The National Journalism Laureate Award announced on the 8th of June recently, met with some hard-hitting thought and reaction on who is a journalist, and the fundamental question of what makes journalism.

Those who think about journalism often take different pathways of discourse. The nomenclature in Malaysia sees journalism as perhaps a job, an employment, and a career.

In the narrative, the description “industry” is often used to describe journalism. I rarely come across those in Malaysia thinking of journalism as a profession, what more a calling.

Other ways of, or implicit in the many notions of journalism could see the profession as an ideology,or a practice, even perhaps a chore.

Naming, labeling, evaluating and critiquing journalism and what may constitute as journalistic practice reflect a variety of groups and individuals, types of media organizations, media and technology; not forgetting the different historical periods, national experience and politics, and geographical settings.

Some argue that journalism is a livelihood. Others, a frame of mind. At times, premising themselves as a “welfare” organization. The notion among Malaysian journalists is fluid, perhaps too senseless to achieve a collective understanding of identity.

To reiterate, a common absence throughout is conceiving and rationalizing journalism as a profession. Many cannot detach journalism to that of what can be understood as “reporting.” And the practitioners I encountered now refer themselves as “content providers” – unheard of in the newsroom in the last century.

There is fluidity and complexity implicit in the convention of journalism by journalists themselves. And some frequently used terms for journalism – news, media, information, portals – suggest different subtle notions of what they do.

One told me that the term journalist also applies to those with a range of skills including photographers, visualizers, media producers, digital content providers, to bloggers, and citizen journalists. The term tends to refer to news making.

And in some of my quick surveys over the years, those I asked – in news media organizations functioning in the newsroom, seemed to be dumbfounded in responding to queries on journalism as a profession and the code of ethics subscribed to. Many displayed much uncertainty, implying a lack of knowledge on the corpus. “Oh is there such?” they have asked.

The confusion and “competition” with “citizen journalists” and the social media are glaring examples of such. There is some cognitive and intellectual ability to segregate between themselves and what is popularly called as “citizen journalists.” And social media is not journalism.

And there are questions too like what would an academic who teaches journalism know about journalism? I have also come across academics who conclude that the way to certain knowing about journalism is to ask the practitioners themselves.

And so many academics (and postgraduate students) who would gave surveyed those in the newsroom over the last five decades on self-identity in the newsroom. I hope they have asked the right questions.

Who do we recognize as a journalist; or those providing authoritative news and opinion to society, particular to the many publics? Where have they worked in; or during what particular periods in the nation’s history? Is there in Malaysia a universal concept, if there is any.

Or is the definition of journalism coloured by ethnicity and identity?

There are broadly four groups competing on what makes journalism – journalism educators (and who are they and how do they define themselves in Malaysia?) who teach and study journalism; scholars and intellectuals who study roles, contexts and institutions; the various publics, who are direct consumers of journalism; and the state, government and authorities, and within them, regulators of speech and expression.

Discourses about journalism range from the popular to the policy. And in between. What can be called the working discourse, lie the term “professional.” This does not simply mean authority defined; or everyday define. What they invoke are not mutually exclusive.