Frank Mutubila has enough credentials to be called a broadcast journalist- Prof Fackson Banda

Ruwe fields Mutubila

By Prof Fackson Banda

Er, er, I know both Field Ruwe and Frank Mutubila. I can only profess utmost respect for both in different circumstances of my professional life.

Ruwe taught me the ‘business’ of journalism, including by inviting me to his lovely house when I was product manager for Philips Zambia Ltd, seeking advertising opportunities with ZNBC through his agency.

Mutubila taught me the importance of editorial self-regulation at the individual level. As a UNZA intern at ZNBC, I accosted him about my supervisors’ decision not to let interns do a stand-up as part of their TV production. He listened. My supervisors looked at me and said: ‘OK. Continue. You can do your stand-ups’. But looking back now, they had a good reason for their decision. I can see it now, being older and wiser. Many years ago, both of them were right, but for different reasons. Ask me privately, if you want to know about the context.

Let’s get on with this thing. Ruwe seems to question Mutubila’s journalistic credentials. All hell has broken loose!

Well, is there an intellectual pathway towards reconciliation?

I might just attempt one, primarily as a way of providing what a former classmate called my ‘diplomacy’ in harnessing a kind of Intellectual harmony between the two stalwarts of Zambian broadcasting.

As an international civil servant, I lay claim to intergovernmental diplomacy. Elsewhere in this debate, I lay claim to having being a respected professor of journalism and media studies at Rhodes University, in South Africa, a UNESCO chair on media and democracy in Africa, as well as a stint of lecturing at UNZA in the field of broadcast journalism. Enough of my qualifications, right?

What then? Firstly, it seems to me that Dr. Field Ruwe has relied on the (largely American) perspective of theorising journalism as a strictly ‘professional’ practice, defined, among others, in terms of its academic requirements of a specified diploma or degree.

Its outworking includes professional practices or rituals centred on an adherence to a particular code of practice, membership in a professional association for validation, norms of newsworthiness, etc.

In that particular sense, Mutubila may not, depending upon the status of his academic certification by a designated higher-educational authority in Zambia, ‘qualify’ as a journalist or broadcaster.

At the time that I taught at UNZA, we often distinguished between ‘print’ journalism and ‘broadcast’ journalism (a healthy professional rivalry. During my time, only four students pursued the broadcast journalism stream. Elitist?).

But this was prior to the emergence of new media, and so on. This American tradition is focused largely on professional exclusion, much as with all other professions (e.g., Medicine, Law, etc.).

Obviously, in the era post-dating legacy media, there are other, newer forms of journalism, but often with, if I may borrow from Ruwe and paraphrase for my purposes, their own ‘ontologies and epistemologies’. But using such words almost needlessly is to make me appear more intelligent than I really am. 

Secondly, however, there is another theoretical tradition, largely associated with the European academe.

Simply stated, in the context of this debate, we must accept, of a necessity, that some individuals may not have the requsite academic qualifications but have GAINED SUFFICIENT EXPERIENCE in a particular field of mediation to warrant professional recognition in that field.

This is particularly so in the field of journalism, which has no strictly legally defined boundaries, and its ultimate goal is the provision of accurate, verifiable, and reliable information in the public — and not private — domain. Journalism is very different from Medicine, Law, etc.

Sometimes, it awkwardly pretends as such, when it shouldn’t. No shame. Its nobility must stand on its own. But I digress by way of being preachy.

To move on, according to this European critical-theoretical perspective, whose focus is on social inclusion, Mutubila may well have done enough to warrant recognition as a broadcast journalist.

In fact, in some cases, such recognition takes being accepted into the professional fraternity of a self-regulatory media professional association. In Zambia, we still haven’t evolved a statutory self-regulatory professional regime?

It is also largely because of this approach that the BBC has used subject specialists in other disciplines to serve as broadcast journalists. This is no different from journalism training’s emphasis on ‘beats’.

At UNZA, we encouraged our students to minor in other subjects, such as economics (Chibamba Kanyama), and yours truly (Development Studies). This provides a disciplinary background from which to more competently practise journalism.

Another important point to highlight is that the professional practice of journalism is often in a media organisation which is bound by the professional codes, practices and rituals of journalism.

As such, organisational constraints are placed on people designated to perform certain journalistic functions, such as those performed by Mutubila within the bounds of ZBS/ZNBC. If you cannot abide by such professional norms, you leave.

It follows that Mutubila, given his experience, including respect for the rituals of the craft, and the social recognition accorded to it, has enough credentials to be called a broadcast journalist.

Obviously, philosophically, there is no absolutist perspective here. There is only respect for both elders involved, by highlighting that we can rise above either the American or European perspectives.

And perhaps even embrace the more African stress of journalism as a co-dependent Ubuntu professional practice: I AM because YOU ARE.

Ba Field, ba Frank: Have I represented either of you well? My intellectual leaning, along with my conscience, says I should take sides without taking sides. Non-alignment.