Distribution Report by Dianne Jordan

Our plan for the distribution of our media outputs that we created this term was to place hard copies of our output in the right hands. By this I mean giving our media to people that will be able to do something with it. More specifically, with our sound slide on the army, we planned to go to the base and drop off a few copies with relevant people. We attempted to do so this morning, but the power was cut and thus we could not show our work. Towards the end of the week, we will drop off a DVD at the base, for distribution and showings amongst themselves. For instance, we would like the Officer in Command as well as the Communications Officer with whom we’ve been working to see our work and give us feedback.

The Officer in Command saw our first soundslide, and approved of it, thus strengthening the relationship we have built with the army as Rhodes University journalism students. By giving copies to these people, the media we have produced will be distributed effectively. With a print version of our sound slide in coming out in Grocott’s in two week’s time, our entire ward will be able to see and read about what 6 SAI Battalion is about. Our last attempt at distribution will take place on Sunday in Tantyjie. Our group is having a media showing at a local church after the morning service. This will give us the opportunity to show some of the Grahamstown community what the army is about through the anecdotal stories of the subjects used in our final sound slide.

Rubbish...daily!

Pilly and Amy

1. “Journalists should help bring a deliberating public into being by creating and sustaining a public sphere to which all citizens have access and in which all topics of concern to citizens and all opinions available can be articulated, deliberated and critiqued” (Haas 2007: 36). What Haas is suggesting fitted well and sort of provided an idea of how we could go about getting started with the Critical Media Project. We did set a space, in the form of public meetings where the public could voice out their opinions, fears and concerns. Albeit getting people to talk about their issues was fairly successful, there were and still are uncertainties regarding sustainability of these ‘deliberating spaces’.

Haas (2007: 32) argues that “if journalists are to help create and sustain a deliberating public sphere”, then it is imperative that they involve citizens as active partners. This leads us journalists to ask to what extent can citizens be involved with the project at hand and whether they are actually willing to participate. Also, are they well aware of how to go about sustaining such endeavours on their own?

Our approach to the citizens and the public at large was the ‘we are here for you’ approach. Yes we were there for them, we were able to get their concerns and complaints and take them to the relevant people. We were also hoping to get responses and comments from the people in power- the Municipality in our case as we did a sound slide report on the Grahamstown Municipal Rubbish Dump. But that did not go as planned; attesting to the fact that for various reasons, those who advocate for change (journalists in this case) often cannot speak directly or effectively to these people (in power). What strategies can we then come up with that will yield fruitful cooperation from them?

What we noticed was the fact that the people we talked to had so much hope that we had come with solutions to their problems since no one had carried out a project of our calibre. In all honesty, this directly and indirectly put pressure on us. Having to make the people understand that we were not there to ‘save’ them but rather to give them a voice with which to air their grievances was quite heartbreaking. There’s an example of a man who had four sons of which three dropped out of school. To this torn man, we were his hope and to realise that we don’t quite have the capacity to help him makes one wonder whether what we are doing is really helping or exacerbating people’s pain.

To say we have lost something by using public journalism methods would be a bit immature at this stage as we are almost at the peak of the Critical Media Production. We do however, feel that the same drive and enthusiasm that we had before commencing with the project has been slightly diminished, not by the use of the public journalism methods but because of the outcomes yielded so far. We are at a point where we are asking ourselves what good will what we are doing bring in such a short space of time. It is quite frustrating to start something that you know you are probably won’t be able to carry through until the set objectives have been met. With the CMP project in particular, there are no guarantees of the sustainability of the deliberating public spheres that we have brought to being and that makes us feel like we have only put salt on already cut-deep wounds.

Wallack et al (1999: 03) states that the media can provide visibility, legitimacy, and credibility to issues that are worth but have no means of being heard by influential people, or those who have the power to provide solutions. Indeed, we have played this role but question is, do we have enough to persuade those in power to listen to what the public has to say because often times what ‘journalists’ have to say is never important enough to overtake what’s on these people’s agendas. How long then, will we have to wait to get the influential people to listen and respond to the public’s complaints and questions?

On a personal note, this has been the most emotionally draining course. The fact that you never really think of how people on the other side of your neighbourhood are struggling until you actually go out there. On that note, we do feel that courses of this calibre should be introduced in first year. We do acknowledge that students would not have been adequately equipped to handle such a project, but if we (as much equipped as we are) are breaking, what difference does it really make then? This is something worth a whole lot of consideration. It really does hurt looking at eyes filled with hope, hope you’re not certain you will ever be able to fulfil. Emotionally, it’s a drainer!

2. The main ideas that were raised in the Journalism, Development and Democracy (JDD), and the Critical Media Production (CMP) courses were mainly that public journalists are journalists of the people and not just journalists for the people. What is meant by this is that public journalists work at ground level, they work with the people who are directly involved in the issue, and not with the people who are at the top and looking onto the problem. Public journalists get “down and dirty” with the people involved to find out the story from their perspective, it is a far more down-to-earth and personal approach to journalism. It is a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach. We experienced this in researching our story, in our story we spoke to the people who are directly involved with the issue, and then we tried to take it to “the top” but they did not even give us the time of day. In terms of getting a more “human” side of a story this approach to journalism is definitely more profitable (in terms of information) than conventional journalism.

Another idea is one that was raised by several members of several communities. And that was how much good do journalists actually do. We charge in there with these “help us help you” type of attitudes telling people to tell us what their problems are, building up their hopes that a difference can be made. The hopes only to be let down and disappointed again. It was a common concern in most groups that we move into these areas bring up all these problems and leave without solving anything.

Dealing with the rubbish...

By Tom Esteban, Nikita Singh & Phetane Rapetswane

The theory behind Haas’s ideas gives a good grounding for the process and production behind public journalism. However, in practise Haas’s ideals and theory fall to the wayside, though perhaps this has less to do with the process and output and more to do with the context of the production. The fact that we are students, with limited time, resources and skills means that our public journalism will never reach the ideals set out by Haas. This is a loss for us, we believe. Being students, we have to get ‘marks’ and from day one it was obvious that ‘marks’ and the idea of public journalism as a means of problem solving and public discourse were at odds. Furthermore, working within Grahamstown – a rather isolated town in the poorest province – meant that there was not much material to begin working with in the first place. In our experience, Ward 11 had no deliberating public. Our public meeting was attended by 4 students. It was painfully obvious that the public in Ward 11 were not concerned with airing their problems. It would have been interesting to know why they did not show up; and perhaps the fact that nobody showed up speaks for itself (i.e. lack of confidence in the public process of democratic South Africa; lack of confidence in the power of student journalists in Grahamstown).

 Perhaps the biggest loss for us was Haas’s idea of setting the news agenda. The idea was that citizens would help shape the news agenda. However, since cooperation in Ward 11 was low, as journalists we took it upon ourselves to find out what we thought was newsworthy, and so the public’s link with journalists in this way failed. This might be construed as failure; however (while still maintaining it is a loss and not a positive) we believe that as journalists we thought with the mind of the public as it were, and tried our best to place our citizenship in front of our jobs. So while we lost out on cooperating with the public on setting a news agenda, we believe that the public would agree with what we have produced. All things considered, we did our best to bring out some kind of debate and interest around something we felt was an issue in Ward 11. Whether or not it remains the most pressing issue for citizens is questionable. However, when weighing up the response from the public with our own production we cannot help but imagine that if there is a more pressing issue we certainly are not to blame for failing to cover it. The methods of public journalism for Ward 11 did not work in our favour. Response was poor and citizens seemed uninterested. Perhaps future students may benefit from our groundwork. We have tried our hardest to tackle issues and present these back to the public. If they take notice, then the fruits of our labour may be enjoyed by future students.

The ideas raised in during the course has majorly impacted on our identities in only one (rather big) way. Aside from Ward 11, where public interest and cooperation was low, we learnt that the public expects something of you as journalists. When going out to the public and asking them for their opinions, ideas and complaints we learnt that the public views our efforts as something to be laughed and jeered at. It was obvious to us as journalists that the public view us as story generators and producers rather than people trying to help the wheels in a democracy move as they should. We saw that people do not trust us as a means to a democratic end; a way of bringing about change. They see as us students trying to get high marks and win the favour of a professor. The impact of this didn’t go unnoticed by us and others. The sad thing is that in some sense they are right, and in another sense their hesitations are wrong and hold themselves back. Knowing that we were expected to do something, but lacking the cooperation, we tried our best to produce something that perhaps would ignite public interest to the point of action and change. If anything, this is not a failure, because once the product is made and shown to the public it is out of our hands and we are no longer responsible for what happens afterwards. As journalists in the public sphere we merely give a platform to the people. If they refuse to use it, we try our best to do what is appropriate. And in that sense our identities have become stronger as citizen journalists within a democracy.

From the beginning we set out to try and generate public interest, cooperation and debate. We rationalised that if the public were not interested they would have nothing to offer each other and us as a group. However, despite our efforts the public interest in Ward 11 was low. As such cooperation and debate was low. This was particularly disappointing for us as a group. Ward 11 is a middle class area and one would expect that these are the people that can get things moving in Grahamstown. It was interesting to note that these are the people that did not cooperate, yet Ward 12 had a great turn out with a lot of interest and debate amongst lower class people. Realistically we expected people to turn up and to give us a sense of what the problems were in Ward 11. We doubt that our expectations were too high, but perhaps the public thought otherwise.

We ended up focusing on what we thought was the biggest problem in Ward 11 – the rubbish dump. Using just our wit and our limited resources as student journalists we interviewed the important people (e.g. Esme and Angelique) and the people working on the ground (e.g. Zisiwe) to try get a balanced and full view of the situation. The journalism we produced was not alternative or groundbreaking, but it was something new for Grahamstown. It may take some time before the public trust in this type of journalism, and if it is new and strange to us it will definitely be new and strange to the public. As such it may be hard or even impossible to tell what our efforts have done for the public at this point in time. It may be that in terms of the rubbish dump we have done nothing; but if the public at least notices our wall paper and our efforts, future students may have the opportunity to bring about real change within Grahamstown. However, this is all too idealistic it seems in light of government cooperation. A revolution in South Africa as a whole is needed before Grahamstown can get its little problems sorted. Lack of cooperation by the municipality and those working on behalf of the government was particularly shocking.

I believe that our objectives were achieved. It may be that in our particular Ward, compared to others the problem(s) seem small and inconsequential. However, the nature of this kind of work (i.e. splitting into areas) means that some groups will have less to work with and other groups will have more to work with. Thus, it would be unfair and unreasonable to make conclusions comparing us to another ward. In light of this, I believe for our ward, what we managed to produce was excellent. Our product was geared towards anybody in Grahamstown, since the problem of the rubbish dump we believe is not merely a Ward 11 problem but a problem for everybody. We clearly made our wallpaper accessible to all people as the stories were written in a simple and approachable style and the design of the wallpaper was attractive.

In terms of the collaborative role outline by Christians et al, it seems we have not come under his description. Unfortunately, it seems that collaboration with government and government officials will not happen (at least for now). The government sees us as a threat to development and democracy rather than an institution that could help further our needs. In this way, as journalists we have lost out on the obvious power that the government has, and similarly the government has lost out on the influence that we have as media producers. The collaborative role proposes that government and the media work together to further each other’s needs and to further the needs of citizens within unavoidable events and processes.  Perhaps our group fell more into the radical role, however we felt powerless as media producers because hardly anybody in our Ward was interested in cooperating with us. If more citizens would get involved, there could be change and the uncooperative government would be forced to interact with us as journalists and as citizens in Grahamstown.

Overall we were happy with what we produced. Given the circumstances we produced journalism that brings up issues and has the ability to spark debate and public action. However, besides providing a platform the rest, we believe, is out of our control. We have felt that public journalism has the ability to bring about change, but only if the public wants change. It was an interesting experience for us, because we saw that people expect so much out of us as journalists and yet are unable or unwilling to work with us. The greatest lesson learnt we believe is that a stable and noticeable relationship is needed between journalists (student journalists or not) and the public. That way, public journalism can really fulfil what it promises, and in the long run everybody will benefit.

Settling with Settlers

Jess Hall and Rogan Kerr

Throughout the project, our pair has aimed to utilize the methods and ideas of Haas’ ‘A Public Philosophy for Public Journalism”. Our first step was to hold the community meeting in order to instigate a ‘common deliberation’ between community members, in order to seek out the common issues and thus, those that would be the most widely effective ones to pursue. However, our community meeting was unsuccessful. The apathy of the community was felt as only four people arrived. Thus, our task was extended and we were forced to create a pseudo-deliberation among the public of our ward. We did this by holding brief, unrecorded personal interviews with people on the street and in the area. This method abolished any sort of social inequality one might feel in a mass public meeting, thus the people’s sense of their ‘public sphere’ was unhindered by inequality of circumstantial issues. The issue of Settlers hospital and the bad service they deliver was prominent among the whole community. Thus we decided to take it further.

            We began research through a series of surveys which helped us in calculating the general opinion of Settlers. It was comprised of six ‘yes or no’ questions relating to the service they received and how medical aid (or the lack of) affected this service. We found out that 78% of the public believed that Settlers service was not up to scratch with the main reasons being: the nurses are rude and lazy; and the time it takes to receive assistance.

            At this point we began production of our television story (and community-based assessment) of Settlers hospital. Being entrenched in the public philosophy, we maintained that the story should be productive in a general community-aiding sense. Thus we decided to focus on the inter-personal service that Settlers gives to its patients. We wanted to investigate what the community’s preconceived ideas about Settlers hospital were and whether the hospital deserved such a reputation.

            We then followed up some of the more interesting cases we encountered through the surveys and conducted interviews with them. We also contacted a local GP (who does surgery at Settlers) and a paramedic who works alongside Settlers. We used all of these interviews in the TV story except for the paramedic who was not yet able to do an interview.

            We then held a focus group comprised of two citizen journalists, a JMS4 radio student who is covering a similar story to us, and one of the community members that we interviewed about the bad service he received.

            This gave us a chance to get some reflective, face-to-face dialogue about the situation and also shed light on parallel issues which we could investigate. The social differences between the guests were an advantage in terms of the varied input we received from the discussion. We discussed not only what we had seen in the television story but also deliberated where we should take the story from here, how effective we can make it and how to take it back to the public so that it will create the biggest influence possible and make a difference to the community.

            Our only regret is that our story was not more community based in terms of creating something longstanding that can continue after we have finished this course. One team from our CMP group is looking into creating a program for teaching basic skills (on a volunteer basis and funded by social development) to under-privileged foster children, in order to give them a better head start in obtaining a tertiary education. This is a very engaging project which has not been looked at before. It could start a stream of help to those who need it and be most enriching for the community at large, possibly even the country. It would have been satisfying to create something of such significance. Unfortunately the authoritarian way that the hospital is run makes it difficult to pitch ideas to those in the position to make some change, or even to uncover the core problems with the system. We have however, done our very best to create a community-based story that can, if nothing else, balance out the friction between the hospital and the public.

The material that we have covered over this semester has definitely impacted the way we define the purpose of journalism. It has broadened our horizons in a seemingly paradoxical process of focusing our attention at the community at hand. Before the course, we were inclined to think of a community as a singular conglomerating mass which we, as journalists served to emancipate. While this is true, we have learned that our purpose goes much deeper than that. It involves taking in the individual voice, interpreting it alongside many individual voices, bringing those voices together in order to seek out common resolution and goals, and then working together, with those voices, in order to achieve resolution on these issues.

            We have learned that, while there is a significant place for national and international journalism, it can be far more satisfying and literally life changing to hyper-localize our focus into the communities. We emphasize into the communities, as opposed to onto the communities. It is enriching and engaging; working with individuals; meeting many, many people; and creating something tangible that you can see is a greater aid to communities than simply publishing a story. It would be incredible to see communities take our efforts into their own hands, connecting resources and creating solutions as a community. This sort of inter-personal engagement among communities can be exceptionally rewarding and can better the standard of living in a community as a whole more than we can imagine on the scale we are working on presently.

            It has been an important reminder of the strength of a community and this project has taught us not only how we, as journalists can help the community but also how that community can help us, as journalists. The symbiotic relationship we have learnt to instigate will be extremely helpful and enterprising in our future as professional journalists.

The Process

Our story was instigated by the general sense of disappointment in Settlers hospital. After our unsuccessful public meeting we were forced to do our research on the streets, doing brief one-on-one interviews with arbitrary members of the public. We ensured that a wide variety of social, ethnic, racial and economic voices were included, and we were surprised at the large, voluntary response we received about the bad service at Settlers hospital. Thus we decided on this story, angling it as a piece that compares public opinion to realities within the hospital. We toyed with aspects of medical aid and discrimination but accounts were too small to be included in this relatively general story. We decided to keep our story general as we believed it would be of more use to the public than attempting to snoop out some investigative material (which is very difficult to do in Settlers hospital). Tension was built up between claims against the hospital from members of the public and then response by the hospital. The topic definitely instigated a good response from public members (as we found in our focus group) and the deliberation that ensued uncovered other topics and areas of research that we could look into.

After issues relating to Settlers hospital were prominent in the personal interviews we conducted, we set out to explore the new Settlers hospital, gain an understanding of what a PPP is, and address the concerns related around discrimination against patients and patient service. Our objectives were realistic in that although we may have trouble getting the hospital to comment, we could provide both good and bad patient experiences with the hospital, including comments from doctors, pharmacists and paramedics who are engaged with the hospital in some way.  This would possibly provide some light on the community’s perceptions of the hospital and educate local citizens about the new hospital and what it is doing that they may be unaware of.

A solid portion of our research came from the surveys that we conducted (as mentioned in the previous question). These surveys gave us not only the resource to calculate public opinion on the hospital, but also created a means of locating people who had something worthwhile to say about the hospital (personal accounts etc.), this was very helpful as it highlighted our first few couple of interviews and gave some direction to the process. Again, we spread these surveys to as many different demographics as possible. We handed them out to Rhodes staff members (kitchens and grounds and gardens), people shopping at Pick ‘n’ Pay, the public around Tantyi hall and people on high street. This gave us an eclectic and all encompassing response.

            From those responses, we chose two encounters that we found interesting and included those in our story by arranging longer and more in-depth interviews with them. We decided to interview with a local GP who does general work and surgery at the hospital. In the next few days, we will be adding a paramedic who works with Settlers hospital; a local pharmacist; a third person (a citizen journalist) who will detail their encounter with the hospital that we found more serious than the previous two; and hopefully, a member of staff from Settlers hospital. We believe that this will canvas a diverse spectrum of opinion and allows for good tension to be built through the claim and response process.

Using deliberation and the inclusion of community members and community opinion, we were able to achieve gaining a better understanding into the community’s concerns about Settlers Hospital. By facilitating discussion, and giving them a platform to discuss their concerns. We felt our process was well planned and executed to the best of our ability. Although we experienced closed communication lines from the Hospital, we have persisted in trying to give them an opportunity to defend themselves, and provide an explanation to the public. By doing so, applying Haas’s ideas of accountability and enhancing democratic values that ensure that all those involved in the story have had a chance to contribute.

We aimed our piece to both include and be seen by the whole community as a whole. Although there are many community members who use the facilities of their own local clinics, Settlers Hospital has always been there for these citizens in severe cases, as well as generally by many people in the community (of varied ages, races, etc). We wanted to make the community as a whole feel that they had a say about the hospital without isolating anyone into thinking that they wouldn’t use the hospital or could afford to use its facilities. We did this trough simple, balanced and objective language. Although our piece is in English, we plan on having isiXhosa subtitles in our final production that will be distributed throughout Grahamstown.

Our stories and interviews represent a broad variety of citizen voices in the community. Our draft production was shown to a focus group of community members which allowed for citizen feedback and deliberation, which positively increased discussion. We gained more knowledge and insight about citizen concerns in our focus group, as individual comments opposed many that were displayed in our draft piece. We provided some historical background that we gained from an interview with Dr Marx, which stimulated more questions and discussion, which enabled us to expand our story and make it more diverse and interesting. We provided possible solutions to the problems that in fact were suggested by various members of the community, which again fuelled both positive and negative discussion. This would not have been possible without the feedback gained from the focus group and community comments. 

The community has been largely unsuccessful in solving the current problem of disappointing service and care at Settler’s, however many citizens were unaware of its recent upgrade and the new facilities it now has. As journalists we felt that our job of creating understanding and communication between Settlers Hospital and the community has been bridged by providing knowledge and insight that many citizens did not have. There were still community members that disapproved of the service at Settlers; however they were interested to hear about the recent progress of the hospital.

            Our medium of television was effective in relaying the information onto our focus group as it brought up very interesting discussions about the hospital and why the public opinion of it is the way it is. The audience of it was interested and open to in-depth discussion of the issues intended. This was a good sign and has given us inspiration to share it with more members of the public.

            The political economy of our group was uninfluenced by any sort of commercial, governmental or editorial influence except for the fact that Settlers is very “closed doors” when it comes to dealing with journalists. This reception has made it very difficult to gain information from the perspective of the hospital and in the beginning, it seemed like the story was going to be very one sided as a result. But we have made leeway since then and will be rectifying this as much as possible.

            Our group was split up into pairs (or teams of three) and sent off to find a story. The research, collecting footage, editing and mastering was done completely by those pairs. After we had shown our footage in the focus groups we met as our CMP group and showed each other the work we had accomplished. This was met with comment, constructive criticism and advice from other members of the group as well as our group coordinator, Rod. From this meeting we took some good ideas away and now have a stronger sense of where this story is going and where it should be aimed. By working in pairs we eliminated group issues of individual apathy. It was up to the pairs to pull together and get work done, if someone was not pulling their weight it was up to the other partner to sort it out and get that person involved. This was helpful in maintaining a good ethic among the group as a whole. We were lucky in having no such problems in our pair.

The collaborative role goes against the independence of the press, however it is usually under conditions of emergency, natural disaster, terrorism and war, and various other crises (Christians.2009: pg 127). It relies on the cooperation between the media and various organs of the government and state (Christians.2009: pg 127). This often means that the government or state controls the supply of “news”, but this is on the “grounds of immediate necessity” (Christians.2009: pg 127). This role goes against the professional journalism grain, and is thus rarely represented (Christians.2009: pg 127). This role differs from Haas in that it is not under ‘special circumstances’ that cooperation between the media and government should be engaged but on a consistent basis. Haas argues that this cooperation should not just be between the media and officials but also between ordinary citizens who make up the community.

Everett M. Rogers defines development “as a widely participatory process of social change in a society, intended to bring about both social and material advancement (including greater equity, freedom and other valued qualities) for the majority of the people through their gaining greater control over their environment. Development Journalism is referred to as conditions under which journalists help in developing nations and finding ways to improve them. Development journalism can also involve heavy influence from the government, like the collaborative role. Development journalism however does not necessarily go hand in hand with national crisis. Development journalism can be really effective to improve local education and empowering local citizens.

Our project has seen a hybrid of collaborative development journalism emerge as a rewarding approach to community based operations. By creating governmental contacts, students were then able to draw on their resources and help expand, mould or create programs and community engagement schemes that can enrich the community as a whole. Working alongside ward councillors and social development, some were able to instigate change that had the full support of the municipality and thus, had a much better chance of becoming permanent resources for the communities and providing much longer lasting benefits.

While this type of development journalism can be a powerful tool for local education and empowerment, it can also be a means of suppressing information and restricting journalists (Smith). As a tool for social justice in South Africa, development journalism can be very valuable. By speaking for those who cannot, a development journalist can inform the rest of the world about important issues within developing nations. Looking at the strengths and weaknesses of a country may also help identify ways in which the nation can be helped. This style of development journalism is a tool for empowerment (Smith).

The radical role refers to social and political purposes that lie outside of the press institution (Christians.2009: pg 126). Its aim is to “expose abuses of power and to raise popular consciousness of wrongdoing, inequality, and the potential for change” (Christians.2009: pg 126). Its main goal is fundamental or radical change in society (Christians.2009: pg 126). Its role ensures that radical opinions and policies are represented in an arena of public regulation and pressure. This role both aligns and differs from Haas’s philosophy. It aligns with Haas in that it encourages accountability and responsibility as well as providing checks and balances for those in higher positions in the community. It differs from Haas in that although they both aim for change, Haas aims for change among citizens and from their deliberation, where as the radical aims for radical change through radical opinion, which does not always represent the ‘common good’ or all citizens.