ISLAMABAD — To aware journalists about election laws and improving their ability to focus on party manifestos rather than personalities, a private organisation, Intermedia, in collaboration with ‘The Asia Foundation’, organised a daylong media orientation workshop on “Election Reporting for Journalists” here on Tuesday.
Bashir Ahmad Tahir, Amir Ahmed Butt and Humera Sharif gave presentations on role of elections in democratic societies, elections and investigative journalism and preparing for elections and journalists role in highlighting election issues, process, voting and candidature.
Addressing on the occasion Programme Coordinator Bashir Ahmad Tahir said that the media coverage of election issues in Pakistan was usually limited to reporting of the post-election pledges by the politicians and election results.
He observed that focus on how people were affected by an existing or changed law was even rare.
The media has a vital role to inform masses, there must be practical component of journalism in our educational institutions and media people must have facility of training he said.
Giving brief presentation about political reporting, Amir Ejaz, Programme Manager of Promoting Peace and Development Through Citizenship (CPDI) said, “The journalists can also monitor elections, report in its true perspective
The journalists could also discuss social issues like barbarism, selling of purchasing of votes, as well as social pressures, he said.
Representative Humaira Sharif gives detail description about elections and investigative reporting and role of media in raising awareness in bringing people out to vote.
She said that the journalists must highlight election issues as well as election laws and regulations and media ethics to educate masses to help them participate in election processes with more informed positions
Electronic and print media journalists also participated in group discussions as well as question and answer session to clarify different technical issues and shared their election reporting experiences in the past.
Stressing on focusing on different issues during elections, they emphasised on the media role in bringing masses as well as journalists out to vote on January 8,the polling day and highlighting the role of elections in democratic societies, the facilitators explained different social and economic bars in contesting the elections.
Explaining different technicalities in understanding election processing up to polling booths level, participants also stressed that investigative journalists should go out and meet all political parties workers; get information about local issues and discover wrong doings Giving concluding remarks, Intermedia Training co-ordinator, Naveed Asghar said the Intermedia conducted almost 23 trainings of print, radio and TV journalists in election reporting to improve coverage and public knowledge on election issues, focusing on improving journalists understanding of election laws.
Source: The Nation
Date:12/19/2007
