Professional Journalist Research Articles

Elaine Dewar's Smarts–one journalist's search for the various meanings and mechanisms of natural and artificial intelligence

In Smarts, Elaine Dewar has created a fascinating and informative account of her search for the latest scientific meanings of that elusive concept, intelligence. Starting out with her personal encounter as a child with IQ tests, this well-written and highly journalistic book meanders like a winding river through her encounters with scientists dealing in many different ways with human, animal, plant, microbial and in silico computer cognition. (To make full disclosure, I happened to be one of her interviewees, mostly for my work on bacterial multicellularity.) As a professional journalist, Dewar prefaces each encounter with a different researcher by relating her own relevant experience and revealing private expectations and misgivings as she travels to an interview or conference. This subjective treatment is unusual, but I found her sceptical approach a refreshing contrast to the over-simplifications and similes of the common popular science book. For the serious student or scholar, Smarts also contains ample references to key discoveries and the scientific literature. These proved useful to me, for example, in tracking down specific citations documenting our realization that plants sense predators and communicate information about attack to their conspecifics. Smarts is also enlivened by journalistic connections to contemporary issues. “Intelligence” as a government activity is not ignored. Edward Snowden makes an appearance as the book considers the consequences of how far electronics has invaded our lives in the form of traceable communications by “smart” phones and email. Dewar has little patience for anthropocentric illusions that intelligence is a specifically human capacity. She spends considerable space in the first half of the book discussing research on cognitive behavior, social interactions, tool usage, innovation and communication in different primates (chimps, apes, bonobos and orang-utans). As a journalist, she also delves unflinchingly into the politics and complex moral issues facing the celebrity scientists who study primate intelligence. From primates Dewar moves on to other higher mammals, like dolphins, before she enters into biological realms usually excluded from cognitive discussions. These include plants, as I indicated above, and the book devotes considerable space discussing the technical and political issues involved with the “plant neurobiology” movement. That account makes this review particularly relevant to this journal. A constant refrain in Smarts is mention of the work based on the discovery that Physarum slime molds find the shortest path through a maze to a food source. Although this is a clear example of sophisticated chemotaxis by a so-called “lower organism,” I could not help wondering if this was one of those cases where the physics and chemistry adequately explain the observations. The thought that a diffusion gradient of attractant would necessarily mark out the shortest path through the maze kept buzzing in my head. Segueing by way of Physarum-inspired computer modeling, most of the final section of Smarts is concerned with information scientists trying to uncover the basic algorithms of intelligence through in silico experiments. The major role of biomimetics in this research is covered implicitly. For example, Dewar devotes major attention to neural networks and evolutionary computation in robotic control. But I would have preferred to see the reciprocal influences of biological and information sciences on each other discussed more systematically. In particular, analysis of the way the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the basic issues in the mechanism-vitalism debate would have provided highly appropriate historical perspective to the narrative. At the end of the book, Dewar confesses her own confusion in coming to terms with some of the most ambitious attempts to model human brain function in a computer program. She points out the irony of representing analog systems on a digital platform. Her candor in admitting her own difficulties is part of what makes this book such a refreshing read. Coupled with the extensive documentation of published cognitive research, Dewar's gripping journalistic approach makes Smarts into a particularly rewarding book for those of us who ponder the mysteries of how living organisms can be so complex and get so much right so often.

Gene Allen. Making National News: A History of Canadian Press.

The United States has always cast a long shadow over Canada; indeed, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously likened the Canada-U.S. relationship to a mouse lying next to an elephant. Yet, the overwhelming American presence in the Canadian reality has also paradoxically helped to form a distinct Canadian identity. A good example lies in the origins and development of one of modern Canada's nation-building institutions, the news agency Canadian Press (CP). As described by Gene Allen in Making National News: A History of Canadian Press, CP originated as a vehicle to transmit news via the Associated Press (AP) to Canadian newspapers over the telegraph wires in the late nineteenth century. In this detailed, exhaustively researched account, Allen, a professor and former professional journalist, describes how newspaper owners created the news cooperative to reduce the high costs of receiving American telegraphic news transmissions. Allen makes a good case for his argument that the growth and development of CP often mirrored Canada's coming of age as a twentieth-century nation. Canada's internal French-English conflict and the external Great Britain-U.S. dialectic for influence within the English-language population was evident in CP's attempts to accommodate the French-language press and the decades-long rivalry between the British news agency Reuters and AP. Moreover, CP's development was also beset by the overall Canadian issue of regionalism, whereby the Western Canada and Maritimes newspaper publishers were frustrated by the predominance of central Canadian interests.

Shifting Borderlines in the Practice of Verification: Some Social Media Lessons from India

Verification is an exclusive jurisdiction of the professional journalist as far as traditional news practice is concerned. However, with the popularity and prominence of newsworthy user generated content on social media, verifying them is becoming a daunting task for journalists. Very many instances of seemingly genuine user generated content tricking veteran news organisations show that accurately describing the reality is no more a straight line game as it used to be, before the emergence of social media. Moreover, the practice of verification, at times, is taken over by vigilant social media users even after stories gathered through traditional methods get published. The jurisdictional conflict arises when social media users, who are outside the authority to carry out verification as per traditional journalistic norms, doubt and question and sometimes expose verification pitfalls from professional journalists. By examining some instances from regional and national Indian press, the paper argues that the idea of verification and its jurisdiction is being challenged as social media is reshaping the news landscape.

Crowdfunding independent and freelance journalism: Negotiating journalistic norms of autonomy and objectivity

In recent years, news organizations have been struggling to find viable business models, with many media outlets either closing or facing budget cuts, resulting in fewer journalists working with fewer resources. One solution that has been gaining momentum is the practice of crowdfunding. This move has been heralded as one that puts audiences in a position of power, in that they have a say in what journalists pursue, but how does the role of the professional journalist change when giving up some control of the news process? This article argues that journalists who crowdfund strongly believe in the journalistic norm of autonomy, but at the same time feel a great deal of responsibility towards their funders, which is potentially a point of conflict. They also challenge the journalistic norm of objectivity, often using crowdfunding as an avenue to create journalism with a ‘point of view’, or advocacy journalism.

JOURNALISTIC COMPETENCE AS A CONDITION OF FORMATION EROTIC CULTURE IN NATIONAL JOURNALISM

Purpose of the article: - analysis of the professional competence of Russian journalists in the erotic industry; - a comparison of the factors affecting the development of professionalism in the erotic themes in Russian journalism; - formulation of the criteria to be met by a modern journalist while covering an erotic theme. The novelty of this work lies in the fact that the value of erotic themes in modern journalism is a problem little studied by science. In the article the following conclusions. The importance of competence journalist on erotic themes in coverage erotic sphere is a scientific problem. The question of raising the level of training of journalists in educational institutions in view of specialization is very relevant in Russia. Covering and analysis erotic culture of modern Russia should only highly competent media professionals. In modern Russia journalism often refers to the erotic category just for economic gain. Professional and competent journalist can find a compromise between the financial side and the quality coverage of the problem.

Broadcasting to the ‘last outpost of the British Empire’: Anthony Lejeune, the man behind the SABC's English Service London Letter (1965–1995)

Anthony Lejeune, the son of an acclaimed British film critic, was born in 1928 and after attending the University of Oxford made his career as a London-based professional journalist, writing for the weekly intellectual journal Time and Tide and later for the Daily Express among others. He also wrote detective novels and in later life penned some very readable histories of the gentlemen's clubs of London. A chance meeting in London in the mid-1960s with Dewar McCormack of the English Service of the SABC led to Lejeune beginning to broadcast a weekly radio London Letter to South Africa every Sunday evening after the six o'clock news bulletin. London Letter was to last for nearly 30 years. The article chronicles Lejeune's career and looks at the background to the London Letter, exploring its contents and evaluating the nature of Lejeune's conservatism and his personal connections with much of the subject matter which he discussed.

To the End of June: The intimate Life of American Foster Care by Cris Beam (review)

Reviewed by: To the End of June: The intimate Life of American Foster Care by Cris Beam Debra M. J. Palmer, DNP (bio) To the End of June: The intimate Life of American Foster Care by Cris Beam. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 336 pp. Available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book forms. In To the End of June; the intimate life of foster care in America Cris Beam provides hope for the dysfunctional American foster care system (FCS) but not without first bringing to light the historical, social, and economic background of the present day FCS. Reading this book is certain to ignite the flame of motivation to fix this broken system. The ideal audience for this book includes child advocates of all types, especially policymakers, physicians, nurses, psychologists, and social workers, as well as those interested in evidence-based cost-effective health care. The author is well suited to write on the topic of foster care. She is a professional writer, journalist, and creative writing instructor as well as a foster care parent and former runaway teenager. Her work is supported by 36 pages of notes documenting a wide range of sources that support an in-depth analysis consistent with those by other health policy researchers into the American foster care system.1 Beam uses first person narratives to focus an intimate look into the history of several foster youth from Brooklyn as they enter and leave the FCS. Woven into the stories are relevant historical facts provided to give social, historical and economic contest to their stories. She concludes the book on a positive note, sharing examples of innovative programs designed to make a difference for youth suffering in the system and recent foster care policy changes in several states that aim to decrease the need for foster care as well as the cost, in dollars, pain, and suffering. The author examines the foster care system from the perspective of all participants in the system: foster, adoptive and birth parents; children; and those who advocate for them. Ms. Beam recounts her own interactions with students and their families who are in the FCS, her experiences as a foster parent, and the experience of one teenager who permanently ran away from a dysfunctional home at the age of 16. The book is written in three sections entitled Catch, Hold, and Release. The first section, Catch, describes the historical and present day ways in which children enter the foster care system and how the system has evolved from being a resource for parents too impoverished to care for their children to a resource for children who are at risk of harm or neglect by their parents. There are several disturbing facts presented that suggest children are often removed from birth families unjustly, with little hope of subsequently leaving the broken system, as they are shuffled from one foster home to another. [End Page 1472] The Hold section identifies the growing number of children caught in the system with no anticipated resolution to their homelessness. They are often not returned to their family of origin or successfully placed in a foster or adoption home. There is often a tug of war between parents and the system as policies change frequently between favoring birth parents (reunification at all costs) and policies that favor early intervention and placement into adoptive homes to provide early stability. Beam provides examples of placement decisions based on numbers and formulas rather than the need to secure a caring home. As children age they become less likely to be adopted into loving homes and are often placed in residential care facilities, boarding homes, or apartments living on their own until they “age out” or can legally leave the system. Frequently, these foster care veterans age out without having secured a high school education or training in a trade. Beam laments the discordant fact that housing a youngster during this phase often costs the state more than the average annual cost of room, board, and tuition in a private school. Release, the third section of the book, outlines four outcomes for children in foster care. The first is to be released into another level of foster care...

Un puente entre España y Portugal: Carmen de Burgos y su amistad con Ana de Castro Osório

Spain and Portugal experienced a time of intense cultural exchange from 1915 onwards through two major female figures in the two countries who were bound by strong intellectual and personal links. Ana de Castro was a writer prominent in politics, journalism and Portuguese literature from the late 19th century, and Carmen de Burgos was the first professional Spanish woman journalist and one of the most important writers of the first third of the 20th century. They shared the ideals of equality for women and social justice for all, in conjunction with their incessant work in the press and in literary creation: Ana de Castro, more as a political figure, Carmen de Burgos, more as writer. We remember here the intense activity that they shared and the wide echo that it found in the press of both countries.

The Past Prepares the Future: A Conversation with Burundian Novelist Roland Rugero

12 worldliteraturetoday.org WLT interview A Conversation with Burundian Novelist Roland Rugero Emily Hunt & David Shook R oland Rugero (b. 1986) grew up in exile from his native Burundi but returned as soon as he could to pursue his education and eventually work as a professional journalist and writer. His second novel, Baho!, was published in France in 2012 and is forthcoming in English in 2015 (Phoneme Media), in a translation from the French by Christopher Schaefer. An active booster of Burundian literature, Rugero cofounded the Samandari literary workshop, which meets weekly in Bujumbura, and launched both the Frenchlanguage short-story Prix Michel Kayoya, now in its fourth year, and the English-language Andika Prize, now in its first. Rugero recently spent ten weeks at Iowa ’s International Writing Program. Shortly thereafter we corresponded about his upbringing as a refugee, the sociopolitical dimensions of his writing and being a writer, and the use of Kirundi in his writing. photo : creg bal The Past Prepares the Future September–October 2014 • 13 Emily Hunt & David Shook: How did your childhood as a refugee shape you as a writer? What about as a reader? How did you learn to read—and what—growing up between places, across borders? Roland Rugero: I left Burundi for the first time and became a refugee when I was seven. I left for Rwanda in September 1993, around the same time as the assassination of President Ndadaye. Three months later, I returned to Burundi before leaving again to Tanzania, around the time of President Ntaryamira’s death. I stayed there for four years. Even as a child, the exile was a very painful experience: Burundi was the home to which I truly wanted to return. I spent a lot of time staring at Lake Tanganyika. I really felt like a refugee, mkimbizi in Swahili (literally, “he who runs”). I wanted to run backward, like I did when I was returning home from Kinindo’s elementary school. Exile gave me time for my first silences, far from the silly games of my schoolmates at the Centre Scolaire Congolais, in Kigoma. The time for my first readings, for wanting to understand, through the rare newspapers that I would find from Burundi, what was happening, and why, and to what end. Otherwise, I technically learned to read as a little street urchin, at the Stella Matutina primary school. My father always wanted us to attend public school. Also, I had the fortune, as I understood it much later, to grow up without television in my family home: my time there was reserved for reading . I read children and young-adult books (OuiOui , Tom Sawyer, Robinson Crusoe, Jules Verne), some comic books, scientific journals, and soon after, crime novels, Hugo, a little philosophy . . . EH & DS: You also work as a journalist. How does that work interact with your work as a novelist ? What is the state of Burundian journalism today? RR: The journalist, like the author, is a griot of time. The difference between them? The former is more used to urgency, to time passing faster and faster. The rapid time of the journalist thus creates the literary account that I develop with the nonchalance of an author. In my opinion, Burundian journalism today suffers doubly: first, as journalism does throughout the world (albeit to different degrees), from predatory powers, and second, for not properly demonstrating and giving full justice to the formidable space of expression taking place in Burundi. EH & DS: When and why did you decide to become a novelist? Is writing fiction political? RR: Fiction that recounts the human, in all its forms, is always political. In my view, mankind is never alone in a novel, whatever he may be. He is at least two, with the author of the story. With this, a city of interactions thus forms, a polis springs up. But I never really decided to be a novelist. I just realized that I could write stories. EH & DS: If the action of eating is linked to the present, what does the feeling of hunger imply, and how does that motivate your novella’s characters? RR: Since eating is linked to the present, hunger becomes a motor that pushes the characters...

‘It all fits into place’

Applied linguistics has a long-standing interest in studying how the media present particular versions of individuals, actions and events. Less attention, however, has been given to the ways in which individuals respond to the media representations of themselves, especially where media representations are of professional categories of people. Here we examine how members of one professional category – psychiatrists – deal with representations of their profession in the cinema. Using discourse analysis, we look at the linguistic strategies used by psychiatrists to challenge and undermine such cinematic versions of their profession. Data come from 13 interviews conducted by a professional journalist with practising psychiatrists from the UK (n=4) and the USA (n=9). In challenging cinematic portrayals of psychiatry, the interviewees construct versions of psychiatry that distinguish these from, and which serve to undermine, media versions. In addition, as members of a category that has category-bound entitlements to explain human behaviour, interviewees can also provide explanations for the inaccuracies found in the versions that film-makers provide. Professional psychiatrists, unlike members of other professional categories, are thus positioned in ways that offer up diverse possibilities for undermining others’ representations of their profession in specific contexts.

THE RADICAL TYPE?

Despite the central role of the paper in Marxist–Leninist strategy, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had little confidence in either professional journalists, including those who were Communists, or journalism practices, even though journalism, like culture, was recognized as “a weapon in the (class) struggle”. While George Allen Hutt (1901–73) was a leading professional party journalist, his career hit a “glass ceiling”, even as he met the three criteria of Communist journalism theory and earned an international reputation as a newspaper designer. In spite of opposition to his role on the executive of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) because of his party membership, he became the longest-serving editor of the NUJ's periodical, The Journalist. As both a loyal, lifetime Communist and the consummate professional journalist, Hutt's career provides a salient example of the ambiguous position of the middle-class journalist in the proletarian-dominated Communist Party. It was the emphasis on his “technical” ability that appears to have disqualified his candidacy for the Daily Worker's top editorial positions and to have justified support for his editorship of The Journalist.

Challenging images of women in the media: reinventing women's lives

Introduction Part 1. Reinscribing Women's Roles Chapter 1. Feeling Good Never Looked Better: Examining Representations of Women in Special K Advertisements By Vanessa Reimer and Rukhsana Ahmed Chapter 2. Tales from the Oh-Oku: The Shogun's Inner Palace and The Outer (Mediated) World By Kimiko Akita Chapter 3. Pakistani Media and Disempowerment of Women By Saman Talib and Zara Idrees Chapter 4. Women in Film ... Treading Water but fit for the Marathon By Lisa French Part 2. Political Issues Chapter 5. Mass Media Explain the Global Sex Trade By Anne Johnston, Barbara Friedman, and Autumn Shafer Chapter 6. Gendered Construction of Illness: A Post-Structuralist Critique of Gardasil By Nicole Defenbaugh and Kimberly Kline Chapter 7. Who's Afraid of the Pink Chaddi?: New Media, Hindutva, and Feminist Agency in India By Saayan Chattopadhyay Part 3. Westernizing Women Chapter 8. Representation of the Modern Chinese Woman in a Discourse of Consumerism By Wei Luo Chapter 9. From Babushki to Sexy Babes: The Sexing-up of Women in Bulgarian Advertising By Elza Ibroscheva Part 4. Political Individuals Chapter 10. Dorothy Jurney, Fran Harris, and Professional Journalist Networks By Steven Carl Smith Chapter 11. The Media Manipulation of Angela Merkel By Lynn Kutch Chapter 12. All Hail the Queen: The Metamorphosis or Selling out of Queen Latifah By Elizabeth Johnson Chapter 13. 18,000,000 Cracks or How Hillary Almost Became President By Lori Montalbano Part 5. Reflective Essays Chapter 14. Big, Black, Boisterous Badasses: Why Queen-Sized African American Women are Never Really Royalty By Deatra Sullivan-Morgan Chapter 15. Lesbian Comics: Negotiating Queer Visibility By Theresa Carilli

Citizen Journalism Just as Credible as Stories by Pros, Students Say

College students did not differentiate between the credibility of a news article that they were told was written either by a professional journalist or an untrained citizen. Students who trust the mainstream media assigned higher credibility to the news articles.

Marx is Back, But Which One? On Knowledge Labour and Media Practice

The global economic crisis has led to a resurgence of interest in the work of Karl Marx. This paper acknowledges this interest, but asks on which of the many shades of Marx, communication scholars should be focusing their research attention. The most general answer is all of Marx, from the early work on consciousness, ideology and culture, which has informed critical cultural studies through to the later work on the structure and dynamics of capitalism that provides bedrock for the political economy of communication. But there is particular need for communication scholars to pay more attention to work that does not fit so neatly in either of these foci, namely, Marx of the Grundrisse and Marx, the professional journalist. Communication scholars need to do so because we have paid insufficient attention to labour in the communication, cultural and knowledge industries. The Marx of these two streams of work provides important guidance for what I have called the labouring of communication as well as for addressing general problems in communication theory.

The Queer Newspaperwoman in Edith Eaton's “The Success of a Mistake”

The Queer Newspaperwoman in Edith Eaton's "The Success of a Mistake" Jean M. Lutes When is a mistake not a mistake? Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far's "The Success of a Mistake" promises, in its very title, to reward error with triumph—a paradox that will not surprise scholars familiar with Eaton's fondness for irony and her flair for upending cultural assumptions. The protagonist, Miss Lund, is a white Seattle newspaperwoman who mixes up her facts while reporting on a Chinese betrothal and unexpectedly finds herself in the role of matchmaker.1 The story hinges, then, on the circulation of misinformation, and it begins with a mistake about sex: Miss Lund's article announces that a Chinese mother has gone to San Francisco to find a husband for her daughter, when in fact the mother has gone to find a wife for her son. At least two people, it turns out, are grateful that the reporter got the story wrong, since her misreporting derails the daughter's already-arranged marriage and paves the way for her to marry the man she loves instead. The story casts the newspaperwoman as an assimilationist Cupid who helps to Americanize her Chinese subjects even as she profits from their cultural differences by reporting on them. But it is in the emotional register of Eaton's reporter-heroine that I think this story might push us to see Eaton's work, and perhaps the larger journalistic tradition to which it contributes, in a new way. In this essay I call attention to one dimension of that emotionality: the queer subtext of the plot, which depends upon the reporter-heroine's sympathetic identification with her source and her charged relationship with a female missionary friend. By staging debates between the reporter and the missionary over the nature and source of the reporter's mistakes, Eaton contests the very definition of a thing incorrectly done or thought. As one misconception follows another in this lighthearted tale, she creates a network of relations that function best when they are misunderstood. It is easy to wonder, then, whether the same holds true for the bond between the reporter and her same-sex friend. [End Page 280] Adding "The Success of a Mistake"—originally published in the Seattle promotional monthly the Westerner and recently rediscovered by Mary Chapman—to Eaton's known oeuvre reminds us of the importance and complexity of the author's journalistic background.2 As an authorial figure, the fictional Miss Lund signals the influence and relevance of Eaton's experiences as a professional journalist. She also reminds us that Eaton belonged to the group of realist and modernist writers who launched their literary careers as reporters. In 1908, the year this story was published, Eaton listed her occupation as "journalist" in the Seattle census (Solberg 36n1). She had been contributing articles to newspapers on a regular basis since the 1890s, including at least one from which "The Success of a Mistake" draws directly, a piece on "Betrothals in Chinatown" published in 1903 in the Los Angeles Express. The reporter-heroine's misreported betrothal story echoes, in both structure and content, Eaton's Los Angeles Express article.3 More broadly, "The Success of a Mistake" calls attention to a vibrant counter-tradition of women's reporting, one that was not necessarily progressive but which was almost always—in one way or another—queer. By associating Progressive Era newspaperwomen with queerness, I do not mean to suggest that they would have identified as or understood themselves to be lesbians (or inverts, a term more common at the time). While some, like Eaton herself, remained single, and some lived with other women in long-term relationships, it is not the manifestation of their specific sexual desires or their self-identified sexual orientation that concerns me here. Rather, it is their participation in a public phenomenon, the newspaperwoman's emergence as a cultural icon in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century North America, that can itself be understood as queer in its confounding of sex and gender norms. Between 1880 and 1900, women reporters became a highly visible minority in otherwise male-dominated city newsrooms, and fictional newspaperwomen...

Ethics of Participation: Research or Reporting?

AbstractThe diverse assemblage of those involved in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) efforts exposes inherent tensions between fields and perspectives. While debates between researcher and practitioner "intent" are starting to surface, these conversations primarily pertain to the methods and strategies in common and in question between technologists and social scientists. This paper discusses the differing ethics between the academic researcher, the practitioner, and the journalist – which efforts work in support of each other, and where are they at variance? When the journalist is also the researcher, a phenomenon occurring more frequently (especially in academic ICTD efforts), what position does this hybrid entity assume when conducting fieldwork? The authors, an ICTD professor and a professional journalist pursuing a Ph.D. in ICTD, are interested in exploring issues of representation, identity and responsibility in ICTD initiatives through the lens of Development Informatics in order to study the opportunities and challenges inherent when the traditions and perspectives of different academic and vocational fields merge, requiring those from different backgrounds to mediate and negotiate their involvement strategies with target communities. This paper endeavors to provide a “blueprint" for others in ICTD coming from a variety of backgrounds and methodologies, and to begin a larger discussion that can grow to incorporate the positions of additional journalists, researchers, and the combination, from both Northern and Southern standpoints.

Conceiving the transparency of journalism: Moving towards a new media accountability currency

This article explores the professional logic behind transparency based on in-depth interviews (N=45) with journalistic professionals. Qualitative analysis from a functional angle – how does transparency affect the work of a journalist? – describes three different types of transparency and confines functional levels for both transparency and opacity. Besides normative and commercial logic we identify an operational logic of the professional journalist as an alternative currency of media accountability. This operational logic is suggested as a more optimistic view for studies on the role of transparency and media accountability.

Journalism and media industry in Serbia: Public broadcast media

Publicly owned broadcasting media in Serbia have real estate which is practically state property. They represent smaller part of broadcasting system that is foreseen by Broadcasting Act (2002)to be adual one. Other and bigger part of this system represents private, so called commercial broadcasting media. In this article, there will be no discussion about commercial emitters. Broadcasting media in public ownership should exist at national and level of Autonomous Region of Vojvodina only. They are legally obliged to fulfill communication needs of citizens according to European standards about quality and format of programs, which are designated as 'public service'. However, because of Act on Local Governments, Act on Capital City and Act on National Councils of National Minorities, there is a plenty of other publicly owned broadcasting media in Serbia today. They are also expected to have information, education and entertainment functions. Hence, in line with an idea to have pure dual broadcasting system, regional and municipality broadcasting media should have been privatized until year 2007. But, privatization process has legally and practically failed. Publicly owned broadcasting media still have relatively safer existence because they have the right to take incomes from broadcasting fees, advertising revenues and budgets of their founders. Despite of this, our survey has shown that even broadcasting media in public ownership make no profit, but losses instead. Respectively, they are not technological leaders as they must be, and their level of productivity is low, because of large number of employees protected as 'state clerks'. On the other hand, they suffer lack of young, multitask and digitally literate journalists. Therefore, new kinds of professional journalist skills is realized by part-time or honorary engaged journalists who are ready, contrary to managers, to accept networking journalism. As our research has discovered, managers of publicly owned media also criticize the role of the state in media system, although such media are surviving on state's money. In one hand, objections are directed against founder's rights of the state at regional and municipality level which keeps alive too much emitter. In other, they would like state to safeguard their existence even in absence of subscription revenues by budget money.

The new Arab journalist: mission and identity in a time of turmoil

MEDIA The New Arab Journalist: Mission and Identity in a Time of Turmoil, by Lawrence Pintak. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011. 288 pages. $92. There are perhaps three keywords that one can use to describe Lawrence Pintak's new book the New Arab Journalist: read able, generous, and important. The book is highly readable, making it accessible to both academic and non-academic readers. It marries theory and practice(s) of journalism in the Arab region in an admirably rich fashion and lets the reader into an almost secret world of privileged information about the state of Journalism in the Arab world. The generosity of the book is the product of the author's invaluable experience as a professional journalist, reporting on the Middle East since 1980. The book is important because it combines theoretical contextualization with good empirical evidence and what I like to call a hands-on political economy. It is undoubtedly a very important contribution to the sociology of Arab news. One only hopes that the book (because of its ruthless candidness and sobering effect) won't act as a deterrent to a much younger generation of both Arabs and non-Arabs who aspire to become journalists in the region. A key question posed by the author here is: How do Arab journalists perceive their mission and how do they define themselves? To answer this question Pintak divides the book into two parts: Part One (Chapters 1-7) analyzes the dynamics of Arab journalism within key theoretical and paradigmatic contexts, including a critical and nuanced articulation of the always illusive and slippery category: objectivity. Part Two (Chapters 8-11) makes use of good empirical research, some of which, conducted by the author, unveils original and extremely important information about Arab journalists' world (concerns); their conception of their profession and that of the other, as well as their envisaged roles in society. The opening chapters provide an extensive catalogue of power abuses by the Arab ruling elite and exposes, using very good evidence, how their ceaseless and systematic interference stifles press freedom in the region. In the chapter entitled Islam, Nationalism and the Media, the author provides a brief historical analysis, tracing the complex and fluid relationship between nationalism and Islamism in Arab politics. He uses this exercise to draw the reader's attention to the continuity and manifestation of this complex relationship in Arab media today. Yet, in grappling with such a discursive and complex connectedness, Pintak takes an unexpected epistemic route, using references such as Islamic Communication and Islamic Journalists in a rather taken-for-granted fashion. This has been tried before by many, including Mowlana et al. who, in their search and hope for an authentic identity, have sought to Islamize all forms of knowledge, including Communication, without much success, since cultures (all cultures) are too complex to be interpreted merely through the prism of religiosity. Furthermore, although Pintak was right to identify Pan-Arabism and Islamism as dominant and continuous discourses in Arab politics, limiting our argumentation to such a polarized binarism alienates other voices in the Arab political spectrum and indeed in contemporary Arab philosophical thought that have been silenced because they never bought into nationalism's exclusive character, nor into the politicization of Islam or, for this matter, the Islamization of everyday life. Still in the same vein, if Arab journalists, as we learn from Pintak's survey, hardly define themselves as Nationalists or Islamists (50% have defined themselves as journalists first, 20% as Arabs and 9% only as Muslims, p. 169), why, then, does the theoretical contextualization, which was meant to provide an academic framework to enable an understanding of the role of journalists in the contemporary Arab world, rely heavily on this binarism? Just in case I am misunderstood, the point of this critique is not to argue that religion is an obsolete analytical category and that, therefore, Pintak was wrong to use it. …

Sociedades desplegadas

The autor studies the main changes which alter the professional and social landscape in Communications media, analysing the new dangers and the new opportunities that technologies offer to professional journalist and to the groups and societies in which he lives.