Beyond the 5Ws + H: What social science can bring to J-education

THE pen is mightier than the sword. This axiom of journalism is at no time more apposite than in this terror-ridden post-9/11 world. Increasingly, nation-states and activist bloggers are realising that the power of the media and those who control it set the agenda for world politics and governance. Yet journalism educators reflexively trust this maxim among their charges to received wisdom. Or pedantically go on presuming this aphorism to be ingrained in them by the time they finish high school media studies. In this, educators sell short students – and fall short of their larger responsibility to our broken world – neglecting the development of future journalists in a critical area of their calling.