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Hawaii’s World
All in all, says Tom Brislin, last Tuesday evening's TV watching "was not an enjoyable experience for a professor of journalism." Journalism schools
must stress ethicsHe is one, and also is director of the newly minted School of Communications at the University of Hawaii.
Brislin is disturbed at the early and wrong calls in the presidential election, particularly those relating to the state of Florida, and at the local concentration for a full hour on an 8:30 p.m. first printout of Hawaii returns.
This included mainly absentee ballots. The electronic media used it too glibly, he says, to project final results -- most notably that Carol Gabbard, a rather controversial person, wouldn't be elected to the Board of Education. She was.
Dan Rather, Brislin says, announced grandiosely that CBS would rather be late than wrong, then went along with the rest of the anchors in being wrong about Florida.
Brislin blames these failings primarily on the intense competition to be first with the news, secondly on a rush to closure to meet deadlines. He thinks projections from polls should be far more restrained in all but the most lopsided races. These errors have their cost in diminished credibility, Brislin says, and are part of the reason for declines in TV news viewership. Newspaper readership is in decline as well.
He feels it is up to schools of journalism and schools of communications nationwide to help do something about it -- in part by promoting more professionalism, in part by promoting more humility among journalists.
He is disturbed by the arrogance he sees in some journalists, particularly young ones, in holding themselves as equals to the people they report on. He told the Honolulu Community-Media Council recently that "we are putting people's reputations into the hands of 21-year-olds fresh from the university."
Brislin got to UH by way of an English degree from College of Guam, a doctorate in mass communications from Ohio State and a professional career bulwarked by 12 years at the Honolulu Advertiser. He has heard some local journalists consider him too tough on the media. Good, he says -- maybe it will help promote more professionalism.
The UH School of Communications was formed in June by a merger, partly for economic reasons, of the departments of Journalism and Communications, with Brislin chosen as director. It has about 400 undergraduate students and 75 graduate students, more or less evenly divided between the two disciplines.
It has a faculty of 15 and is authorized but not funded to go to 20 -- eight for journalism, 12 for communications. Public relations is included.
Brislin would like to cap journalism education with a fifth year -- for a master's degree -- devoted entirely to professional studies. The four-year degree shares most of its study time with other subjects. A doctorate in communications and information science already exists, with an emphasis on communication, library science and information technology.
Brislin helps oversee the Parvin/ Freedom Forum Fellowships in Journalism Study and the Carol Burnett Fund for Responsible Journalism Ethics. The Burnett Fund is used to bring notable national speakers to the UH campus.
He is starting a newspaper-in-residence program in which working local journalists will serve for a week conducting specialized workshops for students. Additionally, some students intern (usually during summer and year-end vacations) with the local media.
The two programs soon will occupy joint offices in Crawford Hall on the Manoa campus but retain their individual degrees.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.