Recommended readings

The ‘Department of Journalism’ at the Punjab University invokes bittersweet memories. Earlier this year, I was back at the department after twenty years to investigate the department’s history and curriculum. While I knew all along that it was the oldest seat of journalistic learning in the Indian subcontinent, I had no idea that Faiz Ahmed Faiz, at one point, was also involved in the department’s development.

In India, the first J-course was launched in 1920 at the National University (Chennai) as the need for trained journalists grew. This effort did not last long. The next initiative in 1938 by the Aligarh Muslim University was abolished in 1940 when the course convener resigned.

Founded by PP Singh in 1941, PU’s Department of Journalism proved to be a successful attempt even if in 1947 the department suffered ‘partition’. When PP Singh migrated, the one-man department also ended up in Delhi where it functioned in the Harcourt Butler School. In 1962, it moved to newly-established Punjab University, Chandigarh.

Back in Lahore, when the Punjab University reopened, the vice chancellor, Umar Hayat Malik, commissioned FW Biston of the Civil and Military Gazette to take charge of the department while a committee consisting of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Hameed Nizami to assist Biston was formed. In 1949, the department found its first regular teacher post-Partition when Abdul Qayyum was appointed lecturer.

In 1959 the department was upgraded to offer an MA programme in the context of Cold War, says Mehdi Hasan, a former teacher at the department. Asia Foundation besides some US institutions lent financial help and it became the pioneer of Masters degree programme in journalism and the only institution of its kind in South and South East Asia.

When I returned to the department earlier this year, I was positively surprised to find that it has been renamed as the Institute of Communication Studies. Even more surprisingly, a hall has been named after Noam Chomsky. There is an Edward Said Room as well.

Twenty-odd years ago, when the department moved from IER block to its present campus, it did not even have 100 students. Now over a thousand enroll annually. Beyond this quantitative development, qualitatively speaking, there is business-as-usual intellectual mediocrity, scholastic crisis and contempt for critical thinking.

What concerns me most is the dependency on mainstream western textbooks. The department offers three sequences in its four-semester MA programme. After two basic semesters, students branch out into Print Media, PR and Advertising and Electronic Media. ‘Recommended Readings’ for the first two semesters include 88 books, of which only 15 titles have been authored by Pakistani writers. Of the 15, only eight are on the media. There are 65 titles by western scholars.

In the Print Media sequence, only six of the 85 recommended readings are Pakistani (in a way only four since two titles are also included elsewhere) while there are 71 by western authors. In PR and Advertising, of 50 recommended readings, only two titles represent Pakistan while 40 are from the west. In the case of Electronic Media, six of 50 recommended readings are Pakistani (there are mercifully a few titles by Indian scholars as well).

I am not arguing against western titles. However, I want to raise two questions. First, why have critical media scholars such as Armand Mattelart, Herbert Schiller, Toby Miller, or Robert McChesney been utterly excluded from recommended readings? Secondly, why has the oldest department not been able to produce in 70 years even ten books worthy of its own lists of ‘recommended readings’, let alone as ‘suggested reading’ beyond Pakistani borders?

The writer is a freelancecontributor.

Email: mfsulehria@hotmail.com

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-New...ended-readings