What is Journalistic Orientations?

Journalistic orientations usually fall into four major allegiances (1) to people, (2) to institutions, (3) to ideologies, and (4) to events or facts. There is often an overlap among these allegiances but at any time, there is a tendency for one of them to dominate. The four allegiances finally boil down to loyalties of personalism, institutionalism, ideologism and neutralism.

The Personalists:

These are people-oriented journalists who have strong loyalty to people either themselves or others. They are egoists or altruists, sensitive to the consequences of their journalism. They have mainly a utilitarian motivation and tend to be more personal, polemical, opinionated, subjective and humanistic in their journalism.

The Institutionalists:

These journalists are directed mainly by an institutional loyalty. Theirs is more of a collectivist orientation than an individualist one. Their motivating factor is loyalty to an institution or to their body of collegians. These institutionalists are either oriented towards their own media or to some other entity such as a political party or a religious group.

The Ideologists:

These journalists are mainly loyal to the cause or a social idea or to a particular philosophical or political concept. They are often tied closely with institutionalism, though not always, but their espoused ideology is usually reflected in their writings. These journalists directly or indirectly advocate philosophies, causes, programmes, movements and concepts and their loyalty gets tied to potent ideas rather than to persons or organisations.

The Neutralists:

These journalists are lovers of facts and their reports and stories are event-oriented. They claim an objective approach even while commenting on certain situations. They usually support their ideas and conclusions by statistics and other true facts. The neutralist is mainly a reparative journalist, not a judgmental one. His main allegiance is to the objective event or to the facts surroun­ding the event. He is little concerned with consequences either to himself or to others connected with the story. He keeps himself above board. His dedication is to the story and not to the cause or mission.

Quest for Objectivity:

Most journalists even when they are not, claim to have a high regard for objectivity in journalism and believe they are trying to reach it by different roads. In this connec­tion Erich Fromm discusses the objectivity in the following words. “Objectivity is not as it is often implied in a false idea of ‘scientific’ objectivity, synonymous with detachment, with absence of interest and care. How can one penetrate the veiling surface of things to their causes and relationships if one does not have an interest that is vital and sufficiently impelling for so laborious a task?”

Objectivity’s Two Faces:

Merrill relates objectivity’s two faces in journalism. According to him, there are two epistemological perspectives: realism and idealism. The realistic view of objectivity considers objective report­ing as a relational concept involving the event (object) and the report- of-the-event (another object).

It puts little or no emphasis on the audience member who perceives the report. On the other hand, the idealistic position on objective reporting is primarily a rational concept involving the audience member and the report-of-the-event. It has little or nothing to do with the actual event, for the only event of any importance is the one in the mind of the audience member.

The realist postulates that: (i) a news event is a news event even though it is not reported; (ii) a news story is an object in itself even though an audience member does not ever see or hear it and; (iii) even though an audience member does not see or hear the report, his perception of the report has nothing really to do with the objectivity of the report.

The Value of Individual Judgment in a Democracy:

The truth about freedom of the press is that it stands for freedom of the people. It is not a special right or a press should strive daily to be reasonably responsible…freedom of cloistered virtue…To deserve its freedom the press is not a press freedom but a public freedom, a public possession and right, and in some ways its stoutest weapon.

The only obligations acceptable to the free roan are those which he chooses to place on himself, and when journalists abide by obliga­tions and responsibilities under any kind of pressure or duress or because they have been led by an outside force to believe that a course of action “is what good and responsible journalists do,” then they are no longer free. As a journalist each must do what he thinks is responsible, not what some other journalist or some outside group thinks is responsible. It is only in this way that journalism can retain autonomy.

O’Meara:

Unfortunately many sincere people do not com­prehend the genius of our democracy…such people would deny free speech to those with whom they are in fundamental disagreement. They would establish a party line-their party line, of course. This is an alien concept, a totalitarian concept; it is not consonant with the democratic tradition; it is anti-democratic.

It in very easy to confuse democracy and even responsibility in journalism by giving the people what they want. But this is a false concept-or at least an erroneous application of the democratic principle, for journalism is something more than a mere public utility that produces a stable, physical staple such as water or electricity. It is at least a quasi-art, a creative enterprise whereby individual talents go into its production. Journalism (at least, free journalism) is something other than a fountain which pours forth a predictable and consistent product at the beck-and-call of the consumers.

The future of the Democracy anywhere is contingent upon the performance of the press. If the newsmen of today and tomorrow are diligent workers and balanced thinkers on problems of governing our society, then one have no doubt that the Democracy will survive and flourish in the whole world. If the press fails in its responsibility, if it founders in a quagmire of superficiality, partisanship, laziness and incompetence-then our great experiment in democracy will fail.

Responsibility and Freedom Reconciled:

Although journalists, statesmen and academicians have for long been thinking in terms of responsibility as well as freedom for the communications media, there has really been no significant effort to place the concept as a serious theory-parallel in importance to libertarianism-until 1947 when the Commission on Freedom of the Press, headed by Robert Hutchins, discussed it in “Free and Responsi­ble Press.” Previously, it had been thought that responsibility was somewhat a personal concept or somehow automatically built into a libertarian press, or that quite some of the media units would interpret responsibility in their own ways. Actually, it had generally been felt that multiplicity of interpretations was what actually constituted not only a free press, but also a responsible press. At least it was felt generally in the western world that a free press in a democratic sense was responsible per sc to its social system.

But the Hutchins Commission thought differently. After seeing a very clear danger in growing restriction on communications’ outlets and general irresponsibility in many areas of journalism (the criteria for responsibility, of course, set up by the Commission), it offered the ominous warning. To the extent that the press does not assume its responsibility, some other agency must see that the essential functions of Mass Communication are carried out.

Here is what a press scholar wrote about the Hutchins Commis­sion report in the 1960’s:

In 1947, the Commission on Freedom of the Press-thirteen men, of whom most were scholars and none was connected with the mass media-reported the results of several years’ deliberations on freedom and responsibility in mass communication. Their central theme was not the need for a rebirth of competition but for a greater sense of responsibility on the part of the owners and personnel of the mass media.

They said that the people would surely demand regulation of a press that did not meet more fully the needs of society for mass communication services. Although fullest, most orderly, and perhaps most basic statement of the problem and of suggestions for change among analysts, the report was attacked heavily by the press as unfair, badly informed, and unfriendly to freedom of the press. Much of the world of the press was to mellow somewhat in its attitude toward the Commission; some publishers even came to agree with most of its report.

According to the Four Theories of the Press a duty to one’s conscience is the primary basis of the right of free expression under the social responsibility thinking. This is all very well, but what relation does this have to the question of government intervention if the need is great? It would seem that duty to one’s conscience is extremely relative and that one editor would feel he had one duty to do some­thing that another editor in good conscience would feel he should not do.