It is to assume that Kenya has for years, had a common programme, a standardised curriculum that all practising journalists in the country today have undertaken.
It is also to assume that all those journalists working both in the print media and electronic media, as well as all public relations officers in public and private institutions in Kenya, have studied a common core of journalism studies.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
Unlike professions such as law, medicine, engineering and education, journalism is not a profession in the traditional sense of the term. Journalism embraces multiplicity of skills that help fashion the written and spoken contents of newspaper, periodical and the radio and television news.
The leader writer, the literary critic, the foreign correspondent, the sub-editor, the press photographer, the producer, the continuity announcer, the graphic designer and the cartoonists are all journalists. They, however, don’t have similar training or aptitudes common to all.
Also, unlike professions that have acknowledged curriculum, an individual can become a journalist, and a forceful one at that, almost overnight. There are many journalists that have not had a formal training in journalism, but have become compelling journalists. There are also many who have had elaborate formal training in journalism or mass communication but remain essentially tame in their performance.
There has been a worldwide debate on the methods of training professional journalists. Some think the most satisfactory school of journalism is the newspaper itself, the newsroom, as they believe the techniques can be acquired best through actual experience.
Others think that journalists are best prepared by a special course of study at a school of training for journalism.
Two schools of thought
Employers in this country have concurrently used the two schools of thought in its recruitment strategies although the government early recognised the need for training in journalism by establishing the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication and the School of Journalism at the University of Nairobi.
Shortage of trained staff might have played a hand. KIMC and the UoN’s School of Journalism—the only journalism training institutions in the country until very recently—did not have the capacity to train a large number of journalists.
The government and the private sector immediately gobbled up the few the two institutions produced as journalists or public relations officers.
However, most institutions continued employing people so long as they had had a social science degree or had an advanced level certificate, but with demonstrable flair of language and writing skills.
At one level therefore, one cannot accurately talk about a new curriculum for the modern journalist since we have had two routes by which one could become a journalist: formal study of journalism at a journalism training institution, and direct entry into the profession by reason of a liberal education degree or a demonstrable flair in expressive skills.
We can therefore reasonably argue that talk of a new curriculum on journalism is aimed at establishing consensus regarding the kind of syllabus prospective journalists in Kenya should undertake now and in the future.
However, we have also to acknowledge the fact that mass media has undergone enormous transformation: apart from having the familiar newspapers, the radio, the television, the film, the 21st century journalist has to grapple with and use the newly emerging communications-related media like website, social media to do what his predecessor has always done: to inform, educate, entertain and interpret news events for his/her audience.
The emergence of the new media does not imply that the skills, knowledge, and traits that journalists crucially need to work are outdated.
Critical qualities
Among the qualities that contribute to the success in journalism are boundless curiosity, keen powers of observation, an interest in human relationship, integrity, commitment and a sense of style, tact and fair-mindedness.
The journalist will still need this in the emerging communication-related media. This is because when all is said and done, the new media is nothing but an alternative channel of communication while the soft-ware, the news, information, ideas, culture and values that journalists have been communicating all along, remains largely the same.
These therefore, are the traits or abilities that training in journalism builds on to produce a professional who could make a first-rate contribution in the development of the profession in this country as their counterparts have done elsewhere.
So, besides these traits, which a prospective journalist should have, what else should he/she study?
A 12-year old boy who was interested in a career in law once wrote to Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the US, Felix Frankfurter asking what texts on law he thought she should study in order to be a competent lawyer, like Frankfurter no doubt was.
The great judge replied to her letter, saying: “No one can truly become a competent lawyer unless he/she is a cultivated man…. The best way to prepare for law is to come to the study of law as a well-read person. Thus, alone can one acquire the capacity to English language on paper and in speech and with habits of clear thinking which a truly liberal education can give.”
If I was to advise a high school student who is interested in a career in journalism and communication, I would, paraphrasing Frankfurter, tell him that “no one could truly become a competent journalist unless he/she is a cultivated man/woman.
Frankfurter went on to say "the best way to prepare for journalism is to come to the study of journalism as a well-read person. Thus, alone can one acquire the capacity to English—or, in our case Kiswahili— languages on paper and in speech and with habits of clear thinking that a truly liberal education could give.”
Importance of liberal education
The importance of liberal education in the intellectual, moral and personality development of a person cannot be gainsaid. It provides the intellectual furniture and discipline every adult needs to give his or very best in whatever he chooses to do with his life.
The principles and ideals liberal education embody broaden a person’s mental horizons with the result that the person is able to strike a context, or a unique perspective to nearly every news event, every major occurrence and give it dimension or meaning far beyond what the rest of mankind perceives in that event.
These mental tools are crucial aid to the practising journalist.
Asked to say what advice she could give to young people who are interested in a career in reporting and broadcasting, the award-winning reporter for the a major television company in the US CBS TV station KNXT in Los Angeles, California, Connie Chung observed:
“Young people who want to work in this field should read the newspaper every day and keep up with current events. I would not recommend majoring in journalism in Radio or TV in college. I think it is much more worthwhile to study history or English or political science. If you want to study journalism, do it at postgraduate level.”
Frankfurter and Chung seem to agree that competence in law and journalism lie in one having a sound academic background.
In his Dynamics of Mass Communication, Joseph R. Dominick observes that a newcomer to the profession of journalism should have a well-rounded education in the liberal arts, especially political science, economics, history, literature and the social sciences.
Dominick, who is a professor of journalism at University of Georgia, Athens, says that a well-rounded education is reinforced by the fact that Accrediting Council on Education in journalism and Mass Communication, the main organisation that accredits journalism schools in the US, recommends that three-fourths of a student’s work be taken outside the journalism area.
Implying that the foundations of solid journalism, public relations and other communication-related careers lie in the rigour of general or liberal education.
In his essay entitled The Meaning of Liberal Education, Robert A. Scott, President, Adelphi University, argues: “A liberal education fosters the ability to distinguish between what is true and what is false, with a number of different analytical perspectives: the scientific, the artistic, the humanistic, the quantitative and the qualitative.
He continues to say such education "helps students to appreciate that which is the best that has been thought and said, to recognise the true, the beautiful and the good, no matter the culture or time. It helps students understand that to measure something indicates it is valued, but that not everything of value can be measured.”
A liberal education, a study of such subjects as literature, history, political science, mathematics, biology, physics equips a person with the intellectual furniture and discipline that helps him or her to ask questions, and searching questions about the whys and wherefores of life.
There is something intriguingly peculiar with journalism. The attraction an audience has with the work of a journalist has something to do with the depth of character, intellect and personality that the journalist radiates or infuses in his/her work. Behind all these is acquaintance with the finest, if not, about the deepest thoughts about the meaning of life and the basis of institutions that shape human life.
It is in this light that I think highly of the curriculum I first interacted with at KIMC the first time I joined the place as a student in the early 90s.
Admitting students who had not had an undergraduate education, the college had long had liberal or academic disciplines such as political science, economics, sociology and administration.
The students studied them alongside strictly professional subjects in journalism. The students it released to the job market had solid academic and professional background to serve the country. They literally trained most of us who joined the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting without a journalism background. They did so because they had all that it takes.
All that I could probably urge is that the college ensures that these disciplines are taught much more systematically and by people who truly appreciate values, perspectives and knowledge the respective subjects they teach contain.
Recommendations
I would also recommend the adoption of such disciplines by all those middle level colleges that have established journalism courses in the country.
Local universities that have established programmes in journalism or mass communication should similarly ensure that students taking these courses have a bowing acquaintance with liberal education, besides studying journalism or mass communication as a profession. I did not belabour the necessity for these as Chung and Dominick have already ably done as we have seen earlier.
Ultimately, the journalist and the communication specialist should have had contact hours in news writing, feature writing, editing and editorial writing. He/she should also study public relations as one of the core subjects in journalism or mass communication. A little knowledge of the history of journalism should equally be studied.
I have noted inexcusably serious weaknesses in this area. Schools of journalism are not preparing students for the technical aspects’ journalism and communication the way KIMC and the School of Journalism used to do in the past.
In the final analysis, a journalist and a public relations specialist must write and write in a certain format. I am seeing serious ennui in this area through the students I receive for industrial attachment these recent days.
We are not being fair to students. It is like the professional equivalent of kukula fare!
We should also expose students to mass communication research, social marketing and advertising; he/she needs this should he/she decide to work as a public relations consultant although the knowledge is equally crucial to a person working in a specific media house.
The training of the modern journalist is not complete without acquainting him/her with emerging new telecommunications-related media.
The Internet is lately becoming a forceful media outlet that should not be ignored by media training institutions. He/she should leave college with knowledge on how to establish his magazine on the Internet.
I have tried to point out what I consider to be the things the modern journalist in Kenya should go out with when he bids farewell to his/her journalism college. The list I have pointed out is not by any means exhaustive.
The question of specialisation
For instance, we need more journalists specialising in specific areas of human concern such as economics, environment, health, education, diplomacy, finance, crime and punishment, politics, science, religion, the arts and a host of other areas.
We need journalists who are experts, who are authorities in their own fields and be in a position to point out the strength and weaknesses of our institutions with requisite confidence.
The Kenyan journalist should not be an errand boy or girl for opinion leaders or policy-makers. He/she should walk shoulder to shoulder with these people without being cowed by the influence and wealth these people wield in the society. Thereby he/she can critique their opinions and their actions, knowing that he/she has a co-equal role in establishing and sustaining only those values that make our country a better place for its 30 million people to live.
General journalism has long had its place in society. We need to go further to produce journalists that have a definite competence in certain areas of human interest and be in a position to bring informed perspectives on what he/she is reporting on.
By this, the audience will be better informed and educated and will in turn be better citizens of this country. The audience will, with the reliable and competent information they glean from the media outlets, be in a position to make intelligent decisions that improve the quality of the lives they lead. The society will be the winner if media training institutions produce the kind of journalism I have been imagining in this talk.
In sum, this is what I consider to be some of the things that should go into the contents of the curriculum for the modern journalist in Kenya and beyond.
Communications officer, Ministry of Education
