Amanda Masuku and Barry Sierra
Haas discusses the concept that topics of common concern are often problematic because in reality there will be naturally forming inequalities amongst different social groups (Haas, 2007). We found this to be especially prevalent in ward 4, specifically with some of our earlier story ideas on farming, waste management and water quality. We felt that the needs of the people and the action of local government where not in-line with each other. Similarly, there was very little consensus on what action could be taken to alleviate such problems; this was largely due to the presence of naturally forming inequalities as local government and established farmers were struggling to agree on important topics, this was the biggest surprise that came up during the earlier focus groups. And, there was very little that our journalism could due to change the perceptions of opposing parties.
Haas, like Fraser, argues that multiple discursive domains would provide distinct social groups with the ability to frame issues of interest to them, which can then be subjected to critical examination by other groups (Haas, 2007). The fact that we introduced ourselves to different layers of these domains meant that we needed to re-evaluate the different needs of the different domains. For example, local government, farm owners and farm workers often had contrasting views on what needed to be done and how it could be achieved. As journalists, through the public journalism lens, we needed to be able to empathise with the different groups and frame our issues in relation to the needs of everyone.
Haas argues that journalist’s primary aim should be to create a public, deliberating sphere that is not restricted by hegemonic interests or commercial news-agenda setting. Instead, journalists should share their authority with the public by instituting various formal and informal procedures in agenda-setting as well as providing a public discourse that highlights the benefits of both face-to-face interaction and mass-mediated deliberation (Haas, 2007). This was important as it allowed us to gain a new perspective on what our journalism could mean for the people. The nature of our production (which will be discussed in greater detail at a later stage) meant that we did not need to rely on hegemonic interest or a commercial news-agenda. We were relatively free when it came to framing our issues. Furthermore, as part of the public journalism method, we found that face-to-face interaction was an invaluable method of gaining information about the issues we were looking into. When discussing areas of interest with people they seemed far more open and honest when we highlighted the fact that we were just trying to find out their concerns and we were not operating from an official standpoint.
The biggest impact has been seeing that journalism is a varied and evolving field. Journalism has many functions in modern society but mainstream media is largely about a ‘check and balance’ on government, news and entertainment. But journalism can also be used for social change and advocacy. We live in a viciously unequal world and our responsibility as journalists is first and foremost to the people of society. However, necessary changes are often difficult to enact as they require the direct action of people and organisations that are hindered by bureaucratic problems. Therefore, change is often slow and difficult to predict. The journalism we produced and the way we produced it made us see that change can, and should, come from the people and we have the opportunity to be a part of that change. We noticed in the course of our research that it was often just ordinary citizens that were more concerned with the plight of the people than the very councillors and representatives that are meant to serve the people. Consequently, working with concerned citizens in a participatory manner was far more successful than trying to enact changes through local government.
The research phase of this project had important implications for the way in which we set our objectives, methods and style of our media production. Firstly, Ward 4 is largely a rural, farming community and their needs are influenced by the environment in which they live. For example, water scarcity is often more acute in these areas than in the urban wards. Secondly, during the planning of the initial public meetings and civic mapping, we were constantly battling with the official sources (local government) needed for our stories. Farming and water issues are directly related to the actions taken by local government. For example, emerging farmers cannot survive without government and help when it comes to funding, farming resources and training not much has been done to assist them. The frustration that came from local government’s inability to help us, or even try to discuss these problems in any depth, made us review the type of journalism we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it.
We had a lot of story ideas at the beginning of the media production phase of the course; stories on farming and livestock theft, water quality, ward development, and waste management. But all of these stories, by their very nature, relied on local government. We thus decided to so a story on the Hobbiton Outdoor Education Centre at Fairewood. There were a few reasons for this but the most important one is that we noticed that it was a real opportunity to do some good in the community and establish relationships between the youth of ward 4, Hobbiton and local NGO’s and community organisations. Thus, our objectives were to help the children in ward 4 by advertising Hobbiton to local organisations and business and to gain funding for workshops and activities. In this regard our journalism can best be defined as advocacy journalism because we aimed to “speak or plead on behalf of another, giving the other a face and a voice.” (Careless, S. 2000: 1). We decided that the best way to do this was not through a wall newspaper because there were no locations suitable for this. Instead we created a pamphlet that was distributed to local charities, NGO’s and businesses. Our objective for the pamphlet was to create a professional and visually attractive advertisement that could introduce potential donors to Hobbiton, the youth of ward 4 and potential activities they could be involved in. Although our objectives were clearly thought through and a product of the evolution of the project, we faced other problems as our desire to be a catalyst for change relied on business people and organisations, instead of the mobilisation of the community. However, as most of the work done for ward 4 has focused on youth, we decided it was a worthwhile risk.
As previously mentioned, our pamphlet is largely an advertisement for Hobbiton but it has specific goals; firstly, to attract attention to Hobbiton’s community involvement and secondly, to highlight issues of particular concern in ward 4. The pamphlet provided information on Hobbiton in the form of its vision, history and current programmes. But we also included information on the GOOD project and quotes by Josh Paton, the manager of Hobbiton at Fairewood. Our advocacy-based journalism was aimed at aiding development in ward 4. Hobbiton provides a perfect avenue for community development because that is its primary goal as an organisation. Whilst they do provide corporate packages, often these are done to help fund future community-based projects. We felt that our involvement in the relationship between Hobbiton, local communities and organisations could help foster lasting links between different sectors of people living in and around Grahamstown. In this regard, the journalism we produced was alternative for us because we were taking a fresh look at what our journalism could do for the people of ward 4. It was less a matter of providing news-worthy information and more about seeking out opportunities to create tangible change for a local community that relies so heavily on the influence of local government to create any meaningful change in their lives.
We feel that the media we produced was carefully tailored to the specific requirements of our vision for the production phase of this course. The pamphlet was meant to provide important information on what organisations could do to assist the youth of ward 4. Visual elements played an important role in this process; we needed the pamphlet to attract attention to the issues at hand but it needed to look professional and comprehensive because it was being distributed to business people and organisations that would be providing capital for our products and our pamphlet and presentation of it needed to inspire confidence in the aims of the program.
Our document research was quite thorough as we had compiled a number of different stories, even though we eventually decided on doing the story on Hobbiton at Fairewood. We relied on interviews, observations and focus groups to provide the bulk of our initial material. We also tried to make sure that we had a variety of sources that articulated the perceptions of the community across different groups of people. We felt that whatever journalism we would end up producing needed to be balanced, and as journalists we needed to be able to have a holistic understanding of the issues that were being raised during the research phases of the project.
One of the biggest disappointments of our ward is that we were unable to uncover any citizen journalists in the rural areas and although we tried to give a voice to their concerns, it was done through our conception of the problems they face. I think some of the other stories in our group were able to effectively showcase the issues; this is especially true of the TV pieces and the audio slideshows which were able to visually illustrate the stories and this had a far more direct and moving impact. For the research on farming stories and water quality we attempted to work with a variety of ‘official sources’ but it was a difficult operation trying to get the relevant material from them. Local NGO’s and advocacy groups were far more helpful but they are also far more independent than local government and do therefore not struggle with the same bureaucratic problems.
We found two farm schools in our area, one taught up to grade 7 while the other taught up to grade 4. After completing these grades the children are supposed to go into the township schools in Grahamstown for secondary education. This does not happen with all of them as many drop out and go work on the farms or just loiter. We wanted the people of ward 4 to understand that Hobbition is not just a place in their ward but a place that is there to serve them as well. Hobbiton teaches many skills and our idea was that with more funding, programmes that involve the children of those schools could be started so that should they not be able to continue to secondary level, they can find other positive ways of contributing to society.
Our production was not primarily targeted at the citizens but more at the business sector in order to highlight education in the area so that they can allocate funds that will boost all forms of education in that area. We chose to target the businesses because there is not much that the citizens can do for themselves with regards to education when they do not have funding, so the first step was to provide them with resources.. The solutions that we highlighted depend on us securing enough funding to assist Hobbiton because already, they do provide free services and if we could get them more money, they could extend their services to include more children.
The pamphlet we created included both information about the place and news on what they have done, projects that they are running that benefit the community and what our aim is in creating such a pamphlet. We believe that this structure made it more engaging because it had small bursts of information with pictures, interesting shapes and colours to attract the reader and show that this was about children’s education and recreation because another issue that was raised in the ward was that of children having nothing constructive to do which resulted in then engaging in under-age drinking and inappropriate sexual acts. We also included quotes that we pulled out and highlighted so that if there is nothing else that you read, you understand the aim of the production.
Since we were only able to begin distributing the pamphlets this week, it is a bit too soon to tell if they are effective but because we engage with the people as we distributed, one could say that we are getting positive feedback because many NGO’s seen interested in working with Hobbiton.
Our group was quite independent because firstly, we deviated from the original brief while still maintaining the main objectives. While we were researching other stories, we found that working with the municipality was near impossible because they we constantly redirecting us and not giving solid answers. We then thought it best to find other ways in which to help the community help itself. What we lost from not involving the government is probably not much because the ward councillor of that area doesn’t even go there as often as he should and any help that he sends them cannot be relied upon because things like the water truck come at very erratic times. What we gained however is a stronger bond in the community because everything that we are working with is already a part of that community so they are essentially building themselves up.
Initially, we divided our group in to two parts so there was 1 person from each specialization in each half. A radio person was then paired with a photographer while a writer worked with a designer. The photographer, although working primarily with the radio people, would also work with the WED groups. Each group then worked at its own pace and was largely independent but made sure to meet all the set deadlines. We discussed our story ideas so that groups didn’t clash and so that we could help each other if we knew something that would benefit the other groups. We have been fortunate enough to have a hard working group so we have not had problems with people not contributing equally but we have had colleagues who have went beyond their call of duty countless times.
The collaborative role for journalism in democratic societies is basically that in a democratic society, the role of a journalist is not to merely report from the sidelines but to act as a bridge between the public and the government. Our role is to aid the government in reaching all the citizens since everyone’s vote counts the same. It is also to give a voice to everyone so that certain communities are not marginalized and everyone basically has the same opportunities from the government. The relationship between the collaborative role and development journalism is the public and making sure that every person’s voice is heard. With development journalism, one works with marginalized and potentially marginalized people and gives them a voice. One also works with the government to ensure that they hear the voices of all the people and actually do something about it. Essentially, the crux of the relationship lies in accountability, the citizens, journalists and government holding each other accountable.
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