The Chief Justice of India, N V Ramana, speaking at an event, recently commented that the modern education system tends to focus only on the ‘utilitarian’ function of education. He observed further that a utilitarian educational system is not equipped to deal with the ‘moral’ or ‘spiritual’ function of education which builds the character of our students and allows them to develop a social consciousness and a sense of responsibility. However, there are also those practitioners and scholars in India, who have constantly reminded us of the need for adopting a utilitarian approach, while preparing the students for meeting the requirements of the industry. These groups of experts insist on a practical educational system, where students gain skills and experience, as though rehearsing always for the targeted careers.

In the age of computer mediated communication and infoglut, people across the globe are questioning the prevalent malpractices becoming endemic to journalism. Perhaps we can find a way out of this contemporary rut by subjecting journalism to a historical analysis. The debate between the supremacy of theory and practice in knowledge is an unending debate that often seems irreconcilable. It was during the times of ancient Greek philosophy when philosophers debated and suggested different approaches to attaining knowledge, namely episteme and techne. Episteme is the Greek word most often translated as knowledge, while techne is translated as either craft or art.

Applying the conceptual categories such as techne and episteme can help us in understanding the ways in which the media and journalism schools in India define and locate themselves. While having a cursory look at the various journalism and media schools in India, we can conclude that the current trend largely favours the application part (techne) of media as opposed to the theoretical (episteme) approach. The “intellectual” approach to journalism is deemed to be limiting the employability of the students. Some advocate that the technique of writing should be cleansed of a more fundamental orientation in the art of argument and critical thinking.  On the contrary, the critics of the vocational, utilitarian approach to journalism studies have attributed its dominance to the neoliberal demands of the market economy that aims to make knowledge work as mechanically repeatable and reproducible as any other form of labour. This anti-episteme and pro-techne approach has given India the largely mediocre standards of journalism currently practiced.

The fact is journalism existed much before its incarnation as an academic discipline. In its pre-institutionalised form, journalism remained the vocation of those who were thinkers, philosophers, and reformers. The institutionalization of journalism in the late 19th and early 20th century shifted the focus of journalism to techne and craft while converging curiously with the emergence of yellow journalism, favouring exaggerations of news events, scandalmongering, or sensationalism, over ethical considerations. One just has to remember the notoriously legendary circulation wars of this period between major newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. It can be argued that the technologized, more commercialized form of journalism and its institutionalization emptied the earlier form of journalism off its poetic essence.

The technicality of the profession of journalism has emasculated its very essence. One can say that the very ethics of journalism demands that journalists are supposed to be open minded, critical and have nuanced forms of understanding on various subjects. What we are faced with instead are sham practices camouflaged as journalism, leading to proliferation of misinformation and circulation of hate in the public sphere. Which story to cover and why are questions which are fundamentally philosophical in nature. Rather than being dazzled by the aura of new technological mediums, journalists in the present times need to be philosophers, rather than stenographers. It is the orientation towards the episteme, while practicing journalism, which only can restore journalism to its original function: to serve reason and human progress. This is probably also the reason why sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and economists dominate the editorial columns as opposed to ‘trained’ journalists. And thus, the case for restoring the place of these humanistic ‘epistemes’ in the ‘techne’ of journalism.

 

Dr. Raoof Mir
Assistant Professor, Media & Journalism
Alliance University