N ieman Reports - Nieman Foundation - Harvard University

Shattering Barriers
Media Assistance on the Global Stage
The intertwined, global array of
media assistance funders and implementers
has become almost too
complex to describe. Money comes
from international organizations
(e.g., the World Bank, Unesco, U.N.
Development Program), foundations
(John S. and James L. Knight,
Open Society, Eurasia, Ford, John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur)
and national development agencies
(USAID and its counterparts in
Sweden, Denmark and the United
Kingdom). Some organizations such
as the International Research &
Exchanges Board (IREX) get money
from funders and invite project proposals
from trainer-implementers.
Internews and the BBC World
Service Trust are more likely to do
both of these elements themselves.
The Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE)
representative on freedom of the
media monitors the Caucasus and
Central Asia for conformity to
Western media standards, holds
instructional conferences, and issues
prescriptive reports.
The Center for International
Media Assistance (CIMA), founded
with U.S. State Department money
at the National Endowment for
Democracy in Washington, D.C.,
has become a central node in this
network, producing numerous
studies, hosting events, celebrating
“media visionaries,” and advocating
the view that the “professional
skills of journalists are probably the
most-recognized measure of media
quality.” The World Journalism Education
Council involves 29 academic
organizations that have met twice
to address common issues. Unesco
has published “a generic model”
of journalism education curricula,
and then there is a Global Forum
for Media Development that claims
a membership of 500 nongovernmental
organizations operating in
100 countries. Its current chair is
the president of the International
Center for Journalists (ICFJ), which
is funded mainly by U.S. foundations
and the U.S. government. It
produces newsletters, sends working
journalists into the field, arranges
exchanges of U.S. journalists and
foreign journalists, publishes how-to
manuals, and offers online instruction.
—J.M.
Annenberg Fellow in Civic Media
at Central European University who
has written several reports on international
training efforts, approvingly
called its “media missionaries.” [See
accompanying box for descriptions of
funders of and programs for global
media training.]
International journalism training
can have the feel of a quite rigid,
institutionalized sense of what must
be done even while operating in an
environment of increasing contingency
and dynamic change—perhaps yesterday’s
solutions to tomorrow’s problems.
In “Global Investigative Journalism:
Strategies for Support,” a report issued
by the Center for International Media
Assistance (CIMA) in 2007, such
training efforts were described as the
descendants of American muckraking’s
“vital tradition” that “has now spread
worldwide.” CIMA wants more of this,
but only through additional training
to ensure “standards and quality,”
professionalized behavior, and even the
proper use of the term investigative
reporting. The report wonders, “How
does one produce a Woodward and
Bernstein?” and considers performance
evaluation that examines “the impact
on a per-story basis.” On the one hand,
this is pretty instrumental and formulaic.
On the other, the expectations are
extraordinary: The report says modern
muckraking is nothing less than “an
important force in promoting rule of
law and democratization.”
America’s own history of investigative
reporting, like that of journalism
education, is less tidy. In his paper
“A Muckraking Model: Investigative
Reporting Cycles in American History,”
Mark Feldstein explains its major
appearances (in national magazines
early in the 20th century and in metropolitan
dailies during the fabled 1960’s)
as the serendipitous convergence of
a literate, politically attentive public,
and a commercially competitive media
environment in which uncovering
malfeasance is good business. James
S. Ettema and Theodore L. Glasser, in
their book, “Custodians of Conscience:
Investigative Journalism and Public
Virtue,” reveal the gap between professed
standards and actual practice by
showing how mainstream investigative
journalists pretend to let facts speak
for themselves, while hiding their own
moral judgments behind an ironic
discursive style.
The stories in this issue of Nieman
Reports are the work of industrious
people, actively engaged in political
change, putting themselves in real
danger. But are they journalists? Is
their work “investigative journalism”
or maybe some variety of postjournalism?
Is it mainly an expression
of highly local knowledge, often
gathered on its own terms, using its
own means? Did the writers require
Western training programs?
Thinking Differently
After thinking over the prospect of
journalism education, Lippmann
rejected it, saying of newsmaking
that “There is a very small body of
exact knowledge, which it requires no
outstanding ability or training to deal
with. The rest is in the journalist’s
40 Nieman Reports | Spring 2011