Unit-1: Concept of Development Journalism

1.1 What is DEVELOPMENT?

• The term development has been viewed from different perspectives.
• The economist had once equated increase in per capital income and annual growth rate
to development, thus discounting social transformation.
• The UN recognized the importance of social transformation and thought of
development as the sum of the equation of economic growth and social change.
• Other scholars believed that for development to occur there must be fundamental
changes in individual skills and capacity, level of freedom, self-discipline, responsibility,
and material well-being.
• The totality of these changes, by implication, will reflect the state of the society or the
nation as a whole.
• Development is not purely an economic phenomenon but rather a multi-dimensional
process involving reorganization and reorientation of entire economic AND social
system
• Raising peoples’ living levels, i.e. incomes and consumption, levels of food, medical
services, education through relevant growth processes
• Creating conditions conducive to the growth of peoples’ self-esteem through the
establishment of social, political and economic systems and institutions which promote
human dignity and respect
• Increasing peoples’ freedom to choose by enlarging the range of their choice variables,
e.g. varieties of goods and services
• While contemporary understanding of development is broad, various definitions
throughout history used be narrow.
• The term “development” itself is relatively new, finding its roots centuries ago in euro-
centric capitalism and its concomitant phenomena of industrialization and colonialism,
exacerbating economic differences between individuals, groups and countries (Desai,
2017, p. 44).
1.2 Sustainable Development
• development that is likely to achieve lasting satisfaction of human needs and
improvement of the quality of life and encompasses:
• Help for the very poorest who are left with no option but to destroy their environment
to survive
• Idea of self-reliant development with natural resource constraints
• Cost effective development using different economic criteria to the traditional –i.e.
development should not degrade environment
• Important issues of health control, appropriate technologies, food self-reliance, clean
water and shelter for all
• People centered activities are necessary- human beings are the resources in the concept
1.3 What is Development Journalism?
• The concept embraces different facets of development including political, social,
economic, infrastructure, societal, environmental, and intellectual aspects.
• Numerous factors contribute to the achievement of the above goals.
• Among these is a communication policy factor; an effective and comprehensive policy
can help the state accelerate development success rate.
• During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a serious debate at UNESCO about global
communication.
• Collectively, these arguments have come to be known as the New World Information
and Communication Order (NWICO) debate.
• It is a a term coined in a debate over media representations of the developing world in
UNESCO in the late 1970s early 1980s.
• Nations of the south, many of which had relatively recently emerged from colonial
domination, demanded a restructuring of the flows, distribution, and practice related to
global information and communication.
• The report then proposed five main ideas of action to progress these goals
1. Include communication as a fundamental right.
2. Reduce imbalances in the news structure.
3. Strengthen a global strategy for communication while respecting cultural
identities and individual rights.
4. Promote the creation of national communication policies to be coherent and
lasting in the processes of development.
5. Explore how the NWICO could be used to benefit a New International Economic
Order (NIEO)
• According to Alan Chalkley (1968), development journalism is not limited to only
presenting facts; rather it offers a critical explanation of different developmental
initiatives introduced by government and non-government agencies.
• In other words, development journalism, through the principle of participatory
development approach, lets common people know about the policies and plans for
improving their living conditions.
• It should also offer contextual and background information about the development
process, explain the impact of plans, projects, policies, problems, and issues on people,
and reflect on the prospect of development.
• Development news ought to focus on the needs of people, which may differ from
country to country or from region to region, but usually take account of essential needs,
such as food, shelter, and employment; secondary needs such as energy requirements,
transportation, and electricity; and tertiary needs such as cultural diversity, recognition,
and dignity.
• Development journalism has been used interchangeably with development
communication to mean the initiative led by the mass media to create change in many
of the aspects of the life
• The concept is grounded in the assumption that mass media including print, broadcast
and the internet can be used as intervening process for making the development
happen and visible in the eyes of the public
 • the idea of this concept is that the journalism should play a great role in the country
such as dissemination of government policies in order to create awareness among the
public as well as mobilize them towards the implementation of these policies
1.4 Development Journalism and Development Communication
• Development communication refers to the use of communication to facilitate social
development.
• Development communication engages stakeholders and policy makers, establishes
conducive environments, assesses risks and opportunities and promotes information
exchange to create positive social change via sustainable development.
• Its techniques include information dissemination and education, behavior change, social
marketing, social mobilization, media advocacy, communication for social change, and
community participation.
• Development communication refers to the use of communication to facilitate social
development.
• Development journalism is concerned with social, cultural and political aspects of
development, not just the economic.
• Development journalism promotes and contributes to humane development, which
focuses on helping people meet their basic needs, empowering people to articulate
their concerns and manage their development, and ameliorating poverty and inequality.
• Development journalism and development journalists should be:
• Thematically broad, reflecting the increasing need to cover issues around sustainable
development and humanitarian needs, with greater visibility given to global issues.
• Analytically strong, built on a firm understanding of the power of representation and
the need to deconstruct stereotypes, generalizations and dominant narratives, enabling
journalists to consciously question their frames of reference to understand and
reproduce the complexity of each story they cover.
• Ethically solid, with an emphasis on human dignity and structural power imbalances
within and between societies (locally, globally and glocally), giving voice to those who do
not possess power, those who are not heard.
• Epistemologically sound, widening our idea of the world and its many communities,
shifting imaginative boundaries and barriers to understanding to draw out specific
contexts and their interconnections at a global level.
 PRINCIPLES
1. Respect for diversity and different social, cultural and economic realities: This does
not, however, mean an unquestioning or uncritical attitude towards the communities,
practices or viewpoints under discussion – only that these issues are covered in an
informed, inclusive and non-discriminatory manner that aims to understand local
perspectives.
2. Critical thinking and analysis: open and critical towards information, especially
regarding representations of the global south. This means moving beyond accepted
wisdom and established tropes to explore challenging issues with curiosity, honesty and
impartiality.
 3. Social responsibility: broadly speaking, this involves faith in the right of everyone to
equal opportunities, solidarity with the most marginalized, recognition of our own
position within global power structures and the role of journalism to challenge these
injustices.
4. Development journalism is democratic and emphasizes communication from the
“bottom up.” Bottom-up reporting results in news that includes the voices and
perspectives of people most adversely effected by modernization. By prioritizing the
views of people at the grass-roots level, development journalism allows them access to
mass audiences and policy makers
5. Development journalism is both pragmatic and unconventional in its approach to
reporting. While traditional journalism reports facts perceived to be true and makes a
conscious effort to remain detached from the subject of the story, development
journalism makes explicit efforts to promote reform and encourage social action.
6. Development journalists take on the role of professional intellectuals, providing energy
for social movements and helping create awareness about the need for action.
Journalists can help “articulate the concerns of emergent forms of protest, putting them
into broader frameworks,” and showing their “deeper meaning and significance.”
7. Development journalists encourage the production of development journalism at
multiple sites, both geographically and within the overall structure of the news industry.
1.5 SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
 Since the early 1980s, great social, economic and political changes have taken place in
the world. Consequently, further changes also occurred in development journalism
principles and practices.
 Reflecting these changes, Romano (2005) divided development journalism perspectives
into the following five categories:
(a) journalists as nation builders,
(b) journalists as government partners,
(c) journalists as agents of empowerment,
(d) journalists as watchdogs, and
(e) journalists as the guardians of transparency.
(a) Journalists as Nation Builders: Strongly influenced by modernization theory, the nation
building approach advocates that news reporting should be aimed at maintaining social
stability, building social harmony and strengthening national economy. It also holds that news
reporting should be solution-oriented instead of sensational (see Ali, 1994).
(b) Journalists as Government Partners: This perspective is closely related to the nation-building
approach but differs from the former insofar as it holds that press freedom should be subjected
to the overriding national interests of social, economic and political development priorities
(Hatchten, 1999; Lent, 1979; McQuail, 1987; Romano, 2005). The two closely interrelated
approaches are widely shared in much of Asia
 (c) Journalists as Agents of Empowerment: This approach holds that journalism should
empower the ordinary people, not the elite, to participate in public life and human
 development (Dagron,
2001; Shah, 1996, as cited in Romano, 2005).

(d) Journalists as Watchdogs and Guardians of Transparency: The last two perspectives
are also interrelated and difficult to separate from one another. They both advocate
that journalism should
monitor the performance of the government and make it as transparent as possible to
the public.
Without free press and other civil liberties, good governance and economic
development will be undermined (Romano, 2005, p. 11).
 As products of different perspectives and expectations in different environments and
different periods of time, different approaches are actually interlinked vertically and
horizontally by three major schools of thought:
 Pro-Process,
 (2) Pro-Participation, and
 (3) Pro-Government
(1) Pro-Process thinking
• journalism should support and contribute to the process of development, which is the
name of the game in development journalism (Chalkley, 1980).
And the process of economic development and nation building, whether it comes in the form of
progress or problem, has to be told in simple language and in a humanizing fashion.
(2) Pro-participation
• scholars or journalists would place more emphasis on participation of the ordinary
people instead of stressing the number of people who actually receive assistance.
They advocate that ordinary people should be empowered to participate in the process of
development instead of being the passive recipients of development news.
(3) Pro-Government
• This is dominant in terms of geographical spread as well as political and professional
impact.
• Driven by de-Westernization efforts, the Pro-Government school emphasizes the
constructive cooperation between the press and the government, the education role of
the press in nation building and economic construction, and the responsible exercise of
press freedom (Xu, 2005).
• The press is expected to support government if governance is clean, good and effective
in enhancing the well-being of citizens (Cheong, 1995; Latif, 1996)
• Further, the press ought to operate within the parameters of government policies,
regulations and expectations for the sake of nation-building and economic
development.
 When social stability, racial harmony, economic growth, and political stability are at
stake, the relationship between the press and the government is expected to be co-
operative rather than adversary (Xu, 2005), and the press is expected to operate “in
close conformity with government regulations and expectations” (Kuo, 1999, p. 232).