Contemporary BRICS Journalism

Non-Western Media in Transition

Svetlana Pasti, Jyotika Ramaprasad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138217324
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315440903
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Contemporary BRICS Journalism: Non-Western Media in Transition is the first comparative study of professional journalists working in BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The book presents a range of insider perspectives, offering a valuable insight into the nature of journalism in these influential economies.

Contributors to this volume have conducted in-depth interviews with more than 700 journalists, from mainstream and online media, between 2012 and 2015. They present and analyse their findings here, revealing how BRICS journalism is envisioned, experienced, and practised in the twenty-first century. Compelling evidence in the form of journalists' narratives reveals the impact of digital culture on modern reporting and the evolving dynamic between new media technology and traditional journalistic practice. Insightful comparisons are made between BRICS countries, highlighting the similarities and differences between them. Topics covered include; professionalism, ethics and ideals, community journalism, technological developments in the newsroom and the reporting of protest movements.

This book's ambitious analysis of journalistic landscapes across these non-Western nations will significantly broaden the scope of study and research in the field of journalism for students and teachers of communication, journalism, and media studies.

Part I
Transitioning concepts and practices across BRICS

1
Professionalism

Continuities and change

Jyotika Ramaprasad, Svetlana Pasti, Fernando Oliveira Paulino, Ruiming Zhou, and Musawenkosi Ndlovu

Profession, professionalism, and professionalization: historical interpretations

If any term exemplifies that the meaning of words lies in their use, it is the word ‘professionalism’. It encapsulates the attempt to distinguish occupations from professions, it references a certain cluster of traits, which in turn may differ by time and space, it is normative but also operational, it implies power but also hegemony, it is empowering and exploitative, it is a good thing and not. The term is used cursorily or deterministically. When applied to journalism, these same ambiguities about professionalism persist.

For several decades now, sociologists have attempted to provide an explication of profession, professionalization, and professionalism in an attempt to separate professions from ‘mere’ occupations. Their evolving discussion may be grouped into two approaches: the administrative structural-functionalist ‘traits’ approach and the critical ‘power’ approach.

Summarizing from a historical review of the traits approach to defining professions, Larson (1977) suggested that for social scientists, “professions are occupations with power and prestige” (p. x) because professionals have 1) specialized knowledge based on specific training (cognitive dimension) that fulfils societal needs, 2) are devoted to public service (normative dimension) and not material goals, and 3) are rated advantageously (evaluative dimension) in terms of autonomy and privilege in comparison to occupations; these together provide them with prestige and the public trust to self-regulate (Cogan, 1953; Millerson, 1964, as cited in Larson, 1977). Further, professions have schools, associations, and codes of ethics. For a considerable length of time (and continuing to date), the definition of professionalism too used this reductionist traits approach: expertise, altruism, public service, ethical standards, collegial control, and so on.

In Parsons’ (1939) functionalist approach, professions are institutional frameworks in which important social functions are enacted, which in turn serve the social order, and along with other social forces or structures (such as the economy) bring equilibrium to society. In this traits/functionalist view, occupations organize themselves over a period of time through a process of professionalization to provide a public service and to enact functions. Scholars, however, acknowledge today that the polysemy, the nuance, and the changing nature of the concept of professionalism (and therefore of profession and professionalization) cannot be subjected to such explication (Martimianakis, Maniate, & Hodges, 2009). Today, they consider this a time-wasting exercise and suggest that, instead of seeking such precision, a focus on the discourse of professionalism would yield greater understanding (Evetts, 2013).

The critical approach to this exercise in the explication of ‘profession’ does not have a benign view of professions, professionalism, and professionalization. According to Hughes (1963), professionals “profess to know better than others the nature of certain matters” (p. 656); they “do not merely serve; they define the very wants which they serve” (Hughes, 1970, p. 153). For Freidson (1989), professionals exert control over three critical aspects: 1) recruitment, claiming that they recruit only those who resist the abuse of privilege and then they hone the recruits’ altruism through socialization, 2) training, determined by members and conducted in higher education institutions, and 3) the work they do, depending on the profession and the clientele. Through such control, they create market shelters (or even market closures) earning advantages through ‘knowledge monopolies’ and ‘gatekeeping’ (Brint, 1993). Freidson, however, also suggests that occupational control of work is necessary because practitioners alone can understand the complexities of the work they do (Freidson, 2001, as cited in Evetts, 2013), thus defending professions in face of more serious critiques such as Larson’s (1977) that invoke hegemony (Brint, 1993). For Larson, professions engage in “a collective assertion of special social status and … a collective process of upward social mobility”, creating a “structured inequality” (1997, pp. xvii–xviii), functioning as an effective form of social and ideological control, and defining particular social realities for the public. Professionalism as a mechanism of control is omnipresent in organizations that exhibit a hierarchical structure, work standardization, and external regulation, aka ‘organizational professionalism’; it is in their recruitment campaigns and mission statements, in their training manuals, and in their managerial literature.¹ In this critical approach, professionalization (or the professional project) is the mechanism through which professions as institutions maintain their privileged status.

Journalism professionalism

Journalism began its professionalization project in the early part of the 20th century, gradually adding traits such as objectivity to the definition of journalistic professionalism (Beam, 1990). Studies of journalism professionalism followed; in these, scholars (Johnstone, Slawski, & Bowman, 1972–1973; McLeod & Hawley, 1964; Weaver & Willnat, 2012) employed as measures a priori traits mostly and journalists’ lived experience sometimes (Beam, 1990). However, even though journalists may share some traits, e.g., subscribing to the normative ideal of providing a public service to the cause of democracy or social justice and having ethical codes and standards of practice (Singer, 2003), they do not have to undergo training in journalism, and their autonomy (and that of the institution of journalism) is not universal and is particularly challenged under the organizational professionalism of corporate control. Thus, the traits approach does not provide support to the claim that journalism is a profession. At the same time, journalists do “consider themselves professionals [in terms of] loyalty to the ideals [and to] shared norms” of the profession (Singer, 2007, p. 81).

Moving away from the traits approach allows for an assessment of where power is asserted by affirming professionalism in journalism. While Beam (1990) defines power more broadly including journalistic control of resources, he indicates that this control is based on ‘expertise’. At the individual level, journalists’ claim to expertise and to upholding related standards such as objectivity makes them believe that they are singularly outfitted to produce knowledge for the public. Losing some of this power with the advent of digital technology and of citizen journalism has been a difficult experience for journalists (Deuze, 2005; Lewis, 2012; Singer, 2003). At the level of the institution, journalists’ entire occupational ideology serves to legitimize their position in the world (Deuze, 2005). Deuze suggests that the professionalization of the institution of journalism was (and continues to be) an “ideological development” that sought to maintain a dominant sense of what journalism is or should be (p. 444). It is on this dominant ideology that “most newsmakers base their professional perceptions and praxis” (p. 445). Deuze (2005) defines ideology as “a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular group” (p. 445) and identifies five elements of ideology: public service, objectivity, autonomy, immediacy, and ethics. From his study of how these vary under different circumstances, he concludes that “any definition of journalism as a profession working truthfully, operating as a watchdog for the good of society as a whole and enabling citizens to be self-governing” is both naïve and one dimensional (p. 458).

Glasser (1992) makes a somewhat similar point; he suggests that there can be no universal or objective knowledge that re-presents the world as it really is. Thus, trying to build a lasting foundation for truth is “a self-deceptive effort to eternalize the normal discourse of the day” (Rorty, 1979, as cited in Glasser, 1992, p. 132).

In sum, the literature suggests that while practitioners and others may consider journalism to be a profession, and possibly the sole legitimate authority on a daily, and more recently an immediate, record of the world, it does not appear to meet all the criteria of a profession in terms of both required or suggested traits and the belief system it is founded on.

Journalism professionalism in BRICS: a historical view

In Brazil, a journalistic press was banned during the colonial period (1500–1808). After 1808, when this industry got a start as businesses began to print books and newspapers, it was as an elite institution mainly because of the high illiteracy in the country. Even when radio and television appeared, the mass media kept this elite bias in choosing those they would accept as journalists (Santanna, 2006). To this day, Brazil places a very high value on a degree in journalism as part of its professional ideology.²

In the Soviet Union, and current day Russia, journalism education meant something other than a degree. In the pre-Soviet times, major writers used the national tradition of literary criticism to publish critical opinions about societal matters. During the Soviet times, this tradition of social criticism became the driving force in the education of students in journalism so that they could implement the role of social organizers. The education stressed masterstvo, such mastery of the profession that a journalist could take an article from conception to completion single handedly using different genres such as feuilleton (critical, analytic, in-depth articles), reviews, and stories. Masterstvo implied excellence and professionalism in journalism. The Soviet school of journalism laid down the maxim that the quality of writing was more important than the audience and the topic (Korkonosenko, 1998).

Although all the journalistic genres were subdivided into the informational and the publicist during Soviet times, this distinction was irrelevant because “every [piece of writing] brought a publicistic component” irrespective of the type of media (Bogdanov & Vyazemsky, 1971, pp. 259–260). Publitsistika is defined as “the literature on … public-political questions”, which includes both factual (informational) materials so that readers can draw their own conclusions and materials that have “different reasoning, summarising, proposing these or those conclusions” (Bogdanov & Vyazemsky, 1971, pp. 677–678). The professionalism of Soviet journalists was measured by the level of development of his/her publicist skills. Even in the present time, publitsistika is highly valued and considered “one of the highest stages of journalistic creativity co-related with bright literary talent and a citizen’s position”, i.e., articulating and defending one’s position on important issues (Vinogradova, 2000, p. 45).

In the early 1990s when journalism experienced de-Sovietization after the collapse of communism and the resultant political and economic liberalization of the media and labour market, in Russia, a strong professional identity was not present in journalism. Journalism as a party-political service died overnight and was reborn as an open market practice with new practitioners flooding journalism. That initial period of post-Soviet journalism was marked by a lack of consensual understanding about the profession. In this time of increasing commercialization, the media began to earn money by using questionable tactics such as fomenting conflict between competitors during elections, misrepresentation, and manipulation of public opinion in the information wars between oligarchs (Pasti, 2004; Simonov, 1998; Zassoursky, 2004).

Today, the choice for Russian journalists is between adopting a political stance and creating an economic advantage for themselves, with consequences for professionalism. The political choice leads to protesting the lack of journalistic freedom and ends with the departure of the journalist from unfree media, or from the profession, or even from the country. The economic choice leads to loyalty to unfree media and a pragmatic decision to stay in journalism to earn a living.

The idea of professionalism in India is an amalgam of influences, needs, and expectations. Journalism in pre-independent India (before 1947) was essentially nationalist in character, playing a role in the fight for freedom from British colonialism. This professional ideology of criticism continued into post-independent India at least in the print media. Guaranteed a free press, print media journalists engaged in critical debates on national and international matters (Thussu, 2005). According to Eapen (1969), after independence, journalists believed their professional role was “informing, educating and guiding the linguistic, religious or regional community within which their papers circulate” (p. 173). More recently, the respected newspaper The Hindu outlined truth telling, freedom, justice, humaneness, and social good as the principles of responsible and ethical journalism (The Hindu, 2003). Unlike print media, broadcast media were government institutions and were thus drafted into the task of nation building with programming that facilitated social change, agricultural extension work, and such. This idea of journalism as a resource to drive development was not limited to broadcast media; in the form of development journalism, it also became the expectation from print media (Aggarwala, 1979).

Today, however, with the advent of privatization in India and the consequent explosive growth of media, the entire news business is more market driven, though government radio and television still maintain the professional ideology of enabling social change. The market-based media system has led to the demise of unions and associations, which were strong during the time of a left-leaning ideology in the early years of the nation. These recent events further complicate ideas of an already multifaceted concept of professionalism in India.

In post-1949 China, news work was conducted under the guidelines of the Party-state and was essentially an act of propaganda, similar to the practice in the Soviet Union. After the Party’s adoption of the policy of reform and opening up (Gaige Kaifang), in 1978, news work and therefore news itself changed. Students of journalism were exposed to Western ideas of journalism through textbooks and academic conferences. After the early 1990s, these students who had become reporters and editors by this time began to apply Western ideas to their practice. For example, CBS’ 60 Minutes was their model when planning a new news programme. This modelling was not simply about the rhetoric and storytelling techniques, but more importantly about adopting Western professional ideology. Since that time, journalists in China increasingly speak about objectivity, the fourth estate, making news stories rather than Xinhua-style articles, etc. Thus, the Western definition of professionalism in journalism has become a part of Chinese journalists’ ideas.

It is difficult to find a South Africa–centric or exclusively South African prescriptive and/or descriptive scholarly definition of journalism professionalism (or of professionalism in general). Instead, generic and Western definitions of journalism are available largely as a result of the country’s colonial history and its impact on both local intellectual traditions and higher education curriculum. Despite the absence of abstract scholarly theorization and conceptualization of journalism professionalism as a set of definitions, what is expected of journalism ‘professionals’ is evident in the critique of practice. For example, normative critiques, available in abundance, indicate “dropping journalism standards”, “shallow journalism”, “tabloidization of journalism”, etc. (Claassen, 1996; Claassen, 2001; Krüger, 2004; Wasserman, 2010). Further, it is assumed that journalism...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: why BRICS journalism matters
• PART I Transitioning concepts and practices across BRICS
• PART II Two-country comparisons of critical issues
• Appendix A: Data collection protocols
• Appendix B: Data collection and processing teams
• Appendix C: Tables for Brazil
• Appendix D: Tables for Russia
• Appendix E: Tables for India
• Appendix F: Tables for China
• Appendix G: Tables for South Africa
• Index