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.
No comments:
Post a Comment