Transforming Journalism in Vietnam - Transcript

[00:00:07]

This is the Nordic Asia podcast.

Joanne Kuai [00:00:11]

Welcome to the Nordic Asia Podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise in Asia across the Nordic region. I'm Joanne Kuai, your host for today. I'm a PhD candidate at Karlstad University in Sweden and affiliated PhD with the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Joining me today is Andreas Mattsson, a lecturer and program director at the School of Journalism at the Department of Communication and Media at Lund University. He's also a PhD student at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki and an affiliated researcher at the Swedish South Asian Studies Network at Lund University. He has conducted research and has been teaching about journalism, practice and digital technology from a comparative international perspective. His latest research focuses on journalism in Vietnam and the impact of some Swedish media aid projects. And this will also be the focus of our discussion today. Andreas, thank you so much for being here today.

Andreas Mattsson [00:01:11]

Thank you very much for having me here.

Joanne Kuai [00:01:13]

To begin with. Can you tell us a little bit of your background? What has led you to your current research interests? I've been working as a journalist, traveling back and forth to Vietnam for many years. I think my first journalistic field trip to Vietnam was in 2006. A few years later, I joined Lund University as a lecturer or adjunct, as we say in Swedish, to teach at the School of Journalism. Over the years, I have managed to somehow both do journalistic work and teach journalism at the same time. When, in relation to Vietnam, I have over the years been able to nourish a network among practitioners. In Nam, I have had the opportunity to visit several newsrooms over the years and revisit newsrooms, taken part of journalists' stories and taking part of different Vietnamese journalists experience of conducting and working as journalists in Vietnam and their experiences and their stories and their emotional feelings about this vibrant profession was some kind of a starting point for me when I started to think about actually conducting my own academic research, one thing led to another. I started to talk with colleagues both here and there and in different academic contexts about what I was thinking. That took me to a doctoral plan that I managed to work on at, as you said in the introduction at University of Helsinki, together with my supervisor, Carl Gustav Linden. And I find the development of journalism in Vietnam very fascinating. On one side, you have repressive media laws, and you have a one party state. We have to bear in mind that Vietnam has since reunification between South and North in 1976, been under the governance of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Many things have happened since then. The societal development is very rapid in many ways. Yet journalism is still a topic that in some ways could be seen as sensitive. On the other hand, journalism in Vietnam has also over the years been booming because of the ongoing and very quick digitalization, the transition to new platforms and et cetera.

Andreas Mattsson [00:03:24]

ET cetera. So that was somehow the backdrop for me when I formalized my interests in conducting academic research in Vietnam. I should also mention that when I've been visiting newsrooms and when I have met journalists around in Vietnam, the media aid projects from Sweden have been a reoccurring topic. The outcomes of the Swedish media aid projects starting in early 1990s have made its footprints in many, many newsrooms in Vietnam. Of course, that also was something that I wanted to bring up in my doctoral plan and also in my project plan for my PhD project, because since the pandemic happened at the same time as I joined the doctoral program Journeys and Trips from Sweden to Vietnam became very difficult to manage. I started to look into these media aid projects and what were they all about and what did they actually do? And so on. And one thing led to another. And here I am today, and I'm obviously investigating and examining media aid from Sweden to Vietnam as maybe the main part of my doctoral studies.

Joanne Kuai [00:04:32]

And can you tell us what is this all about? Why were Sweden in Vietnam giving them the media aid and how did it begin? Oh, it's a long story. It's interesting as well. We have to go back in time a little bit. We have to look at what Vietnam was in the 1980s and of course, also what Sweden was in the 1980s. As I said in the beginning, Vietnam was reunited in 1976, the Vietnam War. And in the mid-1980s, the Communist Party of Vietnam implemented renovation reforms under the name doi moi. This renovation reforms, as they call it, one can also call it economic and political reforms also, of course, included journalism, but it's mainly mostly famous or well known for the the foundation of the economic transition late in the 1990s led up to very, very fast, rapid economic growth. Journalism was also included here. Doi Moi also included reforms and ideas about how to professionalize journalism and professionalize the profession of journalists. Historically, Vietnam and the Vietnamese journalism has been a melting pot of influences from various parts of the world. Vietnam was under French colonial rule for many decades. We have the influences from the Soviet Union. We have the influences of the actual war in itself. In the 1980s, being a journalist in Vietnam was still widely known as someone who politically pointed to a position of being a journalist. In short, one can say that newspapers and TV informed about what the members of the government and the parliament have been up to. The professionalization that started in the end of the 1980s, at the beginning of 1990s was also that kind of journalism where the Swedish media started to enter. So the Swedish media aid projects that I am exploring and what I'm looking at are mainly two. They were both financed by Sida, the Swedish Agency for International Development, one of the projects that lasted from 1993 until 2003 was a local radio project that was carried out by the Swedish public service broadcaster Swedish Radio.

Andreas Mattsson [00:06:50]

The other one was named Further Training of Journalists and was carried out by Foggia Media Institute in Sweden, which is nowadays is a part of Linnaeus University. We look at the ideology that was behind this. One should also be aware of that. When these all formed and shaped, Vietnam was not just a random country in the developing world for Sida or nor for the Swedish government. At the time, Sweden and Vietnam initiated or established diplomatic relations. Very early on, Sweden was the first Western country who opened an embassy in Hanoi in Vietnam already during the war. In the end of the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, the Swedish social democratic government signed a deal with the North Vietnamese government to build a paper factory outside of Hanoi in the north of Vietnam. The paper factory that was named Bai Bang. From a Swedish point of view, it was said, and it's also said in different documents already in the 1980s that all these years of diplomatic relations and collaborations also in the developing sector had also made it possible for the Swedish government to also address political sensitive topics to their Vietnamese counterparts. The aim of both these projects, the Media Aid project, was actually to democratize and modernize journalism in Vietnam. That's a very short definition of the project's aims.

Joanne Kuai [00:08:19]

So, I understand that you conducted interview with the Swedish trainers. What were their experiences? Oh, there were many. And I should also add that besides conducting interviews, I've also gone through a documentation, evaluations, field diaries, field notes, course evaluations from both SIDA, the contractors and the Vietnamese government. As part of this research project. The trainers’ experiences are, of course, diverse. And one thing that I think is striking, at least to me, as the one who have interviewed them, is that their memories and their experiences from Vietnam and from the time that they spent in Vietnam is for many of them, it's an emotional experience. Several of them have said it's a life changing experience. It's a career changing experience to meet colleagues from another media system and to work together for something else and to improve quality of the newspapers, to improve quality of the news shows in TV or radio, to install certain technological equipment, to spend time together and to visit newsrooms that for the Swedish trainers, looked completely different than what they used to. The Swedish trainers were all experienced journalists in Sweden. They were not teachers or lecturers from universities. They were recruited from well-known newsrooms across Sweden, including, of course, the public service companies, Swedish television and Swedish radio. For the radio project. The idea was to modernize and equip local radio stations across Vietnam using methods and technological experiences from Sweden, because Swedish radio at the time underwent development where they also tried to. Build up more and more local radio stations in Sweden We are very familiar with the P4 network where each province should have its own provincial radio station. And the idea was to do the same in Vietnam with the help of the national broadcaster. Voice of Vietnam. What the local radio project did under a decade was to facilitate radio stations with up to date technology and to educate and train the staff in order to be able to use it.

Andreas Mattsson [00:10:36]

But besides that technological transfer, the idea was also to influence the radio stations with ideas on how one could increase certain journalistic methods into their daily productions. And one identified method that was prioritized, I would say, was what we call interviewing, live interviewing. The idea from the Swedish trainers was that if we assist our Vietnamese colleagues in order to do live interviewing, by doing so, we also increase the amount of Democratic working methods into journalistic production by being able to work as mobile reporters, ask questions to the woman or man on the street and so on. There was also an idea that by implementing a dial in radio at the local radio stations across Vietnam, the contact surfaces between the radio station and its audience would increase and the opportunities and the possibilities for the citizens to actually speak out, to share an opinion, share expressions or emotions would benefit the democratic conversation. In Vietnam. The interviews and live elements of radio production was prioritized by by the radio project.

Joanne Kuai [00:11:57]

How are the projects received by the Vietnamese journalists, by the Vietnamese newsrooms? I think this was for many of the Vietnamese journalists that was part of this. This was the first time they met colleagues from another country. And for that reason, it was also very well received and it was something completely new. And it was something that also demonstrated examples of how one can conduct journalism in a completely different way than they might were used to. One should bear in mind that Sweden and Vietnam represent two very contrasting media systems. If we look into the comparative media system theory by Helene and Mancini's, we can identify Sweden as democratic corporatist country up in one part of the media system map. Whereas in Vietnam, if we look into the media law from 1989 latest revised in 2016 and I read it out now in the English translation, the press in Vietnam has the following tasks and powers to provide truthful information about domestic and world affairs in line with the interest of the country and people, and 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, achievements of the country and the world according to the guiding principles and purposes of press agencies. So by reading out the media law, we can kind of very quickly see that these two media systems are in, in some ways very far away from each other. Then when we when the media products that was so tailored and aim to bring ideology from one of the media systems, the Sweden to the other Vietnam. Of course, there were tensions, there were confusion, and of course there were also negotiations about practices. How can one do this? Is it possible to even do, as the trainer from Sweden proposes in these countries? And of course, when you ask about how it was received, I think by looking into the documents and talking to some of the former participants in Vietnam, I find that there were tensions and sometimes also confusions in relation to the translations.

Andreas Mattsson [00:14:15]

Bear in mind that the project language was English, not Swedish nor Vietnamese. In the 1990s, most of the participants, the Vietnamese participants in the in the training activities, they didn't speak English. So the project also totally relied on interpreters. The interpretation, the translations of certain words, certain concepts is of course also of interest. And that's something that we can talk more about later. But that's something that I am paying my scholarly attention to right now, trying to to examine in what ways the language, proficiency and role of the interpreters actually made a difference in this carry out of the media projects.

Joanne Kuai [00:14:56]

As you mentioned, the journalism ideology in these two countries is quite different. And they were tensions when the Swedish media project were in Vietnam. Can you elaborate on this type of tensions and how would the transfer of knowledge happen, like within all these tensions? And what was journalism culture in Vietnam before? And have they actually changed afterwards, or at least at this specific newsrooms where the projects were present? I will break down your question in several possible in my attempt of trying to elaborate on this. First of all, the Swedish trainers’ strategy by using their own words was to demonstrate how journalism was conducted in Sweden and then allow it for the Vietnamese participants to interpret that into their circumstance, into their media contexts, into their newsrooms. But they were doing it in a way where they try to push the boundaries for what was possible and what was not possible or what was seen as possible and what was seen as not possible. My examination shows that the technological transfer was much easier to do than actually transfer ideas of media ethics or newsroom management or how to cover certain stories. Because the technological transfer when kind of smooth. And that also actually brings me to one of your other questions. I believe one of the outcomes or several of the outcomes can be related or can be traced to the technological transfer because, yes, there is live shows. They managed to establish live shows in Radio Voice of Vietnam. Yes, they did manage to establish dial-in radio where people could phone in. And if we look into the other projects, the further training of journalists, the newspaper layout in many of the newspapers can bring up several of the or at least two of the biggest daily newspapers in Ho chi Minh City in the South, Deutsche and Tanyan newspaper. They managed to, through the project, develop new newspaper layout for their print newspaper. So several of these technological transfers actually made an outcome for the Vietnamese media audience to take part. Behind the scenes and from my interviews with the Swedish former trainers, there were also experiences of joining the Vietnamese participants in the field and in doing the field work. And during their field trips around in Vietnam, they encountered things that they were never they never witnessed or they never, never experienced.

Andreas Mattsson [00:17:58]

In Sweden, they encountered, for instance, corruption, paid journalism, or as some scholars would call brown envelope journalism. They experienced what we also can call Paycheck journalism, Both brown envelope journalism and checkbook journalism is, of course, related to the mistrust or or the whole media ethical conduct of media ethics that was completely new to the Swedish trainers. They have never experienced something similar before, many of them. And for them it was also very emotional experience, which they have shared with me in several of the interviews that they had no idea of that this could happen or how they should handle the different situations. There is this Swedish saying, which they also mentioned during their training activities, that the journalists should keep an arm's length distance to the power of the society, to the political power. And of course, that is very difficult in a in a media system or could be a problem problematize in a media system where one of the main tasks of the press is to propagandize information that comes from the party.

Joanne Kuai [00:19:15]

So are you aware if there's any more Swedish media projects going to be carried out in Vietnam? And also, out of curiosity, is there any other Swedish media projects in any other country?

Andreas Mattsson [00:19:29]

So, the scope of my study is basically look at the years 1993 until 2007. And those years I selected because that was somehow the start of many years of international media aid and media development from Swedish SIDA. They have started already in the 1980s with smaller projects that were foreign journalists, and journalists from the developing world was invited to Sweden. But this was the first time Sweden in a larger scale, did media training abroad in another country, and the presence in Vietnam remained until 2015, when SIDA closed its office in Hanoi? Nowadays, and after 2015 and since these years, that is the scope of my study. Sweden and SIDA has carried out media development and media aid in many other countries. I know the learnings from Vietnam and the experiences from Vietnam has been useful in projects in other parts of Asia such as Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. And nowadays I know that Podio is still active in many countries. They do have an office in, still have an office in Vietnam and they have been working on media training and they are working on media training in different African countries at the moment. From my side as a researcher, I find the years in Vietnam 1993 until 2007. It's very interesting because the experiences and the learnings from those years somehow have impacted the way that the Swedish media has been designed afterwards.

Joanne Kuai [00:21:08]

And do you think these types of media aid projects are sustainable and should be encouraged? What role does it actually play?

Andreas Mattsson [00:21:18]

I think it can be very important. I think there are potentials, as I said, by allowing journalists and practitioners from different parts of a country or of the world to meet and share experiences. But I do think that one learning from Vietnam that I know has made an impact on later media aids project is the importance of also taking into account the local context, the local culture, the local journalism ideology. When designing these projects, there are other scholars who have studied this in other countries that has also come up to the same conclusion or to the same result that the local context of the individual journalists is important to take into account when addressing working methods, when addressing different ways of conducting journalism, or when assessing media ethics into different in different professional contexts. And I think that while the projects were ongoing in Vietnam, the organizations behind. Swedish radio and Fogo learned a lot of things through their participants and through their local colleagues, the interpreters and the Vietnamese Ko trainers that they could make use of when they redesigned and further develop their courses and workshops and the structure of the training.

Joanne Kuai [00:22:53]

You mentioned a little bit, but what is the next step in your research project and where are some things that you're working on right now or if there's any future research project in the pipeline? So right now, at the moment, I am, as I mentioned earlier, I'm looking into the role of the language knowledge here, the language skills. It said early on in the project documentation that the language barrier between Sweden and Vietnam should not be a hinder for future development of media aid in Vietnam. So, for that reason, and also because of what has been mentioned in the project evaluations and in the interviews with the former trainers, I am curious and I am interested in actually trying to understand a little bit more about what role do the language actually the languages, because we should mention them in plural. It's Swedish, it's English and Vietnamese. What role did they play in the outcome of this training activities? What role did the interpreter actually make here? The role of language and interpreters and the translation or concepts of journalism. I believe also that is of interest to study in a within the field of journalism education, because we see also more and more globalized journalism education, where practitioners, students, professional journalists study in another country than they work in. And for that reason, I find it interesting also to pay a scholarly attention in how language proficiency actually plays a crucial role in journalism, training and journalism education. Because if we look into the case of Vietnam, once again, more and more Vietnamese students study abroad. And that also includes journalism and media students. And in Vietnam, we can also see how foreign universities, to a larger extent, offer media education on site in Vietnam. So then of course, the question that I am interested in and of course also to understand a little bit on how does this impact the media climate and the role of journalism in a in a given society. Let it be the case of Vietnam. And besides this, I hope that the rest of my PhD journey goes smooth.

Andreas Mattsson [00:25:22]

I think that the media landscape of Vietnam is of interest, and I think it should be studied much more. And I think it's interesting also to know more about the patterns and the decision making that is going on inside that media landscape and their digitalization legislation and the development of different professions could be and should be of scholarly interest to study, of course.

Joanne Kuai [00:25:51]

Thank you very much for joining us and I do wish you the best with your future journeys. Thank you to. Thank you very much. And our listeners, you can connect with Andres on Twitter at Andreas Mattson and with me at Joanne Kuai. The links will be shared in the show note. Thank you for listening to the Nordic Asia podcast showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia.

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