Our navigators in the sea of information

The more confusing the media messages we get, the more we rely on educated journalists to sift through the noise and give us the context we need.

We live in uncertain times. Many of our beliefs, habits and social institutions, once deemed secure, are crumbling. The outlook is disheartening and makes us anxious.

Never before have we needed quality journalism to help us navigate these turbulent times. 

Journalism helps us make sense of our life in society and actively participate through democracy. As the French political scientist Alfred Sauvy once said, “Well-informed men are citizens; poorly informed, they become subjects.” But our information systems seem to be collapsing and journalism seems to be failing us. 

I speak from the experience of having worked for more than 20 years in newsrooms of various media outlets, always in the field of news and current affairs. In recent years, I have been teaching journalism and communication at several universities in France.

It is in that context that I say that journalism education needs to keep pace with the transformation of our information ecosystem. 

Yesterday, we celebrated World Storytelling Day, a global event to mark the importance of stories. Around the globe people are telling stories orally. This year’s theme is oceans.

News Decoder is all about the telling of people’s stories all across the globe so we thought we would help celebrate with a week of stories about the importance of storytelling and the effect stories — and the silencing of stories — can have. 

Read our other stories from this week:

→ The persecution by the government of journalists in South Asia to silence the stories they tell.

→ How politicians and political parties use social media to influence what stories we get.

→ The importance of oral storytelling for teaching children about the world around them. 

→ The power of storytelling in educating people about climate change.

While my educational experience is limited in both time and geographic scope, I have been alarmed by the lack of general knowledge and culture among many journalism students. 

They are unaware of what has happened in the world over the last 50 years, so they don’t understand current events and their potential consequences. We must return to basics, ensuring journalists have an excellent general culture that allows them to make the most of their work.

Third, and related to acquiring a broad general culture, new journalists must be much better at prioritizing and categorizing news. 

They need to be out on the streets, taking the pulse of people’s reality, talking to them, empathizing with them and experiencing the world as the majority of people do. This is how one truly understands what is important and what people prioritize. 

Reconnect the public to the press.

The detachment between journalists and the public is one of the reasons for the decline in newspaper readership.

Unfortunately, this is not taught in journalism schools, yet it is essential. Most journalists spend their days in front of screens whether in newsrooms or remotely in their homes. They rely on secondary sources of information that are often produced by organizations with interests different from those of the general public.

A fourth area for improvement is the permanent implementation of critical thinking throughout journalistic processes. In many daily news articles essential information — the traditional five Ws (who, what, when, where and why) — are missing. Most important, the stories often lack context. 

Journalists should ask themselves why they report on a given topic, who provides the information, what hidden interests might be involved and what value this information holds for the public.

It is true that journalists alone cannot change the current media landscape. But in their role as the central actors in the system, they can do much to improve the quality of information and support citizens. 

A well-rounded “classical” education, coupled with a curious and critical mind, should produce good journalists. These “new professionals” would be better equipped to face the current economic model of information, which favors powerful entities controlling information, the overwhelming information saturation, the prevailing negativity and cynicism and the constant distractions in the form of screens that affect our lives.

If concerned citizens also make an effort to support and reward this new form of quality journalism, we will all benefit. And our societies will gain a stronger democratic and peaceful coexistence. This is why it is worth valuing and improving journalism education.

Three questions to consider:

1. What is meant by an “information ecosystem”?
2. Why does the author argue that many journalists are disconnected from the public they are trying to reach?
3. If you were a journalist, what stories would you want to tell?

Carlos Rubio is an international journalist who has lived and worked in 15 countries on five continents. He has held senior positions in the newsroom and in the field, both in print and broadcast media. Rubio was Australia correspondent for the Spanish news agency EFE and a news editor with Al Jazeera English in Qatar and with Euronews in Lyon. Rubio has four degrees — in journalism, development studies, refugee studies and Asian politics — from universities in London, Sydney and Madrid. He currently teaches at journalism schools in France and is a board member of Nouvelles-Découvertes, the French nonprofit that governs News Decoder.