Abstract
Proactive journalists focus on asking ‘why’ and ‘why not’, ‘so what’, and ‘what now’ in their investigative work. They critically observe, reflect, analyse, contextualize, elucidate, expound and communicate what they have learned, and in the process, educate and enlighten their readers on the complexities of issues that affect their living conditions. This article introduces a model to illustrate how reporters can become more proactive in their reporting of community issues.
This article is written from my experience in conducting training workshops for mid-career journalists in parts of Asia. A common question that participants ask is how can they effectively report in societies that are governed by communal politics and religious conflicts, such as in Malaysia, India, Myanmar and Indonesia. How can they cover events and issues so as to provide readers with value-added information that they need as responsible citizens to make the ‘right’ political decisions? I’d be deluding the journalists, and myself, to think that they would complete a three-day training workshop and leave with a set of practicable tips given the daily newsroom pressure to break stories, do follow-ups and report on the fly.
Besides the technical skills in reporting and writing, I believe that journalists covering the complexities of politics and religion need to develop a more ‘proactive mindset’ in approaching their stories. This mindset evolves when journalists begin to actively observe and anticipate events and issues before they actually happen. This means developing a more ‘proactive’ approach to their reporting and writing to complement the routine reactions to events and issues. Proactive journalists are by definition acutely aware of changing trends. They think about what will or can happen if situations and controversies persist. They see the hidden problems and pre-empt the critical questions. Proactive journalists deliberate and research for possible solutions by processing the diverse opinions and claims from sources across the political, religious and racial divides in countries where race, religion and politics are inextricably linked, such as in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Myanmar.
Essentially, proactive journalists focus on asking ‘why’ and ‘why not’, ‘so what’ and ‘what now’ throughout their investigative work. They critically observe, reflect, analyze, contextualize, elucidate, expound and communicate what they have learned and, in the process, educate and enlighten their readers on the complexities of issues that affect their living conditions. To facilitate workshop participants’ recollection of the attributes of a proactive mindset, I aligned the verbs to form an acrostic ORACLE, defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as ‘a person giving wise or authoritative decisions or opinions’.
It is debatable whether journalists today through their stories do provide ‘wise or authoritative decisions or opinions’ given the decline in trustworthiness of the market-driven media and journalists’ agenda in national politics in recent years, for instance, in the United States (Reilly, 2013) and Australia (mUmBRELLA, 2011), and in parts of Asia where journalists work under authoritarian rule, arbitrary sedition laws, and where investigative journalists are intimidated, jailed and sometimes killed for exposing public corruption (Forbes Asia, 22 November 2014).
Nevertheless, as a standard introduction of the training modules in the workshops, I often revisit the notion that journalists in developing countries during the era of decolonization, such as, in the Philippines, India and Indonesia, were indeed perceived to be ‘oracular’ sources of knowledge and authoritative opinions—from Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen who founded Chung-kuo jih-pao (China Daily in 1899) and Mohandas K. Gandhi of India who founded the weekly paper Harijan (People of God) based on his satyagrahi 1 form of journalism in 1933 to José Rizal who wrote for La Solidaridad in the Philippines (1890s) and Mochtar Lubis who founded Indonesia Raya and renowned for being a strident critic of President Sukarno in the 1950s. The main objective of the workshop is to reclaim the ‘mission and service’ function of journalism, which Mohandas Gandhi noted in his autobiography as ‘serving the people’ rather than serving those in power (Gupta, undated).
As a background, the ORACLE acrostic (Figure 1) is modelled with reference to the elements of best practices that 60 journalists in Asia alluded to in an online survey I conducted in 2006. The survey was complemented by face-to-face interviews with veteran investigative journalists in India, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia to verify the referents (
The elements of best practices range from the quixotic crusader-type journalism, one that represents the plights of the disenfranchised, to the realities of investigative journalism that exposes public corruption and social injustices. The survey responses indicate that ‘best practices’ in journalism evolve when certain attributes work together, such as:
In-depth research and keen eye for data analyses. Exhaustive field interviews. Penchant to see the big picture—asking ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what now’. Scepticism balanced by optimism in the good in people. Understanding from witnessing and experiencing life of the people involved in the stories. Acknowledged obligations as a responsible citizen first, journalist second. Acute sense of right and wrong.
These elements of ‘best practices’ imply a correlation between proactive risk-taking and investigative journalism that results in significant changes to public policies and political discourse. This applies especially in countries where press freedom is highly curtailed, where the media is indirectly owned by political parties or directly controlled by the state via its array of media laws. These attributes of best practices are embodied in, for instance, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s ( play a crucial role in scrutinizing and strengthening democratic institutions. The media could—and should—be a catalyst for social debate and consensus that would rebound to the promotion of public welfare. To do so, the media must provide citizens with the bases for arriving at informed opinions and decisions.
Likewise in India, the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards ( honour journalists who have shown extraordinary strength of character and integrity while reporting under dangerous, challenging or difficult circumstances. Ideally, the story or series should have exposed issues or problems such as improprieties or injustice, mismanagement, and/or corruption. It should have raised public awareness on the issue or involve taking extraordinary risks to reach a story that would not have been accessible easily.
The ORACLE acrostic as explained below is derived from these elements of best practices, and adapted from my past workshops, to provide a teaching guide to show journalism students the potential of developing a more proactive approach to reporting as opposed to routinely reacting to events and issues, and writing follow-ups on events past. The acrostic places in context the tacit knowledge and basic skills of reporting that journalists may already be applying in their investigative work. Hence, the acrostic guide merely attempts to codify the process for easy recall, to remind journalists of the elements of proactive reporting and to provide journalism educators with a teaching tool in the classroom environment.
I explain below how I have used the acrostic guide in my workshops on reporting about race, religion and politics, most recently in Myanmar (November 2014).
2
As a caveat, the acrostic guide is not meant to be followed linearly but to be applied in the context of the different newsroom environment, professional culture, media laws, media economics and political systems that affect the journalists’ investigative work. In following the ORACLE acrostic in searching for newsworthy stories, journalists would:
Contextualize your analyses of events and related issues to the realities faced by different racial and religious communities and political groups. Use anecdotes to connect readers to the issues in the stories. Back up anecdotes with facts and background information to clarify the issues. Include perspectives and explanations from official sources and people across racial and religious communities. Learn more about what you have observed, investigated, understood and written to distinguish truths from falsehoods. The knowledge and experience gained from writing the stories will prepare you to better observe, reflect, analyze, contextualize and write about future race- and religion-related issues. Educate, enlighten and enable readers to find out more about the issues and people involved in the stories. For your stories to have a significant impact, work with your readers, your sources and editors to reach possible solutions to race- and religion-related issues.
As noted earlier, the ORACLE guide poses a general framework for observing events and issues, conceptualizing and framing the story. To complement the reflective process, the FACTS (see Figure 2) acrostic outlines the story development and writing process as follows:
Applying the FACTS to Proactive Reporting
As with the ORACLE acrostic guide, FACTS acts as a mind map for journalists when they develop, structure and write their stories. In the application of both acrostic guides, it is assumed that journalists are sufficiently competent in writing in plain simple news language. I explain how the FACTS acrostic can be applied to show students the imperatives in reporting on Islamic State (IS) militancy and home-grown jihadist leaving for Syria and Iraq who were intercepted at international airports in Malaysia, the US, the UK and Australia.
