MEDIA AS A CAREER

What drives me is I love my profession. I love to do it. 
-- ROBERT DUVALL

By Alex P. Vidal 

As resource speaker in the seminar with a theme, "Media as a career," conducted by the St. Paul University's College of Mass Communication 16 years ago, a participant asked me to define what is a profession.
"Can a person who has not taken a board examination call his occupation a profession?" she volunteered.
I began by explaining that the common usage of the word "professional" can be applied to anyone who shows tested competence in performing a given task.
The term "profession" used to be restricted to fields like teaching, military, medicine, law, and the ministry in the past. The distinction between a profession and an ordinary occupation was put forward when careers in advertising, journalism, real estate, among others were called "professions."

SYNONYM 

Institute for Philosophical Research director, Dr. Mortimer Adler explained that the word "professional" in this sense is merely a synonym for "skilled" although in the original and deeper meaning of the term, a professional man is one who does skilled work to achieve a useful social goal.
Although there is no board examination in media profession, many practitioners have proven they have skills and competence to perform their job -- skills in writing, gathering news, interviews and editing, skills in broadcasting, skills in internet technology, skills in advertisement, a vital component in media industry.
Way back in 1991 during our stint in the Graciano Lopez-Jaena Community Journalism Fellowship, Dean Georgina Encanto of the University of the Philippines-Diliman College of Mass Communication (UP CMC) and Prof. Luis V. Teodoro exhorted media practitioners who have no bachelors degree to formalize their education in journalism as the state's premier institution was planning to introduce a special program to prepare the College for the 21st century.

COURSES

The A.B. Communication program was divided into four distinct courses during Teodoro's term as UP CMC dean from 1994 to 2000 where he conceptualized the new Mass Media Center in late 1996. The Commission on Higher Education named the Journalism and Communication Research departments as its Centers of Excellence in the study of communication in 1998.
Professional activities are distinguished from other forms of work not only by the goals they serve but also by the way in which professional men are related to their work, stresses the famous author.
In commerce, industry, or business, one man often works for another. But in an army engaged in war, for example, the private does not work for the captain, or the captain for the general. Instead. Adler adds, all work together for victory. Similarly, in a hospital, the nurse and the laboratory technician do not work for the surgeon. All work together for the health of the patient.

CODE OF ETHICS

Members of a profession usually subscribe to a code of ethics which regulates how their work is to be done. Adler says this code of conduct sets the standard by which its members are judged. It is, for example, more than common-sense courtesy which requires a physician not to discuss treatment of his patient with others.
Though professional men, like other men, Adler points out, usually have to earn their living, the value of their work is not measured by the money they earn. The compensation that comes to them is incidental to the performance of their professional services.
"That is why their compensation is usually referred to as a 'fee' or an 'honorarium,' rather than as 'wages' or a 'salary.' That is also why doctors and lawyers often take cases free of charge," Adler explains.
The essential characteristic of a profession is the dedication of its members to the service they perform.