Exporting Journalism Culture to Vietnam: The Role of the Trainer in Two Swedish Media Aid Projects

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I explored how two media aid projects from Sweden were used to intervene in the development of Vietnamese journalism between 1993 and 2007. Vietnamese journalism and media aid are contextualized in this paper by unfolding pedagogical ideology, journalistic culture, and the negotiation of professional ideals. Based on an interview study with Swedish trainers from the media aid projects and informed by document analysis, the main research question concerned the role of the trainers in negotiating journalistic practices during the aid projects and the implications of these. Furthermore, I explored the ways in which the aid influenced journalistic ideology in Vietnam, and how the projects fulfilled their political aim to contribute to the democratic development of media in Vietnam. The paper adds to the growing body of literature seeking to de-colonialize media theory to rethink the development of journalism in the Global South. The key findings demonstrate how social norms disrupted the implementation of the ideology of journalism being conveyed from Sweden, while the transfer of technological equipment and knowledge impacted journalism production.

KEYWORDS:

• Vietnam
• journalism
• media aid
• journalism training
• media ethics
• media development

List of Acronyms

Table

AJC	Academy of Journalism and Communication. Since 1993 part of the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics
CPV	The Communist Party of Vietnam
Fojo	A Training Media Institute, nowadays part of the Linnaeus University and previous Kalmar University
MCI	Ministry of Culture and Information (1992-2007) Ministry of Information and Communications (since 2007)
Sida	The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
SR	Swedish Radio
VTV	Vietnam Television, the Vietnamese national TV broadcaster
VoV	Voice of Vietnam, the Vietnamese national radio broadcaster
WTO	World Trade Organization

1. Introduction

How can journalism, its ideals, and norms travel from one media system to another? For almost two decades, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) carried out media aid projects in Vietnam designed to develop Vietnamese journalism with professional values and ideals brought from Sweden. The purpose of the projects was to democratize and modernize Vietnamese journalism. The project executors and the ambassadors for the projects were the journalism trainers. The aim of the activities was to emphasize the journalism ideals related to truth, fairness, and the scrutiny of power, which are shared with other media development programmes (Lugo-Ocando 2020, 41–43).

This paper explores the Swedish media aid programs to Vietnam from 1993 to 2007 by examining the development of journalism in a media system characterized by repressive media laws and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, affected by war and independence movement during the twentieth century. Previous research has shown how journalism education in countries with limited press freedom can enjoy more media freedom compared to the practitioners working in newsrooms. Even if journalists cannot use their learnings, they might have received a greater awareness about informed and deliberative societies through education which eventually will support them to play an active role in a future transition of media (Josephi 2010, 257–259). Journalism training as a media aid is a similar concept but builds on the idea that the participants are professional journalists rather than students, and by that, also attached to a media organization.

In 1969, Sweden was the first western country to establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam (i.e., North Vietnam). As a result of the current Swedish foreign politics, which was critical of the US warfare in Vietnam, Sweden and Vietnam developed strong political ties (Thaarup and Villadsen 2010). In 1974, agreements were made on building two hospitals in Hanoi and the construction of the Bai Bang paper mill in northern Vietnam. The paper mill and forestry project lasted from 1974 until 1995 and became a topic of reoccurring political debates on Swedish aid regarding its performance and results (Berg, Lundberg, and Tydén 2021, 522–530; Blower et al. 1999; Ljunggren 2019).

In 1976, the reunited Vietnam started its development towards what became one of the fastest-growing economies in the world 20 years later (Forsberg 2007). In a post-war society characterized by poverty and societal challenges, the Đổi Mới economic reforms in 1986 contributed to an opening process that also included journalism and media (Nguyen 2008). In the existing media system, journalists were educated and trained by the party and for the party in Vietnam or the Soviet Union (Katsakioris 2019). At the beginning of the 1990s, educational reforms were implemented to serve the rising demands of journalists. In 1990, the Vietnamese government decided to upgrade the Central School of Propaganda and Education to university status, which in 1993 became the Academy of Journalism and Communication (AJC). This was later followed at Hué University in the central region of Vietnam, Da Lat University in the Central Highlands, and at Ho Chi Minh City Open University in the South (Nguyen 2008). Previous scholars have examined the relationship between the state and civil society in Vietnam by emphasizing the role of the media (cf. Gainsborough 2010, 135–139; Kerkvliet 2001; Sidel 2008, 119–120, 138). Media aid has previously been examined regarding the extent to which Western values and approaches to journalism have enabled, and disabled, the growth of post-colonial nation-building exercises in the Global South (Lugo-Ocando 2020, 2018), and thus how foreign aid has supported a particular model of journalism building on objectivity and the commitment to “common sense” as a discourse (Lugo-Ocando 2020, 123). Among previous scholarly contributions, we see how democratic ideals from journalism training in Cambodia were not fully implemented in the newsrooms when the participants returned from the training (Quinn 2020). Another example can be explored in journalism training in Ethiopia, where the trainer’s role could be seen as being of specific interest in the implementation of the journalism program for post-graduate journalists in Tanzania (Skjerdal 2011). According to Skjerdal (2011), attention needs to be drawn to an approach that is “open for contextual influences in journalistic style and performance” (47). Findings presented by Schiffrin (2010) address the need for sustainable business models alongside a better-educated workforce to cope with the inadequate resources and low wages in the context of media development. Other scholarly examples of media training as an aid have emphasized the perspectives of the aid recipients (Myers 2018), and how it inhibited independent practice among the local journalists (Tietaah et al. 2018). Paterson, Gadzekpo, and Wasserman (2018) have examined how donors of media aid have preferred a form of journalism based on factual analysis rather than structural analysis. The concept of journalism training for media development is of scholarly interest as it draws attention to issues related to professionalism, journalism ideologies, and societal influences on the media. This paper contributes to the existing research by looking at the gap between the donors and the recipients, by examining the trainers’ role in conveying journalism between two media systems. By using the case of the Vietnamese media system, this article explores the ways in which the trainer's pedagogy and the project design strived to influence the Vietnamese model of journalism by trying to export methods and technology from Sweden to reshape journalism in Vietnam. This article contributes by providing scholarly perspectives on journalism training as media aid by examining the applied pedagogy and the strategies that were used in the efforts to convey journalism culture. It adds to the growing scholarly area that seeks to de-colonialize media theory by rethinking the development of journalism in the Global South by exploring the extent to which the media aid projects from Sweden to Vietnam convey journalism ideology through the eyes and memories of the trainers. By critically examining the role of the trainer, the aim is to explore journalism pedagogy in a setting in which journalism cultures interact in classroom and newsroom environments.

1.1. Research Question and Research Method

The overarching aim of this paper is to examine the role of the trainer in media aid projects. The trainer can be seen as the conveyer of journalism culture and ideology, thus, the pedagogy and the project strategies to implement journalistic practices in the other media system become relevant things to explore. This study analyses how these practices were used in the training activities. The main research question motivating this study is: What was the role of the trainers in negotiating journalism practices during the two Swedish media aid projects in Vietnam, and what were the implications? To answer the main research question, I need to break it down into three sub-questions:

• How did the media aid projects intervene in the journalism culture and ideology in Vietnam?

• How did the projects fulfill their political aim, to contribute to more democratic media in Vietnam?

• What disruptions did the trainers experience during their work in Vietnam?

This study builds on semi-structured interviews with former trainers and staff in the media aid projects in Vietnam in 2020 and 2021. Interviews were conducted in Swedish and English via video call on Skype and Zoom. In addition to the interview study, the study is enrichened by a second data collection strategy that builds on a document analysis where details and facts from the interviews have been compared with project documentation from Sida, Danida, Fojo Media Institute, and Swedish Radio. By deploying a discourse historical approach to the findings, as first advanced by Wodak (2001), the study contrasts the memories brought up from the interviews with the documentation that consists of a range of documents from trainers’ field notes, diaries and participant lists, course schedules, and instructions. By unfolding the historical context in the analysis of the material, it is possible to examine how the participants’ interests and relationships between the journalists from Sweden and Vietnam influenced the ideas and the transformation of journalism ideals, and thus how this was negotiated, or not negotiated, into the Vietnamese media industry.

The interviews followed guidelines from Kvale (2007) that explore the multiple steps where the interview is examined. For the first step, the interviewees describe their lifeworld during the interview. This includes spontaneous feelings and emotions connected to the trainers’ experience in Vietnam. For the second step, the interviewees discover new meanings to their experience, which are then interpreted by the interviewer. For the third step, the interviewer condensed and interpreted the meanings of what the interviewee described and checked these with the interviewee by asking follow-up questions. For the fourth step, the material has been analysed by the interviewer according to a keyword structure. In some cases, a follow-up interview was conducted and dates, facts, and names were double-checked via e-mail (Kvale 2007, 102–103). The interview transcripts were sorted by themes and contextualized and categorized using content analysis (Kvale 2007, 106). By examining the interviewee’s memories, I focused on both what was told and what was untold, what was remembered and what was forgotten (Gemignani 2014). Doing so allows the researcher to identify the general memories but also to examine both the memories and the forgotten experiences by comparing them with field material, including diaries and correspondence.

1.2. The Swedish Media Aid to Vietnam 1993–2007

The media aid from Sweden to Vietnam follows a tradition through which one views aid as an effort to advance the individuals’ freedom rather than only targeting measurable values such as GDP or per-capita income, inspired by Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen (2000). In 2009, Sida’s media assistance worldwide was estimated at approximately $30 million (Myers 2009, 34). The concept of Swedish aid during the second half of the twentieth century was shaped by the idea that knowledge and ideals from Sweden were useful in the developing world (Berg, Lundberg, and Tydén 2021, 56). Around 1970, the aid policies changed from supporting individual projects to focus on specific countries in which the idea was to internationalize the Swedish welfare state (Diurlin 2019, 348).

In 1993, Sweden and Vietnam took their first joint steps towards many years of cooperation in the media sector. A media aid project was launched between the Vietnamese national broadcaster Voice of Vietnam (VoV) and the Swedish public service broadcaster Swedish Radio (SR) (Phan, Tran, and Tran 2004). The Local Radio Project in Vietnam started with three local radio stations in Hué (central Vietnam), in Hanoi (northern Vietnam), and Can Tho (southern Vietnam) and included 30 other provincial radio stations across the nation in phases 1 and 2. The project was designed to cover one station at a time, but learnings and experiences were shared at regional seminars at which radio staff from several radio stations interacted across workplaces (Ahrén 1996; Phan, Tran, and Tran 2004) [Interview with Trainer 2 and 3].

In May 1996, Sida signed an agreement with the Ministry of Culture and Information (MIC) in Vietnam to develop support for the culture and media sector in Vietnam (Elmqvist 1999). One of the objectives was an agreement to support the training of journalists. In collaboration with the procured contractor, Fojo, a pilot project was carried out from August 1998 until June 1999. This phase consisted of cluster training programs in which the training took place at designated newsrooms. It was later followed by a first and a second phase (completed in 2007) which followed a theme-based pedagogy during which journalists enrolled in courses arranged at training institutes in Vietnam (Elmqvist and Fredriksson 2003). The courses aimed to introduce the participants to methodologies and ideals from Swedish newsrooms by emphasizing dialogue between the participants and the trainers, and in between the participants (Elmqvist and Fredriksson 2003; Elmqvist and Luwarso 2006).

2. Negotiating Journalism Ideology

The findings from the interview study were examined with a conceptual framework based on journalism ideals, training pedagogy, and global media ethics. These concepts were applied to the findings with the purpose of contributing to a larger understanding of how this can be understood in the context in which practitioners from two distinctly different media systems met during the training activities. By including social norm theory regarding how Vietnamese organize social connections, I could also show the importance of understanding the sentiment when conducting professional training in a Vietnamese context. To further analyse the material, I explored how the media systems in Sweden and Vietnam differ from the other, and to what extent the journalism ideology made a difference in the aid projects. Below, I will further describe how I applied the conceptual framework for this study.

2.1. Journalism Ideals in Two Contrasting Media Systems

During the 1990s, a general condition for Sida’s development programs was the potential to influence processes “that seems likely to lead to democracy and greater respect for human rights, including the media” (Elmqvist 1999, 2). In the evaluation of the media aid projects in Vietnam, this is translated to improved newspaper layout, live broadcasting, exchange of ideas, improved newsroom management by organizing newsroom meetings, and networking opportunities between colleagues (Elmqvist 1999).

By applying a comparative media system approach, as suggested by Hallin and Mancini (2004), which builds on the four theories of the press presented by Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm (1963), the Swedish media system is defined as a democratic corporatist model. Politics and media relations have been characterized by factors such as a strong press, political parallelism, and journalistic professionalism. The role of the state is vital, but the media regulations have been based on the assumption that the media should remain independent from political influence (Nord and Grusell 2021). A contrasting categorization can be made regarding Vietnam, based on the notion of the command model developed by Blum (2005), where the government has “absolute control” of the media at the same time as the market is funding them. In addition, Yin (2008) proposes an additional classification of media systems by adding dimensions of press responsibility into the system. Thus we can identify how politics and media relations are intertwined and media plays a two-way role: on one hand, it mobilizes support for the state (following the Press Law), and on another, it also functions as a channel through which people’s concern influence the state (Kerkvliet 2001). In the latest revision of the 1989 Media Law from 2016, it states that Vietnamese journalism’s main task is to “To propagandize and disseminate, and contribute to the formulation and protection of, the line and policies of the Party, policies, and laws of the State” (The National Assembly 2016). The journalism culture in the two countries differs a lot from the other in terms of organization, professionalization, autonomy, and governance. In the case of the media aid projects, two media systems encounter each other, from a practitioner’s perspective.

2.2. Understanding the History of Training Pedagogy

The trainers were journalists with experience from some of the bigger media houses across Sweden. According to an analysis of their qualifications specified in project documents, a few of them had no formal journalism education, while other trainers had a degree from the first higher education in journalism in Stockholm, founded in 1967 (Gardeström 2011, 207ff). One trainer who had studied at Journalisthögskolan [The School of Journalism] in Stockholm shared in the interview [Trainer 1] how the students were affected by the socialist-liberal ideology that formed the journalism culture in Sweden. The program director at that time, Lars Furhof, stressed the need for journalistic integrity to scrutinize political power (Gardeström 2011, 238ff). By the end of the 1980s, the Swedish press corps was a mixture of veterans without formal education and younger idealists from Journalisthögskolan. The support for objectivity and a journalist role based on the task to scrutinize power and explain societal issues was still present during the 1990s (Wiik 2012, 38ff). The democratic function of journalism was a centerpiece in Swedish journalism and its role as an examiner of society was formally written in a series of governmental media policy inquiries (Wiik 2012, 34).

The scholarly literature on journalism pedagogy and its relationship to training is limited. In 1992, Philip Gaunt released the book Making the Newsmakers (1992), sponsored by UNESCO. In this book, Gaunt assesses variations in journalism training systems, by conducting a comparative analysis between several countries to trace the variations between national and regional efforts in journalism education. By dividing journalism education into two clusters: the developing world and the industrialized nations (1992, 157), he identified challenges and prospects for the developing world to be concentrated around government control and the lack of resources. He also expressed his concern about how payment structures, and journalists’ income, has an impact on the status of the profession (1992, 158). Existing research shows that the discourse of journalism education globally has been influenced by the American concepts of journalism. Despite this, there is not one type of journalism education or journalism training available in the world (Deuze 2006; Josephi 2019; Tunstall 2008). Hence, it is relevant to address ideology rather than methodology in journalism education (Josephi 2019, 50). By unfolding the notion on journalism education by Mark Deuze (2006), we rather see how “any conceptualization of journalism must always be framed in terms of journalism and society, as it then can be situated in particular technological, economic, political and social contexts” (2006, 30). Although journalism education can be seen as less attached to national contexts than journalism practice (Josephi 2010, 254), journalism training constitutes the “middle ground” as its participants are practitioners and not students. However, the contrasts between the freedom that journalism education offers and the everyday work in the newsrooms can be transferred into the training setting, as participants s experience the differences between the normative expectations from the training courses (Josephi 2010, 258).

2.3. The Problem with Modern Journalism

The discourse on “modern journalism” emphasizes professional skills and is often regarded as following the ideal of “good” journalism (Hujanen 2016). Ekström (2006) has examined how interviewing and quoting developed into institutionalized practices and techniques that became fundamental for what can be called modern news journalism.

Modern journalism is also closely associated with the development of internal discourses, stories, and strategies for presentation. At every stage in press history, news has naturally been presented in the framework of special genres and conventions. What distinguishes modern news journalism most is the way it increasingly edits public communication, sets the stage for others’ utterances, and creates media events, all in accordance with a specifically journalistic logic. (Ekström 2006, 22)

In the training courses organized by Fojo, professional ethics is mentioned in the external evaluations conducted by Sida’s contractor (Elmqvist and Fredriksson 2003; Elmqvist and Luwarso 2006; Elmqvist and Rylander 2007; McGillivray, Carpenter, and Norup 2012). One reoccurring ethical issue can be described as the practice of accepting payment at press conferences, often referred to as brown envelope journalism (Akabogu 2017; Rao 2018; Skjerdal 2010), and the practice of paying for interviews, checkbook journalism (Skjerdal 2019). Previous research explores how a lack of media ethics in journalism education and training leads to normative practices that are acceptable even though they are unethical (Kuhn 2014; Rao 2018). Guided by previous research on global media ethics and the examination of professional journalist ethics (Couldry 2013, 53; Hanitzch, Plaisance, and Skewes 2013, 37), there is a need to examine media ethics from a holistic perspective. The individual journalist’s living conditions and abilities to impact his, or her, life is included in this. When assessing the Vietnamese labour market, and reviewing related empirical findings, Luong (2016) proposes the importance of examining the salience of social connections in Vietnam. It is summarized in a contemporary Vietnamese saying (often mentioned as the 4T’s): “nhất hậu duệ, nhì quan hệ, ba tiền tệ, bốn trí tuệ” (“Of first importance is descent; the second are social relations; third is money; fourth is the intellect”). This informs us how social connections constitute tools for solutions to various challenges in daily life that ranges from purchasing goods to finding a job or a new home. This is not only a way to resolve problems but should also be seen as a way to structure an individual’s obligations to the members of the own social network or enable business opportunities (Luong 2016, 201; Pham and Talavera 2018).

Vietnamese usually invoke “sentiment” (tình cảm). Notwithstanding the strong local ideological emphasis on “sentiment”, the maintenance and cultivation of social connections or social capital require the investment of time and material resources; time and material resources needed in offering advice, giving gifts, doing favors, or in hosting death-anniversary meals and wedding banquets, among others. In this context, people from different social strata are far from being on a level playing field. (Luong 2016, 41–42)

In the Vietnamese societal context, it is relevant to distinguish between salary and income; the latter include bonuses and other benefits which are connected to an individual’s social network. The norm is that anyone with a position owes it to someone else, which organizes citizens in hierarchical relationships with obligations and expectations(Chi 2021; Phạm 2021; Gainsborough 2010, 178). This has an impact on the relationship between Vietnamese journalists and PR agents because the gift-giving norms have been influenced by the limitations of freedom of speech as the journalism ideology is not focused on objectivity ideals (Nguyen and Tsetsura 2017).

3. The Role of the Trainers in Media Aid Projects

The pedagogical design of the training courses was based on the trainer’s own experiences from working in newsrooms in Sweden. Recruitment of the trainers in both projects was based on their journalist careers, but some had previous experience of media aid in other countries. In the Radio training project, all trainers were recruited from Swedish Radio and were either identified as journalists or radio technicians. A few of them had previous experience from in-house training and the internal introduction of new colleagues. Furthermore, the project staff included Vietnamese co-trainers and interpreters recruited from Vietnamese newsrooms and approved by the MCI.

Fojo and Swedish Radio arranged information meetings for trainers to prepare them for their training courses and stay in Vietnam. The preparation activities were based on trainers’ previous experience, compiled information from Sida and the Embassy of Sweden in Hanoi, and a general overview of the Vietnamese media system. The trainers were also advised to read Mass Media in Viet Nam (Marr 1998) which draws an overall picture of the media system that existed in the 1990s.

3.1. The Disrupted Training Pedagogy and Ideology

The pedagogical method was based on setting an example for journalism practices by providing examples from Swedish newsrooms, which constitutes a transfer of ideology rather than actual training methodology (Josephi 2019, 50). The aim was to allow the Vietnamese participants to interpret their experiences in their work situations. During the interviews, the trainers’ ideals of journalism were specified according to the idea that the journalist should be an interrogator who scrutinizes political power (Wiik 2012, 38ff). When interacting with the Vietnamese journalists, the trainers’ experienced a different journalism culture and how social norms affected the daily work in the newsrooms. One trainer recalled how the trainer at the end of the session on editorial management was questioned by one participant who explained why the proposed models could not be implemented in a Vietnamese newsroom.

Interviewer: How did [the participant] describe it?

[With] other driving forces. Kinships. Networks. How elderly [people] go before the younger. [How] seniority, functions, and kinships have such a major impact that it affects the development of the group. In Sweden, other things impact the group, so [the participant] was right. [Trainer 5]

The editorial management that the trainers brought to Vietnam was built on ideas and models for collaborations between reporters and editors. One Vietnamese editorial manager asked one of the trainers [Trainer 6] about how to facilitate collaboration between reporters. The manager identified a problem based on the bonus systems which departed from the model that each reporter received financial benefits based on performance which reduced their willingness to share information with colleagues. The social norms in the newsrooms related to salary and income emerged during the training courses in various ways. The concept of 4T (Luong 2016) is vital in understanding how social relations and private networks can be used as a door opener in the newsrooms, similar to other workplaces (Pham and Talavera 2018). Several trainers [Trainer 2, 3, 7, 9] remembered how the training was interrupted when participants had to take other jobs rather than participate in the training. The “extra jobs” ranged from selling cigarettes on the streets to work as interpreters, teachers, and taxi drivers. Other jobs could also mean a conflict of interest when journalists work for different news organizations to earn extra money [Trainer 3]. The salary level and bonus systems were seen as hurdles by the trainers when implementing methods on newsroom management and professional ethics among the participants. For those trainers who had been involved in the training projects over time, the awareness of social norms in the newsrooms grew as they built relationships with co-trainers, interpreters, and participants.

I think we were a bit naïve. In one way. I [still] think there is great potential in meeting journalists from totally different systems as we did. […] [Our] attitude was already from start “This is how we do, how do you do it?”. This was our way of teaching all the time, and this was our method to create motivation [among the participants]. [Trainer 8]

The Swedish support to North Vietnam during the war was seen as a facilitator for the media aid projects and was also addressed during all interviews for this study (McGillivray, Carpenter, and Norup 2012). In the local radio project, the political relations in Vietnam enhanced the project as they were dependent on the provincial governments’ support. When asked about how one could prepare for the training in Vietnam, three of the interviewees explained how they identify themselves as former activists, part of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War, and for that reason, engaged in the societal development in Vietnam [Trainer 2, 3, 4]. One former Fojo trainer regarded the Vietnam project as an emotional assignment.

So, in that sense I had a very close relationship with Vietnam and so did many of the other recruited trainers. We all came from the same [background] and had a bond to Vietnam. All of us. We were happy that we got a chance to go there. [Trainer 4]

The trainer’s professional background and personal preferences might impact the outcome of the training (Skjerdal 2011). All interviewees in this study expressed their engagement in the development of Vietnamese journalism in various ways. However, their ability to evaluate the implementation of the projects was limited due to a lack of language knowledge and understanding of the pre-existing journalism culture.

3.2. Negotiating Media Ethical Perspectives Amidst Training Courses

A returning mark in the external evaluation of the projects is the application of ethical codes and awareness of media ethics in Vietnam. In an evaluation report of the Fojo project from 2007, the authors noted a trend of more sensational media outlets that lack a code of ethics (Elmqvist and Rylander 2007). The promotion of an ethical code for journalists was an ongoing activity throughout the training as the projects identified problematic ethical norms such as badly informed articles, the disclosure of names in a way to humiliate people, and the existence of brown envelopes, in the news production. In several self-evaluations (dated 1998, 2002, and 2003) written by the Fojo trainers after the training courses, and in correspondence between Fojo project personnel (2001), the existence of corruption in the newsrooms was addressed. The described events varied from reporters getting envelopes at press conferences to reporters receiving “financial compensation” to avoid publishing certain information. In the documentation, it is described as “a phenomenon” that is internalized to such an extent that it is difficult to avoid. One trainer received an envelope with money when attending a press conference while joining a group of Vietnamese colleagues on the field. The trainer explained how this evolved into a delicate situation to find a way to refuse to accept it without making the Vietnamese colleagues uncomfortable.

[I knew] everyone wanted the money. So, I opened the envelope and saw the money and a card. By the way, [the interpreter’s and the nearest reporter’s] faces were pale. I took the card and told my interpreter “Now, we accept the letter and show the rest how we do it and then we leave the envelope [and the money] here and exit the room quickly”. [I did not] want [the participants] to sit there and make their decision while we are looking at them. But they should know how we handled the situation. [Trainer 8]

The documented project evaluations and the interviewed trainers regard the low salaries as a reason for the existence of the “brown envelopes” and checkbook journalism. Juxtaposed with the bonus system, this not only had an impact on journalistic practices but also on the everyday life of being a journalist in Vietnam. The insights on how the Vietnamese kinship society is replicated in each individual’s ability to solve daily problems are of relevance as they provided the media aid projects with extra inducements for the journalists to participate and expand their social networks (Luong 2016). Previous scholarly research in other media systems has examined how brown envelopes and checkbook journalism disrupt professional ethics. However, it should not be seen as an indicator of a lack of material conditions nor seen as a socio-cultural phenomenon alone (Akabogu 2017; Lodamo and Skjerdal 2009; Rao 2018; Skjerdal 2019). By exploring the gift-giving culture in Vietnam and its common ground in the relationships between PR agents and journalists (Nguyen and Tsetsura 2017), we gain a greater understanding of the practices.

3.3. Introducing Technology for Changing Journalism Practice

A central part of the Swedish media aid to Vietnam was to contribute to the democratic development of journalism in Vietnam. Improved technical skills in live broadcasting and newspaper design are together with newsroom management in the evaluation seen as indicators of democracy and human rights. One of the Fojo trainers experienced this as they represented a “modern way of journalism practice” by conveying ideas and methods on how to improve layout editing and photojournalism.

Their newspapers looked pretty boring. People did not want to read them. The material was poorly presented and so on. I think that was what mattered, and we could go there and also change the content. […] We initiated some [Vi-femmor, man on the street interviews] and asked people on the streets about what they thought about things. It became very popular because it was seen as modern, it was nice and looked good. [Trainer 1]

As a result of the local radio project, audience surveys were conducted, and live broadcasting and phone-in-radio were established in all participating 33 radio stations within the VoV network. From a trainer’s perspective, the events when the participating stations went to air live for the first time are emotional memories. According to one of the trainers in the local radio project, this was one of the “cores of the project”:

We agreed to broadcast fifteen minutes and allow the host to say “Welcome” and then play three songs […] and in between the songs, just telling “This was … and here comes … ” [the next song and artist name]. It was so nerve-wracking! And the hero in all this was the [station manager]. […] He took his chair and sat in the control room. Of course! He was in charge of securing that everything that was aired was [political] correct. Do you understand? He was just sitting there. And then after the fifteen minutes, it was such a rapture! And relief. Everyone thought “Oh, we are so good, we know how to air live!”. [Trainer 3]

With live broadcasting on radio and tv followed new working methods and roles in the newsrooms. The transition of the program host in tv and radio went from presenting telegrams to presenting news from a teleprompter and later to also conduct studio interviews [Interviews with Trainer 1, 2, 3, 4, 7]. The emphasis on live broadcast and phone-in-radio in the local radio project generated interviews in a new format, in which questions (and answers) were not confirmed in advance. Furthermore, the technology that was provided to the local radio stations, enabled reporting from the field. This technological transition of the newsrooms contributed to the rapid capacity building but also raised critical reflections regarding the role of journalism in Vietnamese society as it was negotiated between trainers, participants, and political leaders (Lugo-Ocando 2020, 134).

During the period of media aid from Sweden, the journalism profession in Vietnam underwent a transition from being seen more or less as a political position to a more professionalized press corps with its educational institutions and strategies to inform citizens beyond the press briefings from the government. This ideology brought the normative practices in the newsrooms and the Press Law together as the dual function of media includes opportunities to report on societal challenges on behalf of the government (Kerkvliet 2001, 252). Several of the participants in the training had a university degree in a field other than journalism, commonly in economics or linguistics. However, the quality of the journalism education was of concern, according to several of the trainers interviewed. During the 1990s, most of the editorial managers had a background in the Communist Party (CPV) rather than media, which also affected their knowledge (sometimes also interest) in journalism practice. Trainers working at VTV and VoV talked about how the radio and TV reporters wrote their articles, submitted them to their editorial manager, who changed words and tonality following the politicians expected will, and forwarded the re-written article to the presenter.

They [the journalists] were all politically appointed. All the editor-in-chief’s [at the time] had been successful during the war in one way or another. A few years later when I returned to Vietnam, [an editor-in-chief of a magazine] approached me and told me that [the editor-in-chief] was allowed to independently recruit staff [for the first time]. [Trainer 8]

The hierarchies in the newsrooms generated situations in which junior reporters did not want to share their experiences nor opinions before the managers or senior colleagues. During the project period, a new and educated generation of journalists embarked on the newsrooms. According to one of the trainers, their attendance in the training activities made a clear difference.

Often [younger journalists] show much healthier critical thinking towards sources, authorities, and senior colleagues. They also have critical thinking against me. […] [Last time I was in Vietnam] they did not all sit straight up and took notes [of what I said], instead they argued and want to share their own experiences and questioned things. [Trainer 9]

None of the aid projects explicitly involved instructors from the Vietnamese journalism schools in the project design. However, the connections between the training and the development of higher education in journalism did exist. In the Fojo training courses, the empty seats in several courses were filled up with lecturers from the AJC, and several of the participants transferred from the media industry to academic institutions later in their careers.

The media aid projects in this study occurred at the same time as the Vietnamese media system underwent multiple transitions that changed the field for the decades to come. First, the technological context changed with the launch of the internet in Vietnam in 1997 (Lam, Boymal, and Martin 2004). The digital development started slowly as the subscription rates were high and the public access low. After political reform, subsidies, and a renovation of telecom policies, the introduction of digitalized services, social media platforms, and online journalism started after 2000 (Lam, Boymal, and Martin 2004). Second, the economic context changed twice, when the U.S. trade embargo was lifted in 1994 and when Vietnam entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007. Third, the professional context changed with the growing number of journalism programs in higher education across Vietnam, enabling a new and young generation of journalists. What was unchanged throughout the project period was the political context in which the CPV remained in power and so also the rigid control over media. By exploring the media aid project with the notion of global journalism education, Deuze (2006) found all these factors to be relevant when looking into the conceptualization of journalism during the media training activities. It also adds value when examining journalism practice in a media system in transition (Josephi 2019, 2010, 253–260).

4. The Implications of the Pedagogical Design

The main research question in this study is “What was the role of the trainers in negotiating journalism practices during the two Swedish media aid projects in Vietnam, and what were the implications?”. To respond to this question, I used an approach to media aid by exploring the pedagogical design of the projects, journalism culture, and the transformation of technology.

4.1. The Negotiation of Practice

In the Swedish media aid unit, Sida and the contractors identified live broadcasting media as an enabler of democratic values in journalism. By modernizing the media houses with new technology, the aim was to improve the skills among the journalists, pushing boundaries for the filtering of news that was identified as self-censorship, and allowing more citizens to appear in the media by improving the interview skills among the journalists.

The role of the trainer has been to convey journalism ideology and culture alongside technological practices from Sweden to Vietnam. Technological skills, according to the project documents and the interviews, can be specified as radio broadcasting equipment, recorders, microphones, teleprompters for TV studios, live broadcasting equipment, layout software for newspaper design (QuarkXpress), and photojournalism. The trainers collectively had vast experience from working in media houses in Sweden. Some had previous experience from in-house training in newsrooms, and others had work experience from being training consultants.

The negotiation of practices should also be framed in the Swedish trainers’ context, in which journalism and the journalist’s work were seen as an enabler for democracy (Wiik 2012, 38ff). The findings show how the media aid contributed to the capacity building of Vietnamese journalism by the installation and introduction of technological skills and tools. Hence, the Vietnamese newsrooms involved received a technological upgrade in both examined media aid projects.

4.2. Assessing the Pedagogy

The results from the interview study explored how the trainers’ viewed themselves as representing a “modern” way of journalism practices and thus how the “Swedish way” of working in the newsroom initiated important discussions on management models, necessary skills, and production routines. The ideology, rather than methodology (Josephi 2019), brought a discourse of modern journalism from Sweden (Ekström 2006; Hujanen 2016), which eventually became the role model for the journalism practice that was supposed to be implemented in Vietnam. By applying the notions on journalism pedagogy that stress the importance of adjusting the pedagogy and the journalism concept following the local and regional culture and norms (Gaunt 1992; Josephi 2019, 2010, 258; Skjerdal 2011). I have identified how the proposed journalism ideology was not transferable. Management ideals brought from Sweden were challenged by social norms on kinship and income. Furthermore, discussions on bonus systems, brown envelopes, and checkbook journalism (Skjerdal 2019) disrupted the trainers’ attempt to implement new strategies for collaborations within the newsrooms and journalism practices. The findings show how the transfer of Swedish models for newsroom management and media ethics was interrupted. Like previous research on the negotiation and transformation of journalism practices (Deuze 2006; Josephi 2019), the technological impact on the profession was transferable to a larger extent than ideals for editorial management and media ethics.

4.3. Journalism Culture and Social Norms

In the empirical material, the negotiation of journalism culture conveyed from Sweden to Vietnam was specified as modernizing journalism with regard to the technological and democratic development of the profession in Vietnam. This is exemplified by courses in interviewing skills, modern layout, live broadcasting, newsroom management, and business reporting and is aligned with the discourse of modern journalism (Ekström 2006; Hujanen 2016). From the trainers’ recollection of memories from Vietnam, I examined their experiences from the development of the journalism profession in Vietnam and their reflections on their activities. As is mentioned in the evaluations of the projects, in addition, to live broadcasting and improved newspaper layout design, the projects enabled networking opportunities between journalists. The significance of social networks in getting promotions, increasing income, or improving work conditions (Luong 2016) is of high relevance in understanding the disruptions amidst the training activities. Trainers shared how training was disrupted when the participants were absent because of financial reasons, which is a reminder of the importance of sustainable financial models at all levels in the media organization (Schiffrin 2010). The lack of pre-understanding of social norms in Vietnamese society, as it is expressed in interviews and field material, challenged the Swedish ideals about journalism practice. The findings from this study contribute to an understanding of how social norms affect, and sometimes disrupt, the transfer of journalism culture from one media system to another.

5. Conclusions

This paper has examined the role of the trainers in media aid projects carried out by Sweden in Vietnam from 1993 to 2007. The main contribution to the field of journalism studies in the Global South is to examine, critically, media aid, and particularly the trainers as conveyers of journalism ideology. The findings show how social norms disrupted the implementation of journalism ideology conveyed from Sweden, whereas the transfer of technological knowledge had an impact on journalism production. The examination of the trainers’ role illustrates how their ideology was formed and shaped in the Swedish media system and how they were challenged in the Vietnamese newsroom context. By applying a norm perspective to the findings and exploring how the social norms in the newsrooms disrupted the implementation of newsroom organizations, the aim with this paper was to contribute to the decolonial agenda about how journalism culture travels between the Global North and the Global South. Hence, this paper contributes to a critique of journalism training as a media aid from a Global South perspective by being informed by culture and history.

The findings show how the Swedish donor organization, Sida, aimed to negotiate its journalistic ideology into another media system characterized by a contrasting ideology and disparate history. The period of the media aid projects, 1993-2007, is of scholarly interest as it coincides with the start of the digitalization of journalism in Vietnam. When looking forward, we might identify how journalism ideology and the ideas from the training activities have travelled into the digitalized Vietnamese media system. The media development projects in Vietnam were later followed by several others organized by Sida in other countries to target independent journalism and democracy (cf. Jallov 2006; Nohrstedt, Bastian, and Hök 2004), and media support has since then grown to become an important pillar stone in the Swedish development program. The Fojo training institute has become the dominant Swedish institution within media aid and has trained over 60 000 journalists in more than 100 countries (Fojo Media Institute 2021).

Even though the body of scholarly literature that aims to de-colonialize media studies is growing, the lack of research on media training in countries with repressive media laws calls for more research in non-democratic countries (Josephi 2019, 2010, 253–260). The study also explored how social norms in the newsrooms play a crucial role and hence how these interplay, or not, with existing regulations, which could be subject for further studies in other media systems with repressive media laws. Whereas this paper has shown how the trainers became the conveyer of journalism culture and ideology between Sweden and Vietnam, future studies should investigate the former participants’ strategies to cope with the proposed journalism ideology, regulations, social norms, and the impact from other media systems. By exploring the digitalized Vietnamese media system, future scholarly contributions can examine how the journalism culture has developed since the time of the Swedish media aid. By acknowledging how a media system (in this case, the Vietnamese system), through media aid have been approached by others from the Global North, future examinations might also identify how journalism ideology in the twenty-first century travels in the opposite direction. This could be of interest while analysing disruptions between various applications of journalism in contrasting media systems.

Interviews

The interviews for this paper have been conducted on the following dates:

Trainer 1: 13 January and 12 March 2021

Trainer 2: 16 March 2021

Trainer 3: 17 March 2021

Trainer 4: 10 December 2020

Trainer 5: 9 December and 16 December 2020

Trainer 6: 20 November 2020

Trainer 7: 23 March 2021

Trainer 8: 25 November 2020

Trainer 9: 13 April 2021

Additional interviews have been conducted with four trainers from the two media aid projects. These interviews are not part of this study.

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of my ongoing doctoral project at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. The author want to express his gratitude and sincere thanks to all interviewed former trainers who generously have shared their experiences and memories. He is also grateful to the Journalist Fund in Sweden and the Hierta Foundation for their financial support of the project.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Journalist Fund in Sweden (Journalistfonden); The Hierta Foundation (Hiertanämnden).