You know those questions people ask when they first meet someone and they’re trying to have a meaningful conversation of sorts; so where are you from? How long have you been here? What do you do?
Subsequent questions naturally depend on your answers.
So, during our Journalism School orientation sessions in August, the question that I frequently received was “so how is freedom of press in Jordan?”
I replied with things like “it’s as bad as some other countries in the region, but we still have a long way to go.” Or “while it’s not ideal, journalism in Jordan is more plagued by self-censorship than actual state-censorship.” I said that we have a large number of loosely worded laws that make it very hard to figure out how much space and freedom journalists have, and what exactly would get them into trouble.
But from my own very short experience as a full-time journalist in Jordan, one of the biggest challenges I had to deal with was access to information, especially if it's from a government organization. Press relations officers at different departments can easily tell you "sorry, we cannot disclose this information." Or they could stall and postpone and not answer their phone and come up with every imaginable excuse in order not to answer questions and provide useful detailed answers.
So one of the things that probably impressed me the most here was the amount of information attainable.
We had a library orientation session during which the librarian explained how we can access the different databases and what each one offers. Most Americans were bored during the session, but I found it mind-blowing; everything is archived and accessible - EVERYTHING; newspaper and magazine articles - from the New York Times to the smallest community paper in some two-block neighborhood, research papers, statistics of all sorts, numbers on demographics and trend analysis, records of every public organization or government department, financial reports... all well organized and searchable.
For our Reporting and Writing class (RW1), we each get assigned a neighborhood in the city to cover. While you need to spend a lot of time there and get to know the place to be able to cover it, you also get huge amounts of valuable information from internet research. I know you may go “Duh” and tell me that this is very old news... but the difference in how journalists get to practice their work in different parts of the world makes me pause a lot. I’m covering Red Hook, a small neighborhood of 11,000 people in Brooklyn, and I found tons of amazing information about it online through publication archives, blogs, and other community-specialized websites. Imagine being able to do that in Jordan for, say, Jabal Al-Marreekh, or Mwaqqar... or something. The digital divide is a painful reality, and it's not just about internet penetration, it's about what people do when they have that access.
Most people I met in New York take this for granted. They have access to so much information, and they have so many choices for daily reads and media outlets. “It doesn’t make a difference. We’re just as brainwashed as everyone else in other parts of the world who have no access to information.” This came from a random couple I met at a diner in Red Hook. The man had been an activist during his college years in the 60s, and he was like “here were are, I’ve become as cynical and apathetic as everyone else.” Another young man told me “our problem here is that we have too much critical thinking and it doesn’t lead us anywhere!”
I found those remarks very ironic and somewhat amusing... and it brings to my mind the big question: so what’s the point of information? Is information power? Does it help achieve democracy? What is democracy anyway? (ok ok now I’m getting too philosophical). But when you think about it seriously, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiyah may have changed the face of Arab media, but Arab leaders probably realized that they don’t need to worry about free expression too much - they can let dissidents rant and express their thoughts on pan-Arab satellite all they want; it has not really disrupted any ruling system, has it?
I guess I have these coming nine months at the j-school to debate and ponder and analyze critical issues in journalism with other people who have been experiencing it and thinking about it inside out, and I don’t know where that will take me... but I know one thing, that I get a rush of excitement at the flow of information I have at my fingertips... and I think of all the stories I would investigate and write about back in Jordan if I had this kind of access.
Subsequent questions naturally depend on your answers.
So, during our Journalism School orientation sessions in August, the question that I frequently received was “so how is freedom of press in Jordan?”
I replied with things like “it’s as bad as some other countries in the region, but we still have a long way to go.” Or “while it’s not ideal, journalism in Jordan is more plagued by self-censorship than actual state-censorship.” I said that we have a large number of loosely worded laws that make it very hard to figure out how much space and freedom journalists have, and what exactly would get them into trouble.
But from my own very short experience as a full-time journalist in Jordan, one of the biggest challenges I had to deal with was access to information, especially if it's from a government organization. Press relations officers at different departments can easily tell you "sorry, we cannot disclose this information." Or they could stall and postpone and not answer their phone and come up with every imaginable excuse in order not to answer questions and provide useful detailed answers.
So one of the things that probably impressed me the most here was the amount of information attainable.
We had a library orientation session during which the librarian explained how we can access the different databases and what each one offers. Most Americans were bored during the session, but I found it mind-blowing; everything is archived and accessible - EVERYTHING; newspaper and magazine articles - from the New York Times to the smallest community paper in some two-block neighborhood, research papers, statistics of all sorts, numbers on demographics and trend analysis, records of every public organization or government department, financial reports... all well organized and searchable.
For our Reporting and Writing class (RW1), we each get assigned a neighborhood in the city to cover. While you need to spend a lot of time there and get to know the place to be able to cover it, you also get huge amounts of valuable information from internet research. I know you may go “Duh” and tell me that this is very old news... but the difference in how journalists get to practice their work in different parts of the world makes me pause a lot. I’m covering Red Hook, a small neighborhood of 11,000 people in Brooklyn, and I found tons of amazing information about it online through publication archives, blogs, and other community-specialized websites. Imagine being able to do that in Jordan for, say, Jabal Al-Marreekh, or Mwaqqar... or something. The digital divide is a painful reality, and it's not just about internet penetration, it's about what people do when they have that access.
Most people I met in New York take this for granted. They have access to so much information, and they have so many choices for daily reads and media outlets. “It doesn’t make a difference. We’re just as brainwashed as everyone else in other parts of the world who have no access to information.” This came from a random couple I met at a diner in Red Hook. The man had been an activist during his college years in the 60s, and he was like “here were are, I’ve become as cynical and apathetic as everyone else.” Another young man told me “our problem here is that we have too much critical thinking and it doesn’t lead us anywhere!”
I found those remarks very ironic and somewhat amusing... and it brings to my mind the big question: so what’s the point of information? Is information power? Does it help achieve democracy? What is democracy anyway? (ok ok now I’m getting too philosophical). But when you think about it seriously, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiyah may have changed the face of Arab media, but Arab leaders probably realized that they don’t need to worry about free expression too much - they can let dissidents rant and express their thoughts on pan-Arab satellite all they want; it has not really disrupted any ruling system, has it?
I guess I have these coming nine months at the j-school to debate and ponder and analyze critical issues in journalism with other people who have been experiencing it and thinking about it inside out, and I don’t know where that will take me... but I know one thing, that I get a rush of excitement at the flow of information I have at my fingertips... and I think of all the stories I would investigate and write about back in Jordan if I had this kind of access.
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