Destructive progress for journalism education in China

In the old red-brick building of Tsinghua University which is located next to a 19th century American-style auditorium of the University, students are sitting in a classroom equipped with 40 Lenovo computers and 10 high-speed Bloomberg News terminals, listening to a lecture on global media literacy.

Most of the students in the classroom are non-journalism students. They are from schools or departments of medicine, math, physics, computer, law, business, history, foreign studies and science.

After my return from Salzburg Academy of Global Media Literacy sponsored by the Knight Foundation in the fall of 2007, I started my own ground-breaking course for non-journalism students at Tsinghua “experiencing news in journalism labs – global media literacy”. I teach the course with a hope that it becomes an incubator not only for unconventional and innovative curriculum for journalism education but also an incubator for informed journalists among non-journalism students who will eventually have an impact on the change and progress of journalism. 

Why good journalism and journalists could only be incubated among non-journalism students? Good journalism is all about an informed journalist doing an informed reporting to meet the need of an informed public. An informed reporter does not have to be an insider, but with a sensible, reasonable, knowledgeable and unbiased mind in the subject he is covering. A good reporter must also have the courage to report the truth as it is, not the truth his audience wants. Bad and uninformed journalism is based on reporters’ assertions, biases, rumors, gossips and public sentiments.   

The most marketable journalism today is all about rumors and repeating rumors. The most readable stories about events and persons in China could hardly hold up to a scrutiny.

     “I believe 95 percent of what the press says, but the five percent I know,” a British journalism professor told a recent workshop at Tsinghua University when he talked about his experiences with the news media.

I heard exactly the same kind of remark from a sociology professor at a party in his house, “I trust journalists for their stories about others, but the story about me.”

What is wrong with the press? Why the public no longer trusts journalists for providing reliable and authoritative information? Is the press a bridge or a barrier between the truth and the public? Who is going to blame for this widespread public distrust of the press? As a journalism educator, I look at the deteriorating reputation of the press and journalists from the perspective of journalism curriculum.

Journalism schools in China are far from being incubators for journalism innovative ideas but function purely as factories for encouraging young students and faculty for mass production of tons of research papers on communication theories every year.

     In Salzburg Academy, students learned that journalism means access more than memory. But in Chinese journalism schools, the students are forced to memorize all jargons and quotes in the mountains of books and journals by the communications theorists. In Chinese journalism schools, top students are selected by their memorization instead of their independent, innovative and in-depth writing and reporting. As a result of the lowering of human intelligence required in Chinese journalism education, entry barriers are lower than ever for making a journalism school, a teacher or a student. A popular saying goes like this: if you do not know what to teach, teach journalism; if you do not know what to study, study journalism. If you cannot find a job, be a reporter for a living. Colleagues from other departments of Tsinghua often ask me the question:” What is the relevance of journalism school to the real needs of the society?”

The journalism education in China is not only becoming irrelevant to the real world but worst of all is betraying the core values of the journalism itself. While the public are still turning to journalists for news stories that are so vital to understanding the latest development of the political, economic, social, scientific, medical and educational issues, the journalism schools are far from being capable of preparing their students to report about a world that is beyond their understanding. In journalism  schools, students are taught all the arts of how to get more attention and being the first to report it, but the art of being accurate, being truthful and being scientifically credible.

At the year end, the editors of the news media are coming to the universities recruiting journalists and most of the failures in the job interviews are journalism students.

“How can you sleep well at night when you know that your students cannot find a job?” it is a question often asked with the deans of Chinese journalism schools.

“I will have a good sleep the day when all the journalism schools are closed,” a dean joked but seriously.

 My goal of constructive destruction of journalism education in China is not to destroy journalism education at all but to extend the traditional core courses of journalism – the art of storytelling to the students of law, medicine, business, politics, history and science and encourage them using their specialized knowledge to write a clear, insightful and authoritative news story in words, or in picture, or in video, or in audio or in webs.

Because most journalism students have no course hours for humanities and science courses, the journalism students are not prepared to report the complicated reality to meet the demand of an informed public. When breaking events occur, they do not know where to seek informed and authoritative sources. They do not know whom to turn for scientific evidence and verification. They do not know the difference between assertion and verification, between inference and evidence,  between pseudo-science and science.

The journalism students must know that reporting in an informed way.They must learn which sources to turn and trust and which media and sources not to turn and trust.