Word from the Heart: Journalism, Relation, and Love

Occupational ideology has been widely scrutinized in discourse on journalism as the constitutive core of the profession, notwithstanding its internal contradictions. Journalism's potential and actual reconfigurations that stem from the production of genres, force of extra-journalistic ideologies and challenges from ethicists necessitates deeper philosophical reflection on the journalist as a human being in relation to others such as their sources and audiences. Austrian Martin Buber's elaboration of “I-Thou” as a relational mode of existence and German Dietrich Von Hildebrand's understanding of “love as value response” towards persons are crucial in inspiring the individual journalist's pursuit of the components of the ideology—public service, objectivity, autonomy, immediacy, and ethics as he navigates the changing circumstances of his work. While it has been argued that progress in journalism must be attached to concepts like multiculturalism and multimedia, the human capacity for relation and virtue of love can constitute theoretical frameworks to enhance and critique journalistic pedagogy, praxis, and products in ways that transcend the limits of multiculturalism and multimedia to do so. In this paper, I argue that the twin concepts stand as robust philosophical foundations for a broader view of the composition of the journalistic public, a nuanced acceptance of subjectivities in journalism, an inclusive paradigm of journalistic autonomy, circumspection in calibrating the speed or slowness of news making, and practitioners’ acceptance of ethics as humanitarian imperatives rather than as tools in the news production industry.