FROM THE PUBLIC EDITOR'S DESK : ‘Great journalism’ that gives happiness

Have you ever heard of “great journalism?” If not, follow me as I briefly revisit last Thursday’s presentation to editors by one Dastan Raphael Kamanzi.

Mr Kamanzi, senior knowledge management advisor at the Tanzania Media Foundation (TMF) in Dar es Salaam, was a special guest of Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL).

He was specifically invited to treat editors and senior reporters to the significance of “critical thinking in journalism that can make a difference,” via the MCL products—especially Mwananchi, The Citizen and MwanaSpoti newspapers.

The presenter defined “great journalism” as journalism for public interest and added: “By public interest, I mean nothing but public happiness.”

He immediately gave an example of a remote village whose residents walked tens of kilometres up and down the valleys, crossing a river teeming with crocodiles, to reach a dispensary, shops and schools.

He said a journalist who got a tip off about such a village went ahead to see, live and experience the horrendous life its people were leading and came back to publish what would compel authorities to act by constructing a school, dispensary or bridge would have, in effect, brought happiness to the village and its residents.

“Such is what I call public happiness; born of great journalism that is a departure from event recording which anyone can do,” said Mr Kamanzi.

He contrasted great journalism with “event (reporting) journalism” which he said was done by “common wananchi—almost by everyone with a telephone handset.”

Event recorders are classified under category “common journalists,” which he says is equivalent to what “common wananchi” are doing— common journalism.

Great journalism, on the other hand, demanded a departure from mere recording of events, said the presenter who comes from an institution that offers grants for investigative journalism and facilitates critical reflection and learning.

Event journalists, he told editors, were bound to disappear as events became less, insignificant or simply ceased.

Great journalism – of great disclosures for people’s happiness, applies three specific skills, says Mr Kamanzi. It demands the skill to enquire, to convince by presenting arguments that matter; and to persuade.

The three translate into the capacity to think and ability to see more than an ordinary event recorder. This is because what we immediately bump into are not necessarily the whole thing, but “shadows” of people, situations and things we may need to know well.

What we see are “bridges” to the real objects and situations. It therefore demands crossing the bridge, by way of reading more and inquiry in order “to reach the real,” he says.

An exercise in telling what participants see in a picture before them elucidated what the presenter was saying. When all had said who and what they saw in the picture; the question was changed to: whom don’t you see in the picture?

While the first response enlisted people and things in the picture; the second gave names and titles of those responsible for the situation as shown in the picture.

The latter list included event journalists who normally do not apply critical thinking skills in order to dig stories and consequently present arguments that matter and that can eventually bring about human happiness.

The presenter puts journalism in two categories: Great journalism, done by great journalists, is “above the line.” Journalists in this category write for impact and in order to impact, as I always put it to my mentees.

Event journalists and individual citizens with communication gadgets but without skills are classified as common journalists; and living and working below the line.

Mr Kamanzi lamented lack of ability to wonder and to be curious among journalists. Most of them, he says, see everything, every situation as normal, as usual and therefore without the drive to pursue, question and inquire.

Reaching out to an old saying that “curiosity killed the cat,” the presenter quickly borrowed a rather recent quip in the profession that “…incuriosity killed the journalist.”