A Non-western Perspective on Journalism

Wadah Khanfar is the former Director General of  the Aljazeera Network who recently gave a lecture at City University, London on "Journalism and a World in Transition". In this he discussed the Egyptian Uprising and the current state of the media from a non-western perspective.

Wadah Khanfar

During the uprising he experienced the full and powerful extent of citizen journalism and social media when Aljazeera's network was closed down by the Egyptian government. Thanks to smaller satellites providing transmissions, the public forwarding information and pictures, the editors acting as conduits to send out this news and the reporters working underground; information continued to be dispersed to the world.

Citizen Journalism - Egyptian Uprising

This is all part of the 'new media' which is leading to media democratisation, and Khanfar is very excited about it, despite the problems of authentication of information. He is confident that citizen suppliers are aware of this and are now providing better documentation and improvements in technology are also helping.

At the moment he says the media "...should always posit people at the centre of our editorial policy," and went on to add, "...this to be a moral commitment, a scientific approach and an essential interest." It needs to be combined with serving, unbiased, the public interest as, "without it, our profession could easily become a commodity on sale." Journalists are at risk of being seen as untrustworthy, not qualified and not due any respect. In some western media outlets this of course has already occurred.

He also discussed the media elite that looks down on the masses, the media who have become a power rather than acting as the Fourth Estate, and refers to "Sultanic columnists" who fail in the areas of the journalistic tenents of truth, be questioning and not to be an unaccountable power. In Australia there is a proliferation of all of these at present.

Khanfar's major criticisms of western media are their focus on local western news rather than reflecting the "multipolar" world, failure to contextualise events and stereotypical analysis. He calls this "superficial journalistic discourse." The solution, "journalism in depth" with, "people at the centre of the editorial policy." In this regard he states that journalism in the field and investigative journalism are most important, whilst acknowledging that economic problems are impinging on this. ABC Media Watch can testify to these "superficial" criticisms.

For the future he sees journalists and citizens working together using integrated, interactive newsrooms. An interesting and exhilarating thought that just may save the role and jobs of journalists in the future.

Read Wadah Khanfar's lecture