'Cambridge University called them a "soft" option this week. John Humphrys thinks they're pointless. In the more macho parts of journalism, real journos don't study. They roll up their sleeves and report.
Yet thousands of young people sign up to media studies courses. They have helped produce former Channel 4 chief executive Michael Jackson (Westminster University); Sunday Times editor John Witherow (Cardiff School of Journalism); Royal Television Society Young Journalist of the Year 2004 Mark Daly (University of Stirling); and hundreds of others. So what's the problem?
Until the late 1990s, seasoned journalists relished opportunities to rubbish media studies. It was the modern equivalent of 1960s sociology, a fool's paradise jammed full of bearded Marxists with "sweetie mice for brains". When Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools, condemned it as "vacuous" and "quasi-academic", there were cheers in newsrooms from Brighton to Inverness.
Some still feel that way. John Humphrys, the presenter of Radio 4's Today programme, says: "Even more kids are doing it now and it is sillier than it ever was. Where are they going to find jobs? If you decide after a proper degree in English, history or economics to do a one-year postgraduate course in journalism at a good university, all well and good. But the idea of three years at university doing journalism is barmy."'
This is an extract from an article in the Independent that I came across the other day. You can find the rest of the article here.
I've often noticed that there is negative press around Media Studies as a course, and that people usually assume students taking the subject are only doing it to get an 'easy qualification'. This annoys me, because the journalists claiming it's the cop-out subject have clearly never seen how a MS course works. One thing I've noticed doing our AS level is the amount of extra time students put in in order to get the highest grade possible, more than would be done for subjects like History or Maths, both considered 'acceptable' subjects. Yes, sometimes people make a rubbish piece of film that simply ticks all the right boxes, but what about the others who are truly putting work and creativity into something they love? People taking Art and similar courses go through a similar process, and they put as much care and attention into their final piece as any self-respecting media student would do, and they still recieve respect because it's a 'proper' subject.
And who are journalists to judge anyway? Their whole career is based on the media industry, and yet they sneer at the students taking a subject that teaches the things that they've had to learn on the job, or gained experiance before they could get to where they are. Are they simply jelous because it's almost a 'short cut' that they never had the opportunity to do? Or is it because '"Journalists love exposing the truth, but if anyone wants to take a close look at what they do they hate it"', as said by Peter Cole in the article.
'Philip Schlesinger says: "Media studies is an easy hit. Critics just need to find an absurd course and satirise it. The strange thing is that a lot of people who read media studies and get important media jobs then disavow their degrees. They forget they did MS."'
I suppose it's a debate that will go on for a long time, and even my dad scoffed when I said I wanted to do MS for A-Level, despite the fact he knew nothing about the subject. I ignored him, and took it anyway, and now I probably want to something towards it in my career, so there you go. I do think that it is a worthwhile subject, and anyone who tells me it's the easy option will receive a punch in the face from the media massive.
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