January 15, 2012 | By Professor A. Murad Merican

Professor A. Murad Merican is a professor at the Department of Management and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Petronas

I AM not amused with academics who have a condescending view of journalism and the press. Perhaps I should not expect them to hold journalists and the press in high regard. Or perhaps, too, their frame of reference is based on their experiences of newspapers and newsmen.

To a few, the press is cheap newsprint, trash, daily gossip and spin, and as they say, fit for wrapping fish.

But then, I do not hear academics or the layman expressing the same sentiment about bloggers  and online newspapers.

We are indeed influenced by form, and what we have seen. But what is journalism?  I have a soft spot for the surat khabar. It will be around for many, many years to come despite what the pundits have said.

Why journalism is becoming increasingly significant is due to the fetish with the computer-mediated cyberworld.

It blurs the authority of ideas and opinions.  It dangerously simplifies the complexities of interpretations. As such, it is imperative to redefine journalists and journalism.

We need a new journalistic literacy. So back to the question — what is the press? Why should we care about journalism? We routinely consume journalism, and nowadays we produce it, too.

We experience the world through journalism, through the newspaper. We may be addicted to television, blogs, Facebook or online newspapers.

But are we all journalists, based on what we see, hear  and narrate about ourselves and the world around us? Can we call ourselves as such because we write and narrate about ourselves and the world around us?

Journalism is a mode of expression. But journalists themselves seldom talk about their profession. Profession? Some would measure journalism against the professions of law and medicine. Journalism is not a profession in the conventional sense of the word.

It is a fraternity. It is a vocation. It is a craft. It is an occupation. It is an ideology. It is a narration. It is an intellectual pursuit.

It is not only reporting the news. And it is not only a neutral transmitter of events and ideas. It interprets the world near and far, concrete and abstract

It can be partisan. It is objective. It is impartial. It is ideological.  Journalism has often been deemed as not worthy as an object of study. To some, it does not deserve to be studied in a university because it is perceived to be hollow of corpus.  Journalism has often been conceived, even among journalism educators, only as a skill.

But nay. It is concept, it is ideational. It is philosophy  –  much associated with factuality, objectivity, imagination, meaning, creativity  and language. It gathers a privileged status over prose fiction and non-fiction. It is expected to be truthful  and more so adhere to the canon of accuracy. But it must also be conscious that accuracy is not equivalent to truth.

It searches for authenticity. At the same time, it delves on repetitiveness.  It is a discourse. It creates space for the intellectual and the intelligentsia. It provides for social and political criticisms. It projects identity and ethnicity. It promotes literacy and the exchange of ideas.  Journalism is a cultural form.

It is a mode of story-telling. It is “reality” as reported. It is information  – powerful and ubiquitous, fluid and constrained at the same time.  It is watch-dogging and punditry at its best.

News is important. But opinion is more critical. The journalist oscillates between neutral transmitter and participant observer.  We see this in Malaysia’s  reconfigured culture of journalistic practice  – full-time journalist and part/fulltime blogger.

Journalists are writers, too. And intellectuals also journalise, devoting part of their energies to journalism in the likes of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, and Edward Said. And closer to us, Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Syed Shaikh Al-Hady, Eunos Abdullah, Ishak   Muhmmad, and A Samad Ismail.

Also, scholars who write for the press are those who take it upon themselves to share their ideas, advocate a cause  or project and mitigate a sentiment. The journalistic institution mediates scholarship to the layman.

What we have also seen, in the evolution of the press in Malaysia, and especially since the emergence of  the Malay newspaper from  1876 is the intellectualisation of journalists and journalism.

There is much interchange and interdependence between intellectuals and journalists. They are two sides of the same coin. But one side  is dominated by the market where information is produced, customers are canvassed and ethical codes are abided to.

Journalists are intellectuals in their own right. They make meaning every day. They provide a barometer of the social, political and economic environments.  They interpret cultural and ideological codes.

Journalism also has its geographies. We may assume that journalists and journalism anywhere in the world are the same. While there are universal principles, there are marked differences within and between different cultures.

We inherit the tradition of the scribe from Fleet Street. But we largely study American journalism in our journalism schools. British journalism is different from its continental cousins.

British and European journalism are highly partisan. American journalism assumes the cardinal  ideal of objectivity.

But European journalism is far more literary and journalists are part of the cultural intelligentsia.  And Japanese journalism is another story.

One must also not forget the role of journalism in toppling the Soviet regime. The Samizdat (underground newspaper) prevalent in the 1980s assumes a different character for journalism.

Journalism is also activism, especially in the early years of many a post-colonial state such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Journalism extends scholarship. It shares thoughts and ideas with the disempowered and the powerful.  By sharing the journalistic platform, it generates debates and criticisms. Commentaries and reviews are journalistic ingredients.

Journalism is a habit, beyond ink and paper, bits and bytes.  And engaging in it is a ritual, honest and unapologetic. We celebrate the scribe in all his manifestations.

“Professor Murad is the inaugural Honorary President Resident Fellow at Perdana Leadership Foundation where he is conducting a study on Malay Views of the West. He can be e-mailed at murad@perdana.org.my”

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