Throughout his whole revolutionary cause, Ho Chi Minh not only acted as an eminent leader and a great man of culture of Vietnam, but also was a great journalist of exemplary style for journalists to study and follow.

President Ho Chi Minh and journalists (file photo)

1. Follow his true-to-life journalism full of combativeness

Honesty is a characteristic and professional moral standard of a journalist, and truthfulness is power of press. Highlighting these criteria, in his articles, from the first article “The petition of the people of Annam” under the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc on the L’Humanite newspaper (French), June 18^th 1919, to the last one “Improving responsibilities for taking care of and educating children and adolescents” on Nhan Dan (People) newspaper, June 1^st 1969, he selected and carefully analyzed statistics, information and details to reflect realities. Another example of being truthful in his journalism was that he mentioned not only good things and achievements but also bad things and failures for individuals and collectives to clearly realize and then strive for better. He used to criticize one-sided speech and hype that rarely reflected those individuals and collectives’ weaknesses. He demanded that “Writing about good things only and hiding bad ones are not good. Criticizing should be correct. Mentioning good things should be moderate. This requires honesty. Our soldiers and people have full of good things to write about, it is not necessary to invent stories”. However, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, which means that a journalist must clearly answer the questions in his/her article: “where/ when/ how did things happen?”. Besides, combativeness and orientation-ness were the features of Ho Chi Minh’s journalistic style. He thought that journalistic activities bear the nature of political ones, press is a tool to fight for revolution, thus a journalist must apparently express his/her support for or criticism of an issue that he/she is writing about. Writing an article without including individual elements is a struggle. Therefore, no matter how short Ho Chi Minh’s articles were, they were always a sharp tool to attack the enemy and an effective means to “encourage” the masses and draw support from people around the world.

2. Study the way to identify the correct object and aim of an article

Ho Chi Minh, for many times, shared his journalistic experience with journalists. He said “To be better at writing, you need to learn and practise more. In my experience, before you write an article, question yourself: For whom will you write? For what will you write? How will you write to make your article short, easy to read and understand? After finishing, it is better to have friends and colleagues to review and correct it”. Those short words are a treasure of his journalistic operation experience. Studying his style, journalists in their work should abide by their newspaper’s principles, aims, thoroughly understand their readers’ educational background and aspirations, and always question themselves that “For whom will we write? To whom will we say?”. Although the concrete subjects of articles are different, they are always the masses; therefore, mass-ness should be guaranteed by press. By doing this, journalists would identify the correct content and form as well as the best way to illustrate their ideas conforming to their way of life, educational background, cultural tradition as well as their own demand and aspirations. To successfully fulfil their work, journalist must clearly identify the aims of their writing. In his answer to the question “For what will we write?”, Ho Chi Minh said “For communication, explanation, promotion, criticism. For serving the masses”. Therefore, press must closely attach to the country’s political, economical and social matters.

3. Study his short, simple, and comprehensible style

In his articles, Ho Chi Minh always used a short, concise, really exemplary style of an Asian scholar. However, his short writings were all “well-organized, clear from the beginning to the end with practical contents”. When in France, in order to condemn colonialism and find the way to liberate the nation, he wrote a huge amount of works of many genres mainly aiming at French people with good educational background, especially intellectuals, who were able to make an impact on French and global opinion, using the style of an excellent polemicist. To encourage the people in the struggle against French colonists, when their educational background was generally low, Ho Chi Minh wrote many short and practical works that were easy to read, understand, and be propagated (sometimes he used poetry, cartoons). To make an announcement of national independence to the whole people and the world, he wrote the Declaration of Independence using strongly eloquent and clear words with a vision of the times, which was convincing, touched people’s heart, deserving to be a “legend”.

To do this, journalists should follow his instructions, which were: it is necessary to have a good command of the content and a clear outline, put events and figures in a scientific and close order, and keep the article short, which was persistently practiced by Ho Chi Minh for all his life. He also recommended journalists “to write articles in simple, understandable, and practical way so that each compatriot and soldier could read, understand, remember, and follow them”. Journalists “should not play with words; not to use the ones while not well understanding them. It is better to use Vietnamese”. Ho Chi Minh  criticized the writing habit with sophistication and causing confuse to the readers, and also the abuse of foreign languages”. He suggested journalists “learn the masses’ expression”. Ho Chi Minh wrote that: The saying “to cast pearls before swine” is used to tease the listener. However, communicators who write and say in a confusing way are just “swine”. His message means a lot to journalists, especially in the current context of people’s increasingly better educational background, international integration’s multidimensional impact, and market economy, which requires each press work to be exemplary in all aspects, preserve, and promote the nation’s identity and cultural tradition.

Last but not least, we should learn from Ho Chi Minh his seriousness and caution when he completed his writing. He recommended us “What should we do after finishing our writing? We must read it again and again. Find out redundant parts, sentences and words and remove them. Is reading it for 4 or 5 times enough? It is not enough. Our own reading and correction are not enough. We must ask a number of comrades from walks of life to read it. They will find out details and words that are difficult to understand so that we can correct them”. Being careless about writing could have a negative impact on social life, being detrimental to national interests. Therefore, journalists should always be responsible for and cautious about checking their writings before posting.

Ho Chi Minh’s short, concise, true-to-life, simple journalism full of combativeness and responsibility resulted from his hard training for the sake of revolutionary cause and people’s happiness. His instructions on press specialization were the crystallization of his half-century journalistic and life experience. Which are extremely valuable for journalists to study and follow.

PhD. Tran Thi Minh Tuyet

Academy of Journalism and Communication