7.6.1 Selfless Journalists as Actors/Agents/Propellers
for Social Interactions and Social Change
Should journalists report truth or fact as it is or should they act a social actions
interpreter depends on their epistemologies. Thefirst one is called empiricism and
the second one interpretive social. Journalists may take a distance and report what
they see as a detached watchdog or populist disseminator by reporting about
celebrities, any self-inflated occurrence such as gossiping on stars, and new fash-
ions. But do these roles help the journalist to propel the public to think critically
about sustainable development?
Marshall Singer clarified that we experience everything in the world not“as it is”
but only as“the world comes to us through our sensory receptors”(Singer 1987 : 9).
It is not wrong to say that everyone’s world is unique and different because of the
influence of one’s own culture and the meanings of symbols we interpret. Singer
then concluded that perceptions of reality are more important than reality itself
because we all only experience “learned external world” (Singer 1987: 35).
Singer’s view is in line with the interpretive social epistemology. Objectivity does
not exist in this epistemology there is no truth out there to grasp. However, sub-
jectivity or interpretation of reality does not mean that journalists have to relinquish
the principles of protection of sources, accuracy checking, and writing and con-
structing of story (Kumar 2012 :57–59). Gibson ( 2004 : 32) reports that day-to-day
journalists should not make any claim to“objectivity”which requires presentation
of all relevant facts, asking and answering relevant and significant questions, and
comparing and testing competing views.
I would like to interpret Gibson’s objectivity as impartiality.
As the notion of the media and journalist is not quite precise as in the past
because the participating audience can perform the act of journalism as well (Ward
2011 : 5), practicing“selfless journalism” is advisory to construct less biased
interpretation of reality. By doing so, a selfless journalist should be able to conform
to what Rajesh Kumar proposes about journalists as agents of a global public sphere
as:
a well-informed, diverse, and tolerant global“infosphere”that provokes citizens
to become engaged in issues and provides a counterbalance to the lies of tyrants and
the manipulation of information by special interests (Kumar 2012 : 33).
As the world is full of suffering, sensational journalism should be avoided to
increase a higher degree of self-indulgence or individualism in the society.
According to Kumar ( 2012 : 33, 38), Journalists should help report non-slanting
information and avoid fueling conflict or xenophobia as well as promote a global
ethics, serve the citizens of the world, and promote non-parochial understanding.
Selfless journalists should avoid the following biases:(1) commercial bias: means biased toward money-making business;
(2) temporal bias: biased toward the immediate (ever-changing cover story even
when there is little news to cover);
112 7 Mindful Communication and Journalism from a Thai...