Do you Consider Journalism A Profession, Trade Or Vocation

Journalism is a profession, and our doubts about its status as a profession tells us more about a mistake we make when defining the concept of profession than about journalism itself, and that a good definition of profession can give us some reasons to hope that journalism will remain a profession even if the world changes in most of the ways we now fear it will. The Macmillan English dictionary, for advanced learners, the international student’s edition defines profession as a job that you need special skills and qualifications to do especially one with high social standards. It is well known additionally established profession requires extended periods of training to learn the knowledge and skills need to practice, plus the completion of qualifying a board exams. There are various universities I the world that train people to be professional journalists. For instance in Ghana , the is Ghana institute of journalism and some other universities offering such courses , The institutions that produce the professionals have advocated the license and issuing of accreditation . In the entire history of professions licensing standards and criteria and finally codes of ethics in public conducts have been necessary, most professions have a body which is bounded by codes and ethics of that profession which journalists have such organized bodies, in Ghana, we have the Ghana Journalists association {GJA}
Journalists are something more than mere reporters, editors, media employees or like .and that is why they have a fortune even if mere reporters, editors, writers and the like do not. In search for new avenues of employment, many young and educated people are turning their eyes to journalism as a field which offers enough scope for the exercise of their talent. It is comparatively a new profession and one which unlike some old ones is still expanding rapidly.
Journalism has not , unfortunately , attracted the best talent in the past , Comparatively few people with good academic qualification use to enter it quite recently , Even today there is a large number of men on radio who would be classified as unqualified but still practicing the profession , Indeed journalism was so discredited in the eyes of some people of the older generation now rapidly disappearing that they could not imagine respectable people taking to it when they had the faintest expectation of getting something to do in some other field of work . All though it started so early, journalism has not succeeded in attaining anything like the growth of law or even any of the less favored profession, This might partly be explained as a result of the government attitude, The atmosphere by an autocratic government entirely uninfluenced by the public voice as expressed in the press was, also not very favorable for a quick and healthy growth of the press.
To conclude, with the above reasons mentioned in the earlier paragraphs, we can say journalism is indeed a profession, but sometimes could be seen as a trade or vocation by people’s perception

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Ivy Agyei Siaw