsroom goals for making those decisions easier" (Charity 1995: 3-4). Yankelovich outlines three steps that the public has to pass through to travel from mass opinion to public judgment ( Charity 1995: 4-9):
1. Consciousness raising: the stage in which the public learns about an issue and becomes aware of its existence and meaning. Journalists can help the public if they choose more judiciously where to focus public attention and presented them in user-friendly forms.
2. "Working through": the stage when people must abandon the passive-receptive mode (of the conscious-raising stage) and get actively engaged and involved. Journalists can improve the chances of keeping the process on track by reducing issues to choices, plumbing to core values, spelling out the costs and consequences of each choice, bridging the expert-public gap, facilitating deliberation and promoting civility.
3. Resolution: the stage that shows the successful end of "working through." Journalists can shore up people’s motivation by prodding action on the public’s choice.
While Yankelovich set out the framework for journalists’ engagement, proponents say that the theory behind public journalism has evolved from the work of a variety of scholars: John Dewey (1927), George Herbert Mead (1934, 1956), Robert Park (1955), James Carey (1989) and others. Anderson, Dardenne and Killenberg (1994) say: "Dewey envisioned a society of conversationalists who encounter and respond to messages as participants, not as news consumers" (p. 21); Mead regarded conversation as "the essence of human endeavor" (p. 23); Park asserted "the newspaper’s role in maintaining a Jeffersonian democracy" (p. 102); and Carey looked at conversation as the mechanism that "connects people to memory" (p. 29).
The proponents of public journalism, however, have deliberately or otherwise failed to connect their evolving concept to the work of the Commission on Freedom of the Press (1947), better known as the Hutchins Commission, or the work of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems (1980), better known as the MacBride Commission. Parisi (1995), for instance, points out that although public journalists do not appear to recognize a connection with the Hutchins Commission’s aims, "their work clearly enters similar territory." Shah (1996: 145) also sees a connection between public journalism, which he addresses as communitarian journalism, and developmental journalism, which he addresses as emancipatory journalism. The MacBride Commission was very much associated with developmental journalism. Because both the social responsibility theory associated with the Hutchins Commission, as well as the developmental journalism concept, emerged as threats to the dominant Anglo-American media interests during the UNESCO debate on the New World Information and Communication Order in the late '70s and early '80s, the proponents of public journalism have apparently chosen not to pinpoint these connections and thereby antagonize the U.S. media community that they aim to convert.
In the aftermath of the NWICO debate and the dissolution of the U.S. National News Council, some conservative U.S. scholars, e.g., William Hachten (1992) and R. L. Stevenson (1994), deemed it fit to drop the social responsibility theory from their press theory schema and adopt a so-called Western concept, which they equated with "a free and independent press." During the NWICO debate, Anglo-American interests succeeded in associating developmental journalism with "government-say-so journalism" that violated the U.S. constitution’s First Amendment virtues. Under such hostility, the proponents of public journalism may have deliberately overlooked discussing the connections between Hutchins and MacBride recommendations and public journalism
This essay will examine the overlooked connections between public journalism and developmental journalism, as well as their relationship to the work of Hutchins and MacBride commissions. It will sort out the main features of the two concepts, both of which have no fixed definitions, to show that they have much in common though their practice may reflect cultural variations. Public journalism, as some proponents agree, is not a radical new idea. It is old wine in a new bottle.
Scholars have used the terms public journalism, civic journalism and community journalism interchangeably. Christians (1995) says that the term public journalism, preferred by Jay Rosen (1992, 1994, 1995), underscores its legacy in pragmatism -- as in The Public and Its Problems by John Dewey (1927) – and makes a direct lingual connection to current debates about the public sphere initiated by Jurgen Habermas (1962/1989) and others; the term civic journalism, preferred by Ed Lambeth (1974), reflects the mission of the press and its connection to political theory; and the term community journalism, preferred by Jock Lauterer (1995) and others, shows the concept’s most direct connection to communitarian political philosophy and to the importance of community in social theory and communication studies. The term conversational journalism, preferred by Anderson, Dardenne and Killenberg (1994: 43), emphasizes the point that "given a voice, people become part of the conversation."
Lauterer (1995) says: "Call it whatever you will – community journalism, public journalism, relentlessly local coverage – it’s not a new idea" (p. 184). He says that community journalism satisfies a basic human craving: "the affirmation of the sense of community, a positive and intimate reflection of the sense of place, a stroke for our us-ness, our extended family-ness and our profound and interlocking connectedness" (p. 9).
Dykers (1995) points out that today’s public or civic journalists are moving Dewey and his student Robert Park’s (1955) ideas into the 21st century because such journalists, who are attempting to create communication across differences, are creating among citizens a social good called "reciprocity." Ettema and Peer (1995) say that every attempt to redefine the mission of the press in terms of civic or public journalism has boiled down to the themes of a relationship with the community that facilitates dialogue on substantive issues. Weichelt (1995) says that public journalism has two goals: to make news organizations listen more closely to their audiences; and to make them play more active roles in their communities. Parisi (1995) says that public journalism advances understanding of news as a coherent narrative of the world that serves certain interests, rather than as a mirror image of truth; and he suggests that public journalism can best develop by acknowledging more public news narratives as its center, drawing on the insights of media criticism and addressing creatively the limitations of objectivity as a narrative framework for serving the public interest.
Rosen, an early promoter of the concept, says that "public journalism worries about becoming properly attached" and "getting the connections right" unlike traditional journalism that values detachment. While traditional journalism seeks to inform and act as a watchdog over government, public journalism "tries to strengthen the community’s capacity – to recognize itself, to converse well, and make choices. The guiding image behind public journalism is a vision of the well-connected community, where everything that should connect does connect. Where everyone who should be talking is, in fact, talking" (quoted in Charity 1995: 159).
Rosen (1992) asserts that the terms "objectivity," "fairness," "balance" and "accuracy" have left journalists bereft of any philosophy of action (p. 9); and that journalists should present themselves as advocates for the kind of serious talk a mature polity requires (p. 24). Rosen (1994: 376) says that the identifying features of public journalism include: a willingness to break with old routines; a desire to "reconnect" with citizens and their true concerns; an emphasis on serious discussion as the primary activity in democratic politics; and a focus on citizens as actors within, rather than spectators to, the public drama p. 376). Rosen (1995: 35) also says that public journalism, which has derived from academic theory based on the work of Habermas, Dewey and Carey, means al least three things: an argument about the proper task of the press; a set of practices that are slowly spreading through American journalism; and a movement of people and institutions.
Despite the ongoing debate on public journalism since the beginning of this decade, no standard definition of the concept has emerged. Merritt (1995a: p.114)) says that "for any one editor or institution to define public journalism concretely would also mean limiting the possibilities." Rosen clarifies: "Public journalism is not a settled doctrine or a strict code of conduct but an unfolding philosophy about the place of the journalist in public life" (in Rosen and Merritt 1994: 6). Rosen, therefore, calls public journalism "a work in progress" because no one could say what it would be in five or 10 years (in Charity 1995: v).
However, Merritt (1995b) clarifies: "Public journalism seeks to define and learn a different set of reflexes, one that has a purpose beyond telling the news. It seeks to break away from the concept of One Journalism, with its idea that the rules and conventions of the profession are pervasive and inflexible" (p. 127). He goes on to say that public journalism involves "learning to report and write about public life beyond traditional politics" and, among other things, reporting " the very important news of civic life -- including civic successes" (p. 130). Moreover, he says that public journalism, which is the antithesis of One Journalism, "seeks to define another set of five Ws and H" (pp. 131-132). He adds: "Public life, according to the values of public journalism, requires shared information and shared deliberation; people participate in answering democracy's fundamental question of "What shall we do?" (p. 131).
Merritt (1995a: p. 114) adds: "Public journalism is additive. It builds on telling the news by recognizing (a) the fundamental connection between democracy and journalism, (b) the need for public life to go well, for democracy to fulfill its historic promise, and (c) journalism's rational self-interest, both economic and intellectual, in public life's going well." Accordingly, Merritt sees the public journalist as "a fair-minded participant in a community that works."
Charity (1995) says that public journalism arose out of the conviction that something essential was lacking in American life right now: rational talk, community-based approaches, participatory discussions, communal glue, a proper emphasis on activity (p. 151); and, unlike "most forms of self-styled newer, better journalism," public journalism provided what economists would call added value: the ability to help the audience conduct an ongoing conversation in depth (pp.157-158). Public journalism, he says, "is nothing more than the conviction that journalism’s business is about making citizenship work" (p. 9). Three interlocking metaphors describe who public journalists are: they are "experts in public life," civic capitalists" and "full-time citizens"; they are not "radicals departing from the canons of their profession, but traditionalists attempting a return to first principles" (pp. 11-12). Practitioners of the concept have learned that "telling ordinary people’s stories and dramatizing the community’s struggle to solve problems both roots people in an issue and helps them keep perspective on it over time" (p. 17). Public journalists aim to print "all the news that citizens want to know" (p. 19). Charity (1996) also says that public journalism is only one part of a much larger story: the democratic renewal going on in a lot of professions and communities all at once.
Black (1996: p. A8) says: "Public journalism is hard to define succinctly. It has arisen in response to various signals warning that democracy and public life are in trouble and that journalism is in disrepute, and in response to the belief that certain bad habits of conventional journalism have contributed to these problems."
Anderson, Dardenne and Killenberg (1994: xix-xx) , who coined the term conversational journalism, start with the view that "the prime role of journalism …, and the only way by which it can survive as a viable institution in the pubic arena, is to take the responsibility to stimulate public dialogue on issues of concern to a democratic public." Their radical platform calls for a de-emphasis on the reliance of current news values and the attempt to project objectivity, a shift from the heavy reliance on the inverted pyramid format of presenting news to the much more natural narrative (storytelling) format, a change from the linear transmission of news as a commodity to a communication mode that entails interactive feedback, as well as a re-conceptualization of ethics to encompass multicultural and feminine perceptions (Gunaratne 1996).
Anderson, Dardenne and Killenberg (1994) explain that conversational journalism is a pluralistic journalism based on the triangular interaction of news, communication and community -- the three touchstones that produces "people-to-people communication that ranges far beyond the printed page or newscast script." Far from being radical, this concept merely brings back an earlier community-based narrative style of journalism (p. 2). They argue that the definition of news must include a broader range of what happens to people so that news becomes a co-creative activity that depends on community participation (pp. 5-6). They suggest dumping the linear transfer models of communication – the source-message-channel-receiver models -- in favor of the notion of the informational commons, where "people can learn, mature, agree, and disagree – and from which social change can occur" (p. 6). Furthermore, they argue that because a community exists not through agreements but through communication, journalism can legitimize the "conversational commons" that links previously disconnected people, groups and places (p. 12).
Summary: If one were to put together the ideas emerging from the foregoing review, public journalism appears as a pluralistic journalism based on the triangular interaction of news, communication and community that emphasizes the following:
1. Journalism must redefine the traditional news values – e.g., significance/impact, prominence, proximity, timeliness, currency, conflict and the unusual – and arrive at another set of five W’s and H. The One Journalism that emphasizes objectivity and detachment, as well as the related ethics, is no longer adequate. News should become a coherent narrative that produces "added value" to the audience. The linear transmission of news as a commodity is now less appropriate. News on civic life, including civic successes, is extremely pertinent. Journalism ethics needs to recognize and encompass multicultural and feminine perspectives.
2. Journalism fits in more appropriately within the discipline of communication. Journalists should listen more closely to their audiences and facilitate dialogue or "conversation" so that everyone, who should be talking, is talking. They should promote participatory communication across differences, particularly in a multicultural society, to create "reciprocity."
3. The journalist must be a "fair-minded participant in a community that works." The journalist must become a properly attached advocate of serious talk to enable the community to recognize itself and make choices. The affirmation of a sense of community and the recognition of interlocking connectedness are pertinent to journalism.
Developmental journalism has its roots in development communication, which goes back to the work of agricultural extension carried out by large land-grant state universities in the United States (Stevenson 1994: 232). Eventually, it developed into a coherent doctrine, and a 1964 seminar convened by the East West Center in Honolulu formalized the concept (Jayaweera & Amunugama, 1987). Journalists became a part of the picture simply because of their crucial role in communication. The term "developmental journalism" goes back to the Philippines in the 1960s (Stevenson 1994: 239). The Thomson Foundation sponsored a course called The Economic Writers' Training Course, Aug. 14 to Sept. 5, 1968, when the seminar chairman Alan Chalkley coined the term "development journalist."
Chalkley (1968) explained that a journalist’s main task was to inform and give his or readers the facts. His or her secondary task was to interpret, to put the facts in their framework and, where possible, to draw conclusions. Chalkley said that these were the tasks of political journalists, as well as of crime reporters, society-page writers, human story writers and every other journalist. The development journalist, Chalkley said, had a third task, a positive one that one might call "promotion": not only to give the facts of economic life and to interpret those facts, but also to promote them and bring them home to the readers. "You must get your readers to realize how serious the development problem is, to think about the problem, to open their eyes to the possible solutions -- to punch that hole in the vicious circle," Chalkley said giving his initial definition of developmental journalism. No concrete definition of the concept has emerged since then although scholars and practitioners have presented their different visions.
Chalkley (1968) also pointed out at the outset that developmental journalism was not for the elite but for the ordinary people. Therefore, the task of a development journalist was to use simple terms and to avoid jargon.
Gunaratne (1978) described developmental journalism as an integral part of a new journalism that involved "analytical interpretation, subtle investigation, constructive criticism and sincere association with the grass-roots (rather than with the elite)." He argued that developmental journalism was not compatible with either the libertarian concept, which defined the function of the mass media as providing information and entertainment, or the authoritarian concept, which stifled "criticism of political machinery and the officials in power" and imposed a "top-down approach to problem solving."
Aggarwala (1978) also noted that Western critics had erroneously equated development-oriented news with government-controlled news. He argued that the development newsbeat involved reporting on the relevance of a development project of national and local needs; the difference between a planned scheme and its actual implementation; and the difference between its impact on people as claimed by government officials and its actual impact. Ogan (1982: 10) identified developmental journalism as the critical examination, evaluation and reporting of the relevance, enactment and impact of development programs by a mass media independent of the government. Fair (1988) conceptualized developmental journalism as news that related to the primary, secondary or tertiary needs of a country’s population; news that satisfied the needs of a country’s population and contributed to self-reliance; and news that related to development or to social, economic or political problems.
Despite such analyses of the concept early on, contemporary conservative scholars (e.g., Stevenson 1994) have gone out of their way to debunk developmental journalism as an adjunct to authoritarian and communist concepts of the press in their eagerness to prove the victory of the so-called Western concept in the ‘90s. They have ignored the thrust of developmental journalism embodied in scholarly analyses or as practiced by alternative news services such as Inter Press Service, Depthnews, Gemini and South-North News. As Ali (1996: 30) points out: "The concept of development journalism is good, and always was, so it is a pity it became embroiled in the acrimonious debate surrounding the New World Information Order."
Because of the negative connotations associated with the term developmental journalism, Shah (1996: 144-146) has suggested its replacement with the term emancipatory journalism to facilitate recognizing "a role for journalists as participants in a process of progressive social change." He makes this point in the context that "communication can contribute to participatory democracy, security, peace, and other humanistic principles that are at the core of the discourse on modernity." Emancipatory journalism "requires not only provision of socially relevant information but also journalistic activism in challenging and changing oppressive structures"; gives individuals in communities marginalized by modernization "a means of voicing critique and articulating alternative visions of society"; and encourages "journalists to abandon the role of neutral observer while reporting in a manner that is thorough, deeply researched, and historically and culturally grounded, and that promotes social change in favor of the dispossessed."
If one were to conceptualize a contemporary framework for developmental journalism, taking into consideration the discussion that has gone on for well over a quarter century, one might take into consideration the 10 proposals for a development-oriented news media put forth by Galtung and Vincent (1992). The task of the journalist, they argue, is to unravel the threads of the development drama that takes place both in the Center and the Periphery, pick them out of the intricate web of relationships, "hold them up in the sunlight, and demonstrate the connections to readers, listeners and viewers" as IPS attempts to do at present (p. 146). They point out the inherent drama in development, democracy and participation, all of which are interconnected. "The problem, however, is that when this drama is written out, the underlying text tends to be about the same in all cases: imperialism, exploitation and other ‘leftist’ themes" (p. 150). Is it any wonder, then, that Anglo-American conservative scholars tend to debunk developmental journalism?
Galtung and Vincent (1992) outline their 10 proposals as follows:
1. Whenever there is a reference to development, try to make it concrete in terms of concrete human beings. Thus they urge journalists to relate development to "people." Journalists can discuss the human needs for survival, well-being, identity and freedom in terms of age, gender, race, class and nation. They should report people as subjects, actors and agents rather than as objects or victims with "needs deficits." They should define problems and solutions as clearly as possible taking into consideration ecological balance as well (pp. 151-152).
2. A development-oriented mass media should focus not only on the economics of development, but also on military, political and cultural aspects. Thus developmental journalism has to focus on more than economics because all of them – military power, political power, cultural power, etc. -- have to do with development in one way or another. Journalists should get people to reveal their inner agenda because that constitutes drama that would make journalism more similar to literature (pp. 154-155).
3. Mere economic growth data will never do without accompanying dispersion data. Journalists must look at the income of the bottom 50 percent or 10 percent, as well as of the top 10 percent or 1 percent (p. 156).
4. Focus on relations, not only differences; and do so not only within countries, but also between countries. Thus the journalists must cover both differences and relations. They must substantiate the relational aspect between the rich and the poor: how, for instance, wages may be frozen but not prices so that those who live from moveable prices for their goods and services benefit whereas people on constant wages do not (p. 156).
5. A development-oriented press would do well to focus on the totality of concrete life situations. This means focusing on concrete life situations as when British television took up the development problematique by selecting a family unit from each of five world regions to represent the well-to-do, the middle class, the working class, the poor and the dirt poor (p. 159).
6. A development-oriented journalism would never forget the dimension of democracy. "The task of the media is to report what the system is doing. Democracy can only function when there is a free flow of information between people, the system and the media. Using the media to make the people visible, both as objects and as subjects, becomes one task. Using them to expose the system through investigative reporting is the second. Using the media to expose the media that fail to do their job is the third" (p. 160). The development journalist may have to do investigative reporting more subtly where such reporting may antagonize government sources: the report can contrast government statements with development reality without necessarily implying that there is a link between the two (p. 162).
7. There is always the possibility of reporting about development, not critically in terms of problems, but constructively in terms of positive programs. Success stories may contribute to a general sense of optimism that can generate more momentum for democracy and development. People in similar situations elsewhere can benefit from such success stories if the report is adequately concrete (p. 162).
8. Allow the "people" to talk. This means giving a voice to the people. A useful approach is for journalists to sit down with people from high to low discussing the meaning of development thereby generating "an enormous range of visions" as well as "how-to" insights. Thus people get a voice as experts in line with the seven preceding ideas. Community cable channels in the United States enable this to happen to some extent (pp. 163-164).
9. Go one step further, and let the people to some extent run the media. This means giving people some media control. Letters to the editor and the op-ed pages have space constraints. The next stage is to let people write and produce much of the newspaper or broadcast/television program thus enabling them to provide their own knowledge, experience and expertise. The extent to which this happens can become a criterion of mass media quality in a country (p. 164).
10. Let people run more of society, and then report on what happens. This is what ought to happen in a democracy. People’s movements and organizations do precisely this. Development-oriented media should report more on what popular movements are doing – not only their successes but their failures too (pp. 164-165).
While no definition of developmental journalism may satisfy everyone, it is hard to disagree that Galtung and Vincent’s 10 proposals, as well as Shah’s thinking on emancipatory journalism, provide a reasonable framework to understand the essentials of the concept. That framework will enable us to compare developmental journalism with its new-born cousin that calls itself broadly as public journalism.
Summary: If one were to put together the ideas emerging from the foregoing review, developmental journalism also appears as a pluralistic journalism based on the triangular interaction of news, communication and community that emphasizes the following:
1. Developmental journalism must go beyond the traditional news values that, Galtung and Vincent (1992: 13-17) say, are based on "occidental cosmology." News values must encompass the "promotion" of developmental issues and possible solutions. News should focus on the primary, secondary and tertiary needs of ordinary people rather than the elite. Relevance of development to national and local needs is newsworthy. News includes the critical examination, evaluation and reporting of the relevance, enactment and impact of development. This boils down to unraveling the threads of the development drama. Success stories are also newsworthy.
2. The model of communication relating to developmental communication ought to be the bottom-up type that allows the "people" at the grassroots to talk. Journalism must give individuals a voice to articulate "alternative visions of society." The linear model of communication is less relevant to promote development.
3. The community is what matters in development. Let the "people" run more of society and even, to some extent, the media because the dimension of democracy is so important. The journalist should be an active community participant in social change. He or she cannot be a neutral observer who adheres to objectivity. The journalist must relate development to people and focus on relations and the totality of concrete life situations. He or she must go well beyond economics and bring out the inherent drama in development, democracy and participation.
The summaries at the end of the two preceding sections clearly show the close relationship between public journalism and developmental journalism. That relationship becomes further apparent when one examines specific points relating to public journalism.. Black (1996) points out that public journalism is designed to:
1. "Invite ordinary citizens back into public life by making their concerns the starting point of the debate." Developmental journalism tries to achieve a similar objective by making known the concerns of the large majority of underprivileged people in the backwoods of developing nations to their national leaders and the world.
2. "Overcome journalistic cynicism and acknowledge the possibility that citizens working together might be able to solve some of society's problems." This happens to be the crux of developmental journalism as well. The mass media can and should play an active role in encouraging citizens to work together to solve their rural or urban problems.
3. "Modify the rules of detachment by accepting that journalists have an interest in and responsibility for raising the level of public discourse and helping society find solutions to its problems." Again, this looks like the model development journalist. Detachment cannot achieve the objectives of developmental journalism. The journalists have to play a catalytic role to stir up people into being active participants in nation building.
Merritt (1995a: pp. 113-114)) says that public journalism involves at least five mental shifts on the part of the conventional journalist:
1. Moving "beyond the limited mission of telling the news to a broader mission of helping public life to go well, and acts out that imperative." This is exactly true of the development journalist.
2. Moving "from detachment to being a fair-minded participant in public life." As already mentioned, the development journalist cannot be detached..
3. Moving "from worrying about proper separations to concerns with proper connections." The development journalist cannot afford the luxury of worrying about the separation of the "Fourth Estate" from the three arms of the government or from the community in his or her attempt to connect with the public and project their concerns into national, or even international, attention.
4. Moving "beyond only describing what is 'going wrong' to also imagining what 'going right' would be like." Similarly, the development journalist has the commitment to report civic successes.
5. Moving "from people as consumers ... to seeing them as a public, as potential actors in arriving at democratic solutions to public problems." The development journalist also goes well beyond looking at news as a commodity that enables the generation of maximum profit. Rather, he or she is more concerned with engaging the public in finding solutions to a variety of social problems.
Lambeth (1994: p. 51) summarizes that the new forms of civic journalism" constitute some combination of the following:
1. Careful, timely and sensitive listening to public needs.
2. Systematic consultation of the public by means of polls and focus groups..
3. Journalist-organized dialogue with panels of resource specialists chosen for their differing expertise and perspectives.
4. Media-sponsored public fora designed to deliberate on key issues.
5. Continuity of in-depth reporting on issues chosen independently by journalists for their fidelity to citizen concerns.
6. Occasional cooperative projects by newspapers, radio and/or television newsrooms.
While some of these techniques pertain to the practices in an advanced society, the development journalist may as well use them depending on the degree of sophistication a particular society has reached.
Questioning the traditional occidental news values has been the basis for the emergence of "new journalism." Public journalism, which shuns the term "new," seems to profess that the prevalent news values merely replaced older news values in the last century. If one were to accept such an interpretation, neither public journalism nor developmental journalism is "new." Dykers (1995) says that public journalism’s rhetorical roots are sunk into 300 years of Western intellectual history. Galtung and Vincent (1992: 50-51) have argued that the prevalent news values -- which emphasize elite nations, elite persons, personalization and negativity -- have resulted in very little coverage of "how structures are operating to produce ... unhappy circumstances for poor people." Both public journalism and developmental journalism aspire to solve this aspect of One Journalism.
Moreover, just as much as public journalism is concerned with community building within the framework of democratic ideals, developmental journalism is concerned with public participation in nation building within the same framework. Developmental journalism also envisioned a rational self-interest of doing well in political environments that ranged from authoritarianism to varying degrees of democracy.
Public journalism has encountered much skepticism with reactions such as: it endangers the credibility of newspapers because it repudiates the principles of objectivity and fairness that have been a lodestar of American journalism for half a century; it compromises enterprising, sustained, independent reporting; it gets reader committees to decide what goes into the paper thereby replacing objectivity with advocacy (Zang 1995). One may recall similar accusations against developmental journalism, particularly associating it with the manipulations of authoritarian or communist governments.
Having examined the overlooked connections between public journalism and developmental journalism, our next task is to show their relationship to the work of Hutchins and MacBride commissions. One can well argue that the framework that supports both concepts is the social responsibility theory, which accepts the six functions that the libertarian theory ascribes to the press but, as Theodore Peterson explains, expresses "dissatisfaction with the interpretation of those functions by some media owners and operators and with the way the press has carried them out" (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm 1956: 74). The theory has this major premise: Freedom carries concomitant obligations; and the press, which enjoys a privileged position …, is obliged to be responsible to society for carrying out certain essential functions of mass communication in contemporary society. The six functions are:
1. Servicing the political system by providing information, discussion and debate on public affairs.
2. Enlightening the public so as to make it capable of self-government.
3. Safeguarding the rights of the individual by serving as a watchdog against government.
4. Servicing the economic system primarily by bringing together the buyers and sellers of goods and services through the medium of advertising.
5. Providing entertainment.
6. Maintaining its own financial self sufficiency so as to be free from the pressures of special interests.
The social responsibility theory asserts that the press has been deficient in performing the first three tasks. It also says that the fourth task should not take "precedence over such other functions as promoting the democratic processes or enlightening the public" – something that both developmental journalism and public journalism would agree on. It asserts that the fifth function should relate to "good" entertainment. With regard to the sixth function, it "would exempt certain individual media from having to earn their way in the market place" (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm 1956: 74).
The Commission on Freedom of the Press, which is associated with the social responsibility theory, called on the media to:
1. Provide "a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning."
2. Serve as a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism."
3. Project "a representative picture of the constituent groups in society."
4. Be responsible for "the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society."
5. Provide "full access to the day’s intelligence."
The second, third and fourth of these demands are also central to the philosophy driving both developmental journalism and public journalism.
Parisi (1996) points out that the Hutchins Commission anticipated public journalism in its call for news reporting that projects "the opinions and attitudes of the groups in society to one another" and offers "a method of presenting and clarifying the goals and values of the society." The commission called for news to become "a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning," a matter of reporting not just "the fact truthfully" but "the truth about the fact." The commission’s idea of news also focused on "the public good and on broad-based reporting about significant issues of the day."
Moreover, the social responsibility theory rests on a concept of positive liberty unlike the libertarian theory that was born of a concept of negative liberty (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm 1956: 93). Both developmental journalism and public journalism clearly condone positive liberty.
The libertarian theory, which was born at a time when the state was regarded as the chief foe of liberty, and the social responsibility theory differ on the view they take of the nature and functions of government: The latter holds that the government should help society to obtain the services it requires from the mass media if a self-regulated press and self-righting features of community life are insufficient to provide them (p. 95). On this matter, developmental journalism seems to be more in agreement with the social responsibility theory than public journalism.
The social responsibility theory differs from the libertarian theory on the nature of freedom of expression as well: the latter considers this a natural right while the other considers it a moral right rather than an absolute right (p. 96). Both developmental journalism and public journalism would tend to agree on freedom of expression as a moral right. The social responsibility theory and the libertarian theory differ fundamentally in their view of the nature of man. The latter regards man as primarily a moral and rational being who will hunt for and be guided by the truth. The social responsibility theory views man not so much as irrational as lethargic. Therefore, the more alert elements of the community must goad him into the exercise of his reason (pp. 99-100). Both developmental journalism and public journalism assigns to the journalists the role of those "alert elements."
Finally, the social responsibility theory puts far less faith than the libertarian theory in the efficacy of the self-righting process (p. 102). Both developmental journalism and public journalism would agree with that view.
Shah (1996: 145), on the other hand, points out that even though the social responsibility theory calls for the provision of socially relevant information, it does not call for "journalistic activism in challenging and changing oppressive structures," a task he associates with his new conceptualization of developmental journalism. However, one may as well argue that the "watchdog" function associated with the theory does not preclude the journalist’s active participation in the community.
Several recommendations of the MacBride Commission (ICSCP 1980) also pertain extremely well to both public journalism and development journalism. While the Hutchins Commission addressed the U.S. media, the MacBride Commission addressed the international media. One cannot, however, doubt the impact of the one on the other. Gunaratne (1996) points out that the right to communicate that the MacBride Commission espoused has a remarkable resemblance to the philosophy of both public journalism and developmental journalism. Recommendation 54 says:
· "Communication needs in a democratic society should be met by the extension of specific rights such as the right to be informed, the right to inform, the right to privacy, the right to participate in public communication -- all elements of a new concept, the right to communicate."
This right equates with the espousal of a "conversational commons." In fact, this stands out as the major difference between developmental/public journalism and traditional journalism that heavily relies on elite sources. Participatory democracy is meaningless without the right to communicate. The social responsibility theory implicitly condones it when it calls on the mass media to project "a representative picture of the constituent groups in society."
Among the other most pertinent MacBride Commission recommendations that relate to public/developmental journalism are the following:
· Recommendation 22, which seeks the "promotion of dialogue for development as a central component of both communication and development policies."
· Recommendation 23, which calls on the media to adapt prevailing news values and practices "to be more receptive to development needs and problems."
These two denote the importance the MacBride Commission attached to integrating communication in development. It considered communication to be a "a major development resource, a vehicle to ensure real political participation in decision making, a central information base for defining policy options, and an instrument for creating awareness of national policies." They are compatible with the underlying assumptions of the social responsibility theory, as well as with the emphasis on "conversation" in public journalism to promote community problem solving. Just as Chalkley (1968) urged the development journalist to use simple language, the MacBride Commission also points out the need for "the use of non-technical language and comprehensible symbols, images and forms to ensure popular understanding."
· Recommendation 31, which calls for non-commercial forms of mass communication that is in conformity with "the traditions, culture, development objectives and sociopolitical system of each country."
This too is in conformity with the social responsibility theory, which also recognized the need to "exempt certain individual media from having to earn their way in the market place." Developmental journalism accommodates this view while the concept of public journalism, insofar as its present proponents are concerned, seems content with accomplishing its goals within the prevailing market-place set-up in the United States.
· Recommendation 45, which says that "conventional standards of news selection and reporting, and many accepted news values, need to be re-assessed if readers and listeners around the world are to receive a more faithful and comprehensive account of events, movements and trends in both developing and developed countries."
Both developmental journalism and public journalism point out the need to go well beyond the traditional occidental news values to make the mass media more relevant to readers, viewers and listeners in a democracy that promotes participation. The Hutchins Commission implicitly attacks these news values when it says that "the press has often paid more attention to the superficial and sensational than to the significant in its coverage of current happenings" (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm 1956: 78).
· Recommendation 63, which says that "those in charge of media should encourage their audiences to play a more active role in communication by allocating more newspaper space, or broadcasting time, for the views of individual members of the public or organized social groups."
The MacBride Commission has criticized the mass media for treating their audience as "passive receivers of information." Both developmental journalism and public journalism have a major aim: to make the "people" play an active role in communication. This is compatible with the social responsibility theory, which recognizes freedom of expression as a moral right of individuals.
The foregoing analysis confirms that public journalism is clearly a younger cousin of developmental journalism. The two seems to have separate identities because the term developmental journalism doesn’t fit the cultural terminology applicable to advanced countries. However, both concepts aim to accomplish similar goals in dissimilar socio-cultural environments. Despite pretenses, both have much to do with the ideas that were part of the erstwhile NWICO debate as exemplified in the MacBride recommendations.
Stevenson (1994) has taken the view that "like the communist theory, the development concept lost legitimacy in the 1980s" (p. 231) resulting in the victory of Western (Anglo-American?) journalism. His opposition to developmental journalism or development news is based on the grounds that "it became more blatantly identified with the regime" thereby excluding "criticism and negative information" (p. 239). The examples of "development journalism" he gives are from China Daily and Pyongyang Times. Thus he implies that developmental journalism and communist journalism are identical.
Stevenson is able to engage in this condemnation because there is no concrete definition of developmental journalism, which is much more grounded in the social responsibility theory of the press that he no longer seems to accept. If Western journalism (in the sense of a "free and independent press" of the libertarian type) has won, why has the public journalism movement arisen in the 1990s? Both developmental journalism and public journalism aim at achieving similar goals of social responsibility.
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Copyright 1996
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