By Rudie van Meurs / POLDERPERS.NL

In the beginning was the word.
Then came sound
Then there was picture
At the end it was all mixed up in internet.
In this sequence.
But most of all is the word.
Print journalism.
I call print the mother of all journalism.
If you realize to lure the reader with an excitingly and invitingly written lead, if you are able to explain a complicated affair in a brilliant, almost rhythmic written, five paragraphs long news story – I guarantee that you also will succeed in making a three-minutes broadcast news reportage or a ten minutes long TV-documentary. That is at least my experience.

Journalism is a craft. I can teach you and you can learn it.
But I warn you, it is not an ordinary profession.
You need to be curious. Eagerness is absolutely necessary. Involvement with society and compassion with people is indispensable. You have to be honest to your readers and sources. Remember always the three keywords: accuracy, integrity, fairness. If you don’t respect these principles you are a bad journalist.
Next, you have to be punctual and reliable in your agreements and promises to your colleagues. For journalism is a deadline-business, everyone depends on the other, with hierarchy during the production time and organized chaos later on.
And don’t forget, journalism is a 24 hours a day job. Walking through the streets, visiting family-parties, seeing friends – you always are alert on topics, angles, news and ways how to use your information.
Journalism is a state of mind.

Journalism is a job for passionate, discontented people who like to improve conditions of life. Soon you will experience that journalism fills you with skepticism, suspicion and doubts. Once you will find out that the man is the man an enemy and that, according to philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the human being is locked up in the state of war. Peace is a situation of no war.
My own website www.polderpers.nl carries the words of the famous American journalist Izzy F.Stone: Every government is headed by liars, nothing what they tell has to be believed. Always remember that everyone in power likes to stay in power, if need be by telling the public fairy-tales, false stories and lies. The assignment of the journalist is to report the truth, to reveal these lies and fight lies. Journalists will control and scrutinize governments, businessmen and everyone who is in power. They will discover facts and publish information in stead of rumours and speculation – often spread by politicians and decision-makers.

Sometimes journalists cause huge accidents by neglecting these principles and rules. They use their media as a weapon of war. Ten years ago Radio Milles Collines in Ruanda played an essential role in the massacre of hundreds thousand of people by repeatedly broadcasting messages in which Tutsis were slandered and depicted as despicable.
Visiting Prizren and Mitrovica, some months ago, I saw the tragic consequences
of uncontrolled and biased reporting of the media in Kosovo, covering the events in the midst of March a year ago. The conclusion of reports I read, was that reckless and sensationalist reporting of the Kosovo press, undeniably contributed to the ferocity of the outburst of ethnic and criminal violence. Media displayed a total lack of professionalism.
It is not enough to teach about the journalistic attitude to approach your sources with suspicion, to hear and hear again, to check and double check and even to wonder if you can trust yourself.
In the media I worked for in Holland, there was a constant discussion about codes, professionalism, sources, facts, ethics, what and how to publish. Sometimes I grew mad from all that valuable time, invested in arguing. But I also learned that journalism and discussing the codes of ethics are bound by indissoluble ties. I never forget Fatos Lubonja, author in Tirana who spent seventeen years in the Hoxha prisons. Sometimes, when I was again confronted with disappointingly experiences in the Albanian media and with journalists who sit down in Bar West, writing rumour about colleagues, I consulted him how to do better. ‘The only thing you can do is to teach them moral values and ethical codes and if you succeed in bringing principles to some of our journalist, it has not been in vain,’ he said.

I entered journalism more than forty years ago. In that time, almost every household in the Netherlands started to buy a television set. Pessimistic voices predicted the inevitable fall of the print press. And indeed, some titles disappeared. But the newspapers and weeklies also succeeded in fighting back by doing better, creating new lay-out, paying more attention to photo’s, writing more attractive, looking for better ideas and subjects, using info graphics and color, changing format. In Holland by example, three leading national newspapers changed their broadsheet in compact, a less infected word than tabloid. And yes, it is sometimes really a joy to smell and read the restyled newspapers. If television continues to display their unbearable lightness of programming, people desperately will need newspapers to be informed. And I predict, there will be newspapers for another hundred years.

Rudie van Meurs / POLDERPERS.NL
Pristina september 2005