Reflections on journalism education at the Wee Kim Wee School

Journalism education, more than most fields, needs to be grounded in a sense of social responsibility and public accountability. Journalists have immense power to do good or harm: the media have taken over from more traditional social institutions much of the role of providers of information, tradition and moral orientation. As university educators, we will have neither the first nor last word in our students' development. Nor do our graduates have a dominant influence on media performance, since even the biggest employers of our students are (not unwisely) diverse in their hiring. Nevertheless, we should start with the assumption that what we are able to do matters to society at large.