Development Journalism
• Development journalism debuted in Asia in the late
1960s
• when the idea of communication for development was
garnering support academically and politically,
especially among the newly independent nations
• journalism was believed and expected to play a key
role in facilitating and fostering national development
• Such a belief and expectation constituted the driving
forces behind the rising popularity of development
journalism among developing nations in Asia, Africa
and Latin America.
• Having been practiced for more than four decades
across three continents, development journalism has
generated diverse principles and practices.
• Without claiming to be “a new kind of journalism,” development
journalism represented “a new attitude towards the treatment of
certain subjects” in relation to development. It was designed to serve
the ordinary people, not the elite
Key components
• 1. to report the difference between what has been planned to do and
what in reality has been achieved as well as the difference between its
claimed and actual impact on people
• 2. to focus not “on day-to-day news but on long term development
process”
• 3. to be independent from government and to provide constructive
criticisms of government
• 4. to shift “journalistic focus to news of economic and social development”
while “working constructively with the government” in nation building;
• 5. and to empower the ordinary people to improve their own lives and
communities
School of thought
• In the early 1980s, there were largely only two major approaches
within development journalism: investigative and authoritarian-
benevolent
• The investigative type focused on “critical questioning and evaluation
of the usefulness of development projects
• The authoritarian-benevolent style of development journalism was
strongly advocated by authoritarian governments who believed that
journalism should cooperate with governments in nation-building and
overall social, economic and political development.
Development journalism perspectives
• journalists as nation builders,
• Journalists as government partners
• Journalists as agents of empowerment
• Journalists as watchdogs
• Journalists as the guardians of transparency
Key Scholars
• Floyd J. McKay (1993) investigated the practice of development
journalism in Depthnews through a content analysis of its news
coverage.
• Angelo Romano (1999) offered observations and insights on
development journalism in “Normative theories of development
journalism: State versus practitioner perspectives in Indonesia.”
• Kokkeong Wong (2004) opened up a new domain for research on
development journalism.
• For African perspectives on development journalism, the article
“Development Journalism in Black Africa” by Jerry Komia Domatob
and Stephen William Hall (1983)
• Hemant Shah’s (1996) article “Modernization, Marginalization, and
Emancipation: Toward a Normative Model of Journalism and National
Development” represented one of the few torches that attempted to
lead development journalism research out of the tunnel.
• B. T. Isiaka (2006) proposed a paradigm shift in development
journalism practices; from mass media to group media approaches.