Student’s Blog

Information is an inherent part of our life. From early ages to present time in order to make a decision people always try to get and know more information about interested subject. Therefore, it is very important what type of information it will be. This factor is directly depends on journalism or mass media that very often determine what to present to public.

There are two types of journalism: domestic and international. Domestic journalism mostly concentrates on local events and problems.  Therefore, people who live inside of a specific country can easy filter information and understand what is true or not, what interests are promoted because they are local citizens and very often know background of any news agenda.

 The main objects of international journalism are global issues. Consequently, public almost do not have opportunity to check information; moreover, it is very difficult to understand news when you do not have a clear idea of another country or culture. There are the basic causes that demand high responsibility to objectivity from international journalists because stereotypes and misinformation can mislead not only ordinary people but also influence on international politics: very often international news are perceived as an opinion of a concrete state.

            Objectivity… what does it mean to be objective? It is a very contradictory notion. It is not a mathematical formula that has strict rules and exact results.  From my point of view, objectivity is directly depends on independence. Independent journalism is a myth, let’s be realistic. I do not consider that international journalism is more independent than local. As we know all mass media (international and domestic) are divided on private and state-owned that are equally depended on money that they get from their owners or government. As a result, public gets information that very often presents opinion of a specific group of people.  Nevertheless, I do not think that everything is so tragic. Diversity of media solves this problem because people can read or listen different points of view and make a conclusion by themselves.

Course of Introduction to International Journalism is very interesting. First of all, I have learnt that journalist should try to be neutral, do not support any side, do not believe one source of information and always check everything. Secondly, I have known about different media giants like News Corporation and Disney, advantages and disadvantages of private and state-owned mass media and how difficult to be objective. The last and the most important thing that I have learnt, thanks to this course, is news is a very comprehensive subject and in order to perfect understand it you should know background.