| Abstract |
The breakdown of the communist ideology with its resulting reintegration of
Eastern Europe in the European process has led to the need of a change of
the journalistic education in a period of a fundamental transition of the
whole mankind, including mass media.
The Net has become a primary source of news, it represents complex
challenges and opportunities for journalists as well as the news audience.
Although the Internet is such a tremendous resource, East European
journalists donit use it very often and in countries like Bulgaria talk of
the Internet making newspapers is premature. This paper will mention and
analyze the reasons for this state of facts.
Journalism education was an academic subject, part of a university degree
structure before the fall of the iron curtain and it still is, all over
Eastern Europe. But before 1989, the university journalistic education was
concentrated merely on the role of the socialistic journalist as a
disseminator of the will of the ruling party and its ideology. Balanced
coverage, independence, law etc were unknown concepts in the journalistic
curriculum. After the fall of the communist regimes in the East European
countries, journalists started following the advice and models used by their
colleagues in the West.
This paper will discuss the ways the journalism education has changed in
Eastern Europe after 1989, the influence of mass media over the social life
and will give some examples regarding the online journalistic education in
Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland before 1989 and later changes.
This paper will probe into the way digital photography influences
newspapers, magazines and web page design and production in developing
countries. After a training period, journalists with no photographic
experience can handle the latest technology with confidence.
More people today watch the same programs, the same game shows are popular
in all countries, the same soap operas get a high number of viewers
everywhere, the format of the newsreports are becoming increasingly similar.
Therefore, the process of globalisation leads to the need of creating a
transnational European education. On the other hand, the structure of
journalism education is very national, shaped by different media cultures.
There are several important international organisations which try to
facilitate this sort of internationalisation of journalism education and to
respond to the increasing demand for new media and the journalism online
skills. They offer appropriate training to East European journalists and
each program attempts to use the skills of the participants but expanding
these skills to a level at which everyone begins to transcend his or her
national journalistic prejudices or habits. This paper will mention and
discuss some international programs meant to transform national journalists
from Eastern Europe into transnational journalists.
On the other hand, not every journalist has the chance of attending such
training courses and not every journalist has even had any appropriate
education before setting up a professional career. The ones who do not have
formal schooling usually do an on-the-job training. Most of the time they
try to imitate not only their more experienced colleagues, but also the way
West European media cover certain topics, such as elections campaigns and
military conflicts.
This paper will manage a comparison of the impact mass media had on Romanian voters during the 1996 elections and the election process having occurred in France, several years before. The Romanian journalists copied the way their French colleagues had covered the same event. This paper will also discuss
the impact of media during the war in Yugoslavia and the obstacles
journalists have to cope with when being constantly assailed by a
combination of military propaganda, restrictions on access, competition for headlines, and patriotism.
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