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A Noble Profession
By Myron L. Belkind Editor's Note: Tokyo Chief of Bureau Myron Belkind celebrated his 40th anniversary with the AP this month and devoted his column in Number 1 Shimbun, the magazine of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, of which he is president, to talking about his career and his life in journalism. From Biblical times, the number 40 has symbolized an important milestone. Moses’ people wandered the desert for 40 years, and the flooding at the time of Noah’s Ark lasted for 40 days. There is no way I can equate anything I have done to anything of Biblical proportions, but I have just passed an important milestone -- the 40th anniversary of my Associated Press career -- and I would like to share with you some experiences and thoughts after a long life in journalism. Firstly, I have no regrets at having gone into journalism, initially at age 11 when I became a reporter on a new junior high school newspaper in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. In those days, I often stayed after school to complete an assignment. Nowadays, as my family will tell you, I regularly come home late because of the press of work. One does not go into journalism to get rich monetarily, but the rewards are far greater than anything that money can buy. There is the satisfaction of contributing to better understanding in the world, the satisfaction of the occasional scoop, the satisfaction of directing news staffs filled with new members of our profession with the same idealism and thirst for breaking news that I like to feel I still have. What other profession could enable someone like me, the son of a Russian immigrant to the United States, go on and report (in order of assignments) from the Philippines, Malaysia, Burma, Borneo, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Sikkim, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, England and Japan? What other profession could enable the same son to interview Lee Kuan Yew, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk of Bhutan, and the Chogyal of Sikkim and his wife, Hope Cooke? And to report on major news events over the past four decades including the India-Pakistan War of 1971, the Indian State of Emergency from 1975-77, the Margaret Thatcher era in the United Kingdom and the fascinating story of the Royals from the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981 to her death in 1997? And, in my wildest dreams, I never would have imagined that I would be privileged to have the opportunity to come to Japan and witness a country in political and economic transformation as it emerges with renewed optimism from a decade-long economic slowdown and considers major constitutional changes to take it into the 21st century. The answer is that there is no other profession like ours. We are the reporters and observers of history on a minute-to-minute basis. We do not have the luxury of academic historians who may take years to write a book and have every fact checked and double-checked. Our task may be easy and glamorous when we cover a press conference or interview a leading cultural figure. But we also often face difficulties when we have to battle down obstacles put in our way of gathering facts. Ours is a profession -- unlike law or medicine -- where no special examinations are necessary to get a license to practice what we do. And, also unlike law or medicine, there are no professional bodies to discipline us when we act in an unprofessional manner. We do not have any certificates to display that declare us to be a "Professional Journalist." All we have is our credibility, as judged by our peers and our readers, and that credibility is based on how we behave as professionals in terms of gathering and reporting facts fairly and accurately. In my 40-plus years as a journalist, there have been enormous, revolutionary changes in technology. When I went to India on my first assignment as a foreign correspondent for the AP in 1966, I would write my stories in cable-ese, running words together to save a few pennies in tolls, and then a messenger would take my stories on a bicycle to the post office, where the wordage would be counted before being sent to London, where they would arrive several hours later. Now, journalists can transmit news and photos back to their head offices from the remotest parts of the world literally in seconds. But one thing has not changed, and that is the obligation on the journalist to report the facts fairly and accurately. Forty years from now, I am confident those standards will be as essential to our profession as they are today, and as they have been since this idealistic kid from Cleveland joined his first newspaper, the Short Circuit, at Memorial Junior High School in 1951. (Jan. 27, 2004) Related articles: |
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