21 July 2008
Student Visitors Ponder the Changing World of Journalism
State Department-funded Franklin Fellows get healthy skepticism of media
Washington -- A savvy group of high school students from Europe, Central Asia and the United States got a chance to turn the tables on the media and question Washington Times political reporter Stephen Dinan about new trends in journalism and the media’s role in influencing public opinion.
The students, who visited the newspaper’s offices July 16, are participants in the State Department-funded Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows (BFTF) program. Based at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, the program combines a three-week discovery of the United States with hands-on academic studies of democratic practices, conflict resolution and journalism.
Among the program’s hallmarks is an introduction into the world of creating and maintaining a blog (or weblog), and Wake Forest professor and BFTF staff member Linda Petrou said the blogging aspect, in turn, has put much focus on journalism instruction. (See “U.S., European Students Blogging in State Department Program.”)
“A lot of these folks are coming from countries that are newly free and they are still trying to find their way toward freedom of the press and expression,” she said. “In fact, some of them make comments about how in their countries people print things and then get locked up and disappear -- still!”
Based on the questions posed to Dinan, the group of 17- and 18-year-olds, known as the Diplomats, had acquired a very informed perception of the current challenges in journalism.
“In the Internet age, how are newspapers able to generate the advertising money needed to keep going?” asked one student.
“Given the media competition in Washington, D.C., what demographic is the Washington Times specifically targeting?” asked another.
Dinan had a few questions of his own, asking for a show of hands on from where his guests usually receive their news -- newspaper, television, radio or the Internet -- and whether they rely on only one source.
He also asked when was the last time they read a newspaper article from start to finish, rather than just the first few paragraphs. Almost everyone, including the adults in the room, said it had been weeks since they had done so.
STUDENTS CONSIDER ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES OF MEDIA
Some of the students shared their impression of the media with America.gov.
A student from Arizona said the program has helped fuel her interest in the media’s role in leading public perception, citing current American concerns over the country’s economic outlook to what they have been seeing and hearing on the news, and thereby creating a vicious cycle.
On the blog she set up through BFTF, she observed “the average American would most likely not monitor their spending habits as closely if the media did not influence them to do so.”
A student from Germany also set up her first blog as part of the program, but said she is very skeptical of a blog’s journalistic value since many blogs are subjective and unaccountable. More prominent news sources and Web sites “cannot lie because of prestige and [they] don’t want it to be ruined,” she said.
All the students appeared to share a sense of skepticism about the media and the need to get information from more than one source. A student from Kosovo, who came to the program with previous journalism experience, having worked at a youth radio station in her home country, voiced this skepticism.
“You try to get different views and reflect if everything is true or some lobby is behind it,” she said. BFTF’s journalism program “made me want to hear more sources and to not trust the first thing that [supports] your side.”
