Being a journalist is a profession full of dreams and
desires, and since the beginning of the process to become one,
the student has to face the contrast between the university and
the real environment, because journalism has an advantage, that
can be disadvantage too. That is, that everybody can look at the
work that a reporter does, because this is the real meaning of
journalism, to work for the community and for the public
cause.
Being in the front of the reality and in the center of
illusions is the place in which the students can see the roads
they can follow in the real world. Money, ethic, ideals, micro or
macro-media? That becomes a dilemma when the capitalist world is
in front of their face and expectations, and when life and people
begin to remind them that, as teachers use to say: "this world
can chew you up and spit you out."
This opportunity to watch the work of their colleagues,
for those who are going to be journalists, is a big chance. Not
everybody has the possibility to watch what is happening with the
professional job, and to look at the work in the real context; it
can be also a way to look at their mistakes, weaknesses and
strengths, and to build their own future, and to see how they
want to be when they become professionals.
Being a professional is the main goal for those who
begin a career, and if it is a journalism student, this
professional status must be combined with passion and a big
concept about the social importance, and the real manner to do
journalism. To have this, is very important, since you are a
student, to have a notion about what is the truth.
To tell or not to tell the truth has been, since the
profession began, the main and most complicated dilemma for the
people who work in this area. Journalism schools try to set some
ethical bases for the students, and, since the beginning,
genuineness and legitimacy in the job are the rules for the going
-to-be journalist.
The university, as the place where theory is the basis,
is the workshop of dreams about being the best person and the
best expert, working transparently and based on the ethic that a
profession, like journalism, requires. You want to get your
diploma and get a job, and your labor is going to be different,
because you are going to change the rules and the environment is
going to be better. You are going to transform the entire
development of your career, because your ethical job is going to
make the difference. There is no way to get permeated by the bad
habits and mistakes that old journalists use to make, no; this
new professional is going to modify all of humanity, and the way
journalists work. Corruption is going to be over. Biased labor is
not going to exist any more. There is no way to get bribed for
status that makes you lose your ideals and your
principles.
It is normal to spend hours talking to your classmates,
and those hours are enough for students to transform the complete
profession, because you are going to make the difference, and the
real world is not going to stop your dreams. Media is going to
work for the people and is going to be directed and led by honest
people, and the main principle of journalism, the human being, is
not going to change. Being the viewers of the State and political
and social process is going to be the major goal. Your entire
career is full of projects; some of them very good and the others
very mediocre, but all of them missions to accomplish, to change,
too, but finally, tasks to develop in the future.
Teachers are trying to prepare you for a future that may
not exist, because the academy must be idealistic, and this is
normal because you have to be prepared to be the best and to
change the things that are not working in the professional
atmosphere, but certainly the world has things that can hardly be
changed.
Then comes the real world. The truth, which was the most
important idea and the rule to follow, becomes ambiguous.
Contradictions exist in the whole development of the authentic
world, and they are impossible to avoid as a journalist. Economic
powers are the first interested in your work; how you do it and
what you say is your first regulation if you do not want to lose
your job, because political and economic interests are after your
work. You are supposed to be telling the truth to the entire
society, but that truth is full of uncertain and confusing
contents, as the society is, so, you have to work to translate
those concepts in clear theories. Processing and transmission of
the information is not the principle of journalism, but
interpretation of it.
How is journalism born? It is a profession of passion
and love, in which being dedicated is the most important
requirement. And that is what a good journalist is, at least in
Latin America.
Latin American journalism, as in the entire world, was
conceived as the occupation of people who want to be a viewer in
the society; to be the "guardian dog" of democracy and good
development of the society and community. That is why politics
and journalism have very big ties; they cannot work in separate
ways even though they fight for their interests every time. It is
impossible that this profession hasn’t changed throughout
the years, and actually it did, and it is incredible to find out
its meaning in each different generation.
To work in any branch of journalist means nowadays in
South American countries, and surely not just for them, to get a
job that satisfies the public’s ambitions and necessities,
based on what satisfies the reporter’s boss, not being
conscious about the fact that media’s power is managing the
public or the information agenda, which means that they can tell
the audience what they need to know, what to talk about and how
to do it, that makes the journalists’ work something really
delicate, because is in their hands the publication of
information that is going to be part of the spectators lives.
These actions are the real preoccupation of teachers, old
journalists, and even students in the Latin American context,
because of the problem that is affecting the political and social
development: There is no citizen’s participation in the
processes that affect their societies, because the
education’s quality is not as good to form that kind of
criteria; and that those countries’ news papers and in
general, the media, are not working to educate their
viewers.
The most honorable journalists in the southern part of
the American continent, for example Gabriel García
Márquez, Ramón
Cortez, Alberto Lleras Camargo, Eduardo Caballero
Calderón, Mario Vargas
Llosa, as too many others, based their work on cultural and
social benefits. They were reflected in the journalists’
interests in the daily life, newspapers and media, trying to
reproduce in their jobs the abnormal, and even normal things, as
interesting stories to tell to their countries. Their work has
been taught in the academy as an example to follow, but it has
been shown also, and may be unconsciously, as something that
could just have happened in the past and that can not be coherent
with the new world demands.
To explain the differences in education, the Colombian
Literature Nobel Laureate, Gabriel Garcia
Marquez says in his essay "The Best Work in the World" that
50 years ago journalism schools were not a trend as happens
nowadays. The vocation was learned in the redaction rooms, in the
printers’ office, in the
coffee shop in front of the newspaper, at Friday night parties.
Every newspaper was a factory that used to inform without
mistakes, and generated opinion in an environment that maintained
the moral in its
place. Because journalists were always together, they used to
make a common life, and were such aficionados to their occupation
that they never talked about anything different than the
profession itself. Empirical knowledge was the one that was born
from fervor.
Garcia Marquez continues saying that the later creation
of journalism schools was a scholastic reaction against the fact
that the profession had not any academic bases, and now the
career is called Communication Sciences or Social Communication.
The result, continues Garcia Marquez, is not enthusiastic. The
students go out from the university with big illusions, and all
their lives in front of them: it seems like they are out of world
and realism, out of the vital problems, and their priority is the
competition to gain, to have the scoop and be the
protagonists.
It is not easy to find the place where and the year when
journalism changed its essence, or maybe it didn’t happen
and what changed were the ways to do it. It can be the immediate
spirit that new and mass medias have, in the profession in which
each effort finishes with each information, as Garcia Marquez
said; and because of it, the goal begins to justify the methods.
It seems like the students of this career miss the old journalism
manner without live it, or, citing the same writer, "… in
the case of journalism, it seems like the profession could not
evolve as fast as its instruments …", but even though the
world has changed, the admirable, the big writers, are still
doing their best and reminding what this profession was conceived
for, and they do not used to live in another world. It makes me
think that the education in the universities is responsible for
that, and I don’t want to sound like I have feelings or
thoughts against it, but at least it makes me wonder about what
kind of professional I want to be.
But today’s universities are not that bad. The
creation of them formed from necessity, and to form journalists
too. The media and the hurry to belong to one of the most
commercial and acknowledged enterprises is what makes the new
professional a person that, what ever it takes, has to work for
one of those existing macro-institutions. Having a job is more
important than going on with the ideals, because reporters
acquire other responsibilities, as family or their own life, and
they also need to eat. So, at this point, it is the professional
ethic what counts, or the personal
responsibilities to take care of their selves and their
families?
It is not easy to talk about a global way to do
communications; maybe the mass media is the trend, but the work
of each columnist, or reporter, is what makes the media
exceptional and unique. Their work can come from their knowledge,
but the information that a student of journalism has can be the
same, or very similar from the others, but, experience,
perspective, principles and awareness to interpret the world are,
with no doubt, the origin of that uniqueness that media, which
are getting equal from the others, need.
Studying the reasons that explain why journalism can be
differently taught, and even developed in a third world country,
as Latin Americans are, from other places, it leaves the
conclusion that, because of Latin American countries’
conditions, namely social development and politics; journalism is
expected to be the thing that works against the people and the
institutions that, even though are supposed to be working for the
citizens, are not thinking precisely in it or about the entire
society, but them selves. And these exigencies are derived from
the fact that the work of the journalist is the most visible in
the Latin American society, because their public work makes them
face the reality and be responsible of what their work can
cause.
It is that kind of work that makes a journalist special
in those countries, because to try to do their job according with
the professional ethic and their principles can be really
dangerous, and not too recognized.
We are talking about the kind of countries in which
there are armed conflicts and common delinquency, and political
corruption and impunity, being a journalist is a risky job, it is
even more so you are doing your job with out any conception of
evil. Only the accomplished labor, as happens in Colombia, shuts
journalist’s mouths and stops a honest job. It can sound
amazing but is not difficult for some people; it is just a
question of paying somebody for killing, and the problem is
finished. That is why nowadays Colombia is one
of the most dangerous countries to practice the occupation, even
to the point that, as the journalist, who is the Colombian
vice-president, Francisco Santos assures, some international
insurance companies do not want to insure journalists.
Therefore, it is not easy to find anyone in this
occupation who is not afraid, but students are not totally
conscious about this problem. It is true that they watch the news
about one journalist killed because of a work in which he
denounced a corrupt politician. However, most of them do not get
touched, because the university seems like a place in which you
are in the real environment, even though you are protected from
bad things, from society things. There is no way to get
contaminated. But even though as a student you
are in a crystal box, it is impossible not to notice about how
often a colleague can be killed: Colombia is the country where
many journalists have been killed in the last 15 years, and,
actually in 2001 there were 37 journalists murdered, and in 2002
there were 19. It makes me wonder whether the amount has
diminished because this problem is being controlled, or because
there are fewer journalists working against corruption. I do not
know about the second one, but I am sure that the first one is
not a part of any statistic.
Colombia’s vice-president, says in his article
"The Danger of work the journalism in Colombia" that to
understand the situation it is important to know the conditions
in which journalists in Colombia work, because the three
principal illegal actors in the armed conflict, guerrillas,
paramilitaries and narcotrafficants, "are not friends of the
truth." And besides, concludes Santos, with a very bad and
flexible judicial system, and an impunity average of 90%,
journalists have to pay a high price if they say who did what,
and who killed who.
Journalists are frightened and are in a dilemma that
puts them in between tell the truth or keep their jobs, or their
life, but, in spite of that, to expect this kind of job from the
communication professionals is not a crazy thing, and it does not
seem either like an impossible utopia, because these people who
work in the media have the resources and the power to educate the
citizens, and to form them, and to go for a better society for
the average person who have their hands tied because they have no
power to change the situation. It is not impossible to dream
about a journalism that cares more about the people than money,
but it is not easy to ask to the economic emporiums the same
thing, because that is the way they work, and as they own the
media they own the information, and worse, they "own" the
journalists. That is just talking about money, but talking about
political interests is not less complicated, because image and
personal
benefits are committed, and the topic is getting really
confusing.
<> Taking a look to the facts, it is very normal
to see the young people, who are being prepared to accomplish
with this hard labor, having career crisis, and
even refusing the system and the media’s way to work; and
dreaming about new kind of enterprises, such as micro medias, but
independent from advertisers and people who try to manage their
work and their principles. Finally ethic and soul cannot be sold,
and if they can, good work and satisfaction are not going to be
in the statistics.
I do not know if I have told you that I am going to
finish my studies in Social Communication and Journalism, and I
do not know if I am going to be able to talk about honesty and
ethics and accomplished dreams in a few years from now, but I
just know that this kind of discussion are the things that keep
the career alive from catastrophe to be running of ideals and get
out of its main reason: think for the people, work for them and
for the principle of democracy: everybody has rights and
responsibilities, in which life and free speech are fundamental,
but also political decisions. I wonder, even if a country’s
educational system is not good, cannot journalists and
communications professionals, whose work is getting to every
place, transmit the information required by the society to permit
them to achieve their rights and accomplish their
responsibilities?
Concluding, it is important to say that if the media
does not work according to the Constitution of their country, how
can they expect the common people to work according to it? For my
country and my next job this might be the rule to trace,
contained in the Republic of Colombia Political Constitution,
article 20: "Every individual is guaranteed the freedom to
express and diffuse his/her thoughts and opinions, to transmit
and receive information that is true and impartial, and to
establish mass communications media.
The mass media are free and have a social responsibility. The
right of rectification under equitable conditions is guaranteed.
There will be no censorship."
BIBLOGRAPHY.
- Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
2000. - Constitution of Republic of Colombia
- Encyclopedia Britanica. Volume 7, page
215. - Encyclopedia Britanica. Volume 13, page
94. - Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. "El Mejor Oficio del Mundo."
March 2003. Sala de Prensa.
Available in www.saladeprensa.org - Impunidad. www.impunidad.com
- Santibañes, Abraham. "El Desafio de la
Mariposa Azul." 02 July, 2001. Pensamiento, Palabra, Obra
y Opinion. April 13, 2003. Available in www.abe.cl/edi20010702.html - Santos, Francisco. "El Peligro de Ejercer el Periodismo
en Colombia." 12 may, 2002. Revista Inter-Forum.
Available in www.revistainterforum.com/espanol/articulos - www.sabanet.unisabana.edu.co/comunicacion
<>
Natalia Hernández Zuluaga
Estudiante de Comunicación social
Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana
Medellín – Colombia.
Trabajo hecho en la Universidad
de West Virginia (West Virgia, EEUU)