AGYEI NANCY BOAKYE

BACS23362

Group 1

The oxford Advanced learners (2010,808)defagyines journalism as the work of collecting and writing news stories for newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Journalism is important to the world because it is current and relevant,People tune into the news (whether on television the radio, newspapers or internet )because they want to see what is going on in the world. It is also responsible for the  spreading of current ideas.

There are a number of reasons often said that journalism is not a profession or can never be a profession due to the following reasons;

Journalists are not licensed, Journalism lacks a body of theoretical knowledge, journalism has no required curriculum through which journalists from reporting news and journalists as such do not have high status or high income. Seeing all these reasons together may seem enough to settle the question of journalism status as a profession

What I shall argue here is journalism is a Profession or can be a profession, I stand against the notion that journalism can never be a profession .There are a lot of reasons I believe Journalism is a profession and I rebuke the assertion that journalism can never be a profession.

To begin with, journalism  just like any profession has several elements to it such as the ethics,culture of journalism and clients. The term profession  described by Australian council of profession (2004) as an occupation in which an individual uses an intellectual skill based on an established body of knowledge and practice to provide a specialized service in a defined area,exercising independent judgment in accordance with a code of ethics and in the public interest. It’s purpose is to keep the public informed about what takes place around the world. Journalists have the responsibility to report the news about what is going on in politics, sports, entertainment, industry and on education to the public.

Also, I believe every institution has it’s standards, rules and regulations that check the conduct of its members.  Individuals need to understand these standards which is the reason there is a segment morals, therefore the journalism body has rules and regulations called “code of ethics” which is use to check the conduct of its members, journalists are expected to go according to this codes of ethics to avoid query. Scholars like Alberto Cairo and Jericho Chambers argued out that journalism is an activity but I strongly believe that those assertions by the scholars cannot be entirely true because one there are set rules and regulations governing the conduct of members, it makes journalism a profession.

Furthermore, when looking at the culture of journalism it is suggested that for one to be qualified as journalist, One needs to obtain at least a 4 years Bachelor of Arts in journalism degree. I believe every  profession must have an institution to train members to acquire the necessary skills in that field for the profession.  In Universities individuals are trained and groomed to be good journalists and an example of a university who specializes into such profession is Ghana Institute of journalism who train and groom students in journalism to acquire skills and become better journalists.  One scholar by name Stovall (2005;26) states that a basic culture requirement of journalism is that those in the profession have a high level in skill in using the language.

To continue with, a group of scholars such as Franklin et Al  Amer, Hannah and Richardson in their definition of journalism stated it as finding things out, then telling people about them via newspapers, radio,television or the internet (key conception journalism studies (2005). The definition clearly states that as a journalist the audience which we serve are our clients and our profession focuses mainly on them. As a journalist, you connect and update your audience on what happens daily. They depend solely on you for credible information and current happenings in our society and the world. Every profession needs accountability so as in journalism, so journalists are held accountable for everything that happens around them.

To conclude with, I strongly believe journalism is a profession because of the above elements stated shows that journalism just like any other profession has its own standards,rules and principles which differ from other fields.

REFERENCE

the Oxford Advanced learners dictionary (2010;808)

Bob Franklin, Martin hammer, Mark Hannah, Marie Kinsey,John E.Richardson(2005),key (2005),key concepts in journalism studies, sage Publications

James G. Stovall (2005) journalism:who,what,when,where,why,how;University of Tennessee-knoxville

m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/james-alan-anslow/journalism-is-not-a-profession