WHEN I began teaching eight years ago I would ask students to tell me which journalist they most wanted to hear from. That list was always varied; students were interested in hearing from newspaper reporters to editors to TV anchors.
I inevitably had a guest lecturer every week of the first semester and I’m grateful all my guests spoke candidly to my students. I’m equally proud my students asked difficult questions like why salaries are delayed when media owners are clearly wealthy.
But I noticed a shift in the winter of 2019, a waning in interest among both undergrad and postgrad students. It’s not that they didn’t know journalists, it’s that they didn’t really care to hear from them. I began to hear more complaints of the ‘I don’t feel represented’ in the media variety. There was a lot of resentment at how the Aurat March had been covered a year earlier. The anger at the misogyny has grown every year I’ve taught and, as the kids say, I’m here for it. Newsroom managers reading this must take note.
Then, in 2023, when I began teaching news media literacy to liberal arts students not on any journalism or news media track, I was surprised at their lack of interest in meeting journalists.
The only two names that featured were Waseem Badami and Iqrarul Hasan, both on the same channel. My students weren’t all supporters of a particular party but their families were so they were the two names these students were most familiar with. This year too, Waseem Badami has topped the list. It is because they like his style of journalism which they say is non-combative. He seems like a nice guy, one student said.
Eight years doesn’t seem like a long time to witness such a decline in interest but then, maybe it mirrors the decline in what’s passing as news these days. When journalists are laid off, and others have to step in and take the extra load, with no extra compensation or when they have to work without getting salaries for two months, it seems unfair to expect quality journalism.
Yet many of my colleagues are producing stellar work under impossible, circumstances. They deserve the recognition for their work, which isn’t getting the eyeballs it deserves. Because the screaming heads on TV and YouTube consume too much space.
One noticed declining interest among the students.
Loathsome as they may be, some anchors have been taken off air in the past few weeks and this should cause everyone a great deal of concern. My students weren’t that pushed because they don’t relate to TV, let alone TV anchors.
I turned to a friend and journalism instructor in the US to get his thoughts. Why can’t I get my students to care about these anchors being taken off air in Pakistan, I asked. How can I get them to see that this censorship will impact them too.
He said he was struggling to get his students to connect with the big story about Netflix cancelling Ezra Edelman’s six-part documentary on Prince because the late artist’s estate complained the film had “dramatic” inaccuracies and “sensationalised” certain events.
I have followed this story with interest as I’m a huge Prince fan; the issue provides so many points of discussion for media students — censorship, whose job it is to protect a subject’s legacy — but my friend said he couldn’t get his students to engage because “they couldn’t relate to Prince”. And they felt the film should be canned because Prince didn’t sound like a likeable person.
Maybe this is a generational issue both of us need to come to terms with — we need to evolve with our students instead of pushing issues they don’t care about, as tragic as that may feel.
My students do engage with the news. It’s just not the way I want them to.
They consume news across platforms like TikTok, news outlets apps and check for updates several times a day. They are bombarded with information — and conspiracy theories — and often struggle to sift fact from fiction but this doesn’t mean they don’t care. They are cynical. I tell them they have the traits of a good journalist and they say they want quality journalism but struggle to find that too.
Although my friend and I are far away, we found this similarity among our students: Gaza features high on the list of things they care about along with climate change, health and money. They were closely following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who led pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University. They are deeply impacted by police brutality and injustice.
News organisations should take heed and quench this generation’s thirst for reliable, fair information. I am guilty of stereotyping them and must step up and do right by them. We all must.
The writer is a journalism instructor.
X: @LedeingLady
Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2025
