Who is a journalist?

After eight annual self-examinations, media practitioners, meeting in Cebu’s Marco Polo Hotel last weekend, still had not found the answer to the question, “Who is a journalist?”

The question was crucial because the theme of MediaNation 8 was the Philippines being “The Most Dangerous Place for Journalists.”

Actually, that notorious title which the country achieved after the Nov 23, 2009 Maguindanao massacre where 32 of the 58 killed were members of media. Other countries like Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, have overtaken us in that notoriety but it doesn’t mean the killing of journalists here has stopped. Under the 16-month old government of President Benigno Aquino III, six journalists have already been killed, according to the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines.

One unwarranted death is too many.

Since 1986, when democracy was restored in the country after the first People Power revolution, NUJP said 146 journalists have been killed including 13 during the Arroyo administration.

In the two-half day discussion, the question “Who is a journalist?” keept cropping up.

It used to be that the dictionary’s definition of “journalist” was enough. One of Webster dictionary’s definitions of a “journalist”, is one who engages in journalism, which is also defined as “ The collecting, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles in newspapers and magazines and in radio and television broadcasts.”

In the Media nation discussion, the issue of radio block timers came up. They are commentators who buy time in radio. They are usually the ones who do hard-hitting commentaries. Based on the records of media killings, they are the most vulnerable group of media people.

There is a certain uneasiness among some members of media about radio block timers because it is public knowledge that many of them are in the payroll of politicians. Although it was also mentioned that there are block timers who are not corrupt.

So one asked the question, “Are radio block timers journalists?”

Another question: “Can one still be called a journalist, if he is corrupt?

The lack of answer of who is a journalist is the reason why there are different figures on media killings. NUJP has its numbers. The Philippine National Police has a different figure. Karapatan, the human rights group, and the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists have different statistics.

Aside from the lack of a standard criteria of who is a journalist, there is also the question of when is the killing of a journalist considered “media killing?” If a journalist is killed over a family land dispute is that media killing?
The “ifs” led to more “ifs” and it was decided to set aside the resolution of the issue. Everybody agreed that whether nor not the media person practiced responsible journalism, there is no justification for violence.

Media Nation is the advocacy of a civil society group, Pagbabago@Pilipinas, which believes in the important role of media in a democracy. It’s current president is Bart Guingona.

Formed in 2003, MediaNation’s original aim was to have the news media re-examine its place in the context of an “unfolding nation,” and to drive home the point that in a country where the educational system was wanting, the media have become default educators.

One of the speakers in MediaNation8 was media guru, Vergel Santos, BusinessWorld chairman of the board. Santos underscored the importance of skills for a working journalist.

Excerpts from his talk:

“At any rate, journalism is part academic and part craft. It is philosophies, mathematics, histories and cultures, politics and economics, and arts and sciences supplied in amounts enough to provide a beginner journalist with a general working perspective, one informed not only by the standard liberal-arts disciplines, but also by studies in professional ethics; also, journalism is words handled with some degree of perspicuity – accuracy of description, clarity of thought, leanness of language, and a manner of expression decent yet straightforward.

“Both parts surely can be learned in school, but only if properly delineated, that is, taught separately and by different methods, one taught in a classroom as a regular undergraduate course, the other taught in a laboratory as a practical post-graduate course, one learned by doing.

“In fact, from then on everything is learned mostly by doing, learned on the job, although a return to academe, or any semi-academic setting (lectures, seminars, and similar short programs), should be useful for specialist or otherwise higher learning.

“I’ve often wondered who actually have had the benefit of that sort of grounding, and don’t feel sanguine ¬– how can I, with the proliferation of superficial and sensationalist publications and broadcast programs and more recently the opening of on-line platforms to everyone?

“It seems to me that the media have sunk into a free-for-all business – more individualistic than organized, turning out products untouched by professional standards – and that true journalism has become a mere shadow within it. In this new disarrangement, citizen journalism is the phrase of currency, one that cheapens a once noble and discriminating vocation by suggesting that anyone – just anyone – can take it up.”

“That is just the sort of fraudulence that breeds wrongful ineptitude, which, although, again, never deserving to be met with violence, is, all the same, a crime – a wholesale crime. “