JOURNALISTIC KNOWLEDGE OF PEACE

The special status of the cognitive activity of a journalist

Forms and course of the cognitive process

Information Orientation

Methods of cognitive activity

Result of the cognitive stage

Man is given an amazing ability to multiply the diversity of the world. He does not simply interact with the environment in which he lives, like, say, a tree, a beast, or a bird. He is able to create new realities, mediating such interaction and forming in the aggregate culture - “an artificial sphere of existence and self-realization created by people, a source of regulation of social interaction and behavior” [1]. These realities can be material values ​​and are characterized by material-energetic nature (tools, buildings, lighting devices, things, etc.), they can be spiritual values ​​and are characterized by the nature of information (works of science, literature, art, or other material using a specific sign-symbolic system). But in any case, they are started by the information and control communications of a person and his environment, which allow receiving and keeping, accumulating, processing informational signals of the environment, turning them into an information product , either in order to translate it into reality of the real world, or to include the spiritual communications of the society in the network.

Information product - a phenomenon of the highest degree interesting. Already in its original form, it is at the same time a result of the development of reality, since it accumulates in itself its informational signals perceived by man and the result of creativity, because it represents the sign-symbolic “transformation” of these informational signals into something new - stable, capable of more or less long exist in time and space, revealing its informational essence whenever a communicative situation arises. Moreover: it can be a kind of recombination of information signals, their synthesis with information “internal”, acting as an image of what is not there in reality and what is yet to be created. If knowledge is “the process of establishing specially grounded and symbolized relations with the environment, which characterizes the development of this environment at the level of sustainable representations” [2], and creativity is “an activity that generates something qualitatively new, never before existing and distinguished by originality, originality and socially historical uniqueness ”[3], the information product is a living embodiment of the inseparable bonds of knowledge and creativity.

Each individual person cognizes an objective reality, creating her image in his inner world, directly and indirectly, through his own contact with her and through information products created by other people acting as subjects of different types of creative activity. These types of creativity are brought to life by diverse social needs and exist in two forms: as an amateur activity and as a professional activity. The first is a voluntary case of those who wish, the second is the institutionally organized discharge of responsibilities for the production of certain information products in society by the relevant professional groups.

Journalists are one such professional group. Their primary concern is to create information products of operational use, designed for the operational knowledge of changes in reality. “Journalism acts in history both as a social institution and as a social activity, mediating with the help of actual information the connection of individuals with the totality of new changes in society, with the dynamics of the surrounding world. It coordinates the pace of social life with the rhythms of individual existence and, ensuring their parallelism, synchronization and a certain integration, performs various functions of the orientation of individuals in society ”[4]. The duty of the press, advocating for the universal values ​​of humanism, ensures that “the public has enough material to enable it to form an accurate and coherent view of the world,” so that it has access to the media for free expression of opinions [5].

However, there are journalists in conditions in which a high degree of reliability of such an orientation is difficult to achieve. This is explained primarily by the fact that “the fact of the transcendence of the world in relation to individual individuals constituting the audience of the media objectively contains in itself the possibility of abusing the journalistic monopoly of daily operational communication of information on the reality beyond these individuals” [6]. But even if we do not take into account this “possibility of abuse”, which manifests itself as deliberate manipulation of people's minds, there are enough reasons that can affect the degree of truth of operational knowledge created by journalism. Among them are the general laws of cognition, by virtue of which not a single fragment of reality the human psyche can reflect in full, and the creative nature of consciousness capable of “replacing” any “cut off” essential connection with an inessential, unimportant, apparent or perceived connection, and a special the nature of the circumstances in which the journalist works.

The social consequences of the inadequacy of the real world of the symbolic-symbolic reality that journalism creates are quite tangible. There are many examples of this. Let us recall at least this: the media have long and amicably sang the hymn to the “peaceful atom”, involuntarily lulling the vigilance of humanity, and without that imprudently invading the mysteries of life. Chernobyl had to pay for it ...

Awareness of this kind of responsibility is not quick. This is also a moment of knowledge - of itself, of its place in the world, of the means that can save from such misfortunes. The results of self-knowledge in journalism at the present stage already provide an opportunity to conclude: one of the ways leading to an increase in the reliability of press information is associated with the personality of the journalist, with the improvement of his own abilities to learn the world in the process of creative activity.