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.