Week 1: What is journalism for?

Hi! My name is Jessica, and I’m a journalist. I love to write, read, and know stuff, which is why I’m going into print journalism. I’m more interested in being an editor than a reporter, and I’m currently deciding if I want to focus on newspapers or magazines. Either way, I love writing informative pieces that are also accessible and fun.

Welcome to my blog for my Principles of Journalism class at BYU. Each week I’ll be writing a reflection on a given topic, which I hope will not only help me in class, but also improve my blogging skills. I’ll also be exploring Twitter for the first time for this class. You can follow me (@LadySwensy) but I can’t guarantee that it will actually be a feed worth reading, as I’m pretty lost so far.

The texts for the class are The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel and The Mind of a Journalist by Jim Willis. I’ll reference these as Elements and Mind, respectively.

As I’m a BYU student, my goal for this blog is to respond to the weekly prompts from both a secular and spiritual standpoint. My religion and journalism are both important to me, and I hope that through this blog I can find ways to connect the two.

This week’s prompt is:  What is journalism for?

According to Elements, “The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing.” So, journalism’s purpose is to give truth to the people. But what is truth?

D&C 93:24 defines truth as such: “Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” What I find most interesting about that is the idea that truth has elements of past, present, and future.  In other words, truth is eternal. This idea is something rooted in the history of our country. Thomas Jefferson believed in “self-evident” truths, as he wrote in the Declaration of Independence. However, news stories are about news, not about these eternal truths.

To me, there are two kinds of truth. There are situational-specific truths and there are those eternal truths. Journalism has the ability to convey both. Stories are centered around the situational truths, giving facts and providing unbiased information, but they also convey these larger truths and values.

 The best kinds of stories blend both. Take, for example, a story on crime. The situational truths will cover who, what, when, why, and so on. But the underlying truth is that justice must be carried out. That is why stories covering court cases are so popular. Yes, the facts are important, but citizens understand the truth of justice, and want to see that carried out.

Journalism exists to convey both of those types of truth. As it says in John 8:31, if “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Therefore, journalism frees us from the bonds of ignorance and, as better informed citizens, we have the knowledge we need to get involved and make in difference in the world.