Journalism education
K.E. Eapen
This article is an attempt to share some thoughts on journalism education. It is prompted by the item “UNESCO’s model curriculum for journalism education launched” (The Hindu, June 27).
N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, and A.W. Khan, Assistant Director General for Communication and Information, UNESCO, gave commendable reactions to “Model Curriculum for Journalism Education for Developing Countries and Eme
rging Democracies.”
Having taught at four Indian universities (at three as professor/head/chairman) and at the University of Leicester, U.K. (Centre for Mass Communication Research) and at the University of Wisconsin, U.S. (School of Journalism), over many decades, I think some of my thoughts will be relevant in 2007. Two of the major works I lean on for this are Journalism as a Profession in India (Doctoral dissertation for Wisconsin, 1968) and Communication: A Discipline in Distress (Gurukul, Chennai, 1995).
The sample for the former work was over 300 full time working journalists of the then Madras and Bombay, and the two States: Kerala and Bihar. An overwhelming majority of newspersons personally interviewed, 1967, supported the notion of training. Though, as now, there were a few doubting Thomases also who believed “journalists are born, not made.” Some others felt that a professional degree in journalism should be made mandatory, as in South American countries, for full time permanent employees.
The earlier academic approach of the 1950s was training for the press, as radio was limited and television still to come, but later it was education about communication. The Bachelor’s course was to be a how-to-do type, and higher studies to recognise the economic, socio-political and cultural environment in which the media system existed. This implied a distinction drawn between “skill” and “knowledge” application.
First effort
India’s first university effort at training was in Nagpur (Hislop College 1952) which by 1964 had metamorphosed into “mass communication.” Nonetheless, later at the global level, academic as well as well established organisations like the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) and regional bodies like the Asian Mass Communcation and Information Centre (AMIC, Singapore) dropped “Mass” for “Media.”
This was because ‘mass media’ was a notion of such industrialised nations as Japan and the U.S., and not of countries like India where 70 per cent of the population was rural and the so-called mass media were yet to have their presence in most hutments. If literacy is to come to rural India and if community radios are to find their village space, the men and women engaged in these technology tasks have to be trained/educated in colleges/universities. This has to be in some holistic fashion differently from what the academic scenario today is.
As early as the 1970s, the Communication Panel of the University Grants Commission (Dr. Khan was its member) had relayed the new challenges to all including government attempts such as the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC). The Institute was run by retired Press Information Officers with limited media vision. None heeded the Panel recommendations.
What was borrowed as syllabi from the West is followed slavishly without realising that university courses in America or Europe are meant for their needs and not of India’s; unlike in new academic areas such as management there is little indigenous material that can be of use in journalism classrooms. So, the relay of Western Communication knowledge continues, despite UNESCO exhortations.
We began by referring to the UNESCO conference in Singapore. In this context it is good to remember that UNESCO held in 1964 the Asian Regional Conference in Journalism Training attracting representatives from some 30 countries to Nagpur. It was for the first time that such a meet was organised outside a national capital and under the auspices of a private college (Hislop College). Educational efforts remain stagnant. History repeats itself.
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