Abstract

Over the last few years, the number of news media outlets in developing countries
and emerging democracies has grown rapidly. There has been an increased
recognition of the crucial role of journalism in promoting democracy, and this has
created an urgent demand for well-trained journalists. As the lead UN agency
in promoting freedom of expression and access to information and knowledge,
UNESCO has taken various initiatives to improve the quality of journalism education
worldwide. In December 2005, in response to numerous requests from Member
States for help in the design of journalism education curricula, UNESCO convened
an experts’ consultative meeting in Paris. Major outputs of the consultation were the
identification of courses, which should be included in a journalism curriculum.
A team of four UNESCO experts, commissioned for the initial development of the
journalism education curricula initiative, solicited a response to their first draft
from twenty senior journalism educators who were deemed to have considerable
experience working in developing countries and emerging democracies. Their
responses proved to be essential for the establishment of appropriate and
applicable curricula. The revised draft design thus featured a list of courses for
both undergraduate and post-graduate levels, a brief description of each course and
an outline of fundamental journalism competencies. Journalism instructors with
experience working in developing countries or emerging democracies were then
carefully selected from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South
America to write the syllabuses for seventeen core courses. The draft curricula was
reviewed at a second experts’ consultative meeting at UNESCO in Paris, selecting a
number of model syllabuses to qualify the document for formal presentation to the
World Journalism Education Congress in June 2007 in Singapore.