On Journalism and the society

Anele Ngwenya

On the second last Friday of the JDD-CMP course, my group and I had a focus group meeting to discuss and review our experience of the course and the work which we’ve done.

On our group’s vision, we were able to talk about how we’ve been able to create a vision based on what the community has taught us about themselves. For the course we had obviously been in a place where we wanted to gage what the place was about but we learned more from them.

We reflected on what kind of journalism we had been part of. I think we were all agreeing that the journalism we did was alternative and innovative. This is because of all that we’ve been able to achieve with the network we’ve expanded towards like Pick and Pay and giving the Little Flower Day-Care Centre.

In the last three years of studying journalism, I have come to realise that the idea of upholding the ideals of democracy and maintaining human rights has become important now. I have come to realise that regardless of the specialisation which we’ve chosen, we’ve been able to see how we could help out. I saw this clearly when we delivered our first wall-paper to the owner of the Little Flower day-Care centre. It was then that I realised how important this course was. More than anything, its been a good way to navigate ourselves as journalists into society.

At first, it felt like a price we had to pay for wanting to be part of the journalism department for so long and over the last couple of years, we’ve each had time to think about our careers and what we want from them. The JDD course just took us back tour initial career aspirations.

Through our journalism, we were able to help out where help was needed. The biggest question which was asked was whether we were ‘social workers’ or just journalists. For me we were not able to help out of being social workers, but rather, journalism served as a platform for giving information and creating a space where organisations like Pick n Pay came out and offered more than we needed from them like giving food etc. and in this way, we were able to achieve journalism y being able to allow peoples voices to be sent out.

Now that we are the end of the course, the question can be asked, have we really made a social change? Have we been able to bring about a democratic space? Truly speaking, it will still take a while for South Africa to at a point whereby everybody’s issues can be brought to the surface, but our goal was achieved indeed.