close
Tuesday March 19, 2024

Seminar on ‘Challenges to Media’ held at KPC

KARACHI: Various challenges to media were discussed on Saturday at a seminar organized by students of Karachi University’s Mass Communication department here at the Karachi Press Club.

In the words of Owais Aslam Ali, Secretary General of the Pakistan Press Foundation, attacks on journalists in Pakistan have increased manifold over the past ten years and the government has barely taken action

By OTHERS
November 28, 2015
KARACHI: Various challenges to media were discussed on Saturday at a seminar organized by students of Karachi University’s Mass Communication department here at the Karachi Press Club.

In the words of Owais Aslam Ali, Secretary General of the Pakistan Press Foundation, attacks on journalists in Pakistan have increased manifold over the past ten years and the government has barely taken action in such cases. “In 97 per cent of the cases, the attackers go scot-free,” lamented Ali, who added that the coming years for journalists remain unpredictable.

According to Ali, there was a time when journalists hardly faced any security challenges but this peaceful time changed suddenly after 2002. He quoted the recent example of the attack on a DSNG belonging to Dawn News and said that incidents of violence against journalists are on the rise.

On the issue of media ethics, Abdul Hasanat, a former city editor of Dawn and current editorial consultant with Express Tribune said that the lack of media ethics amongst journalists had more to do with internal shortcomings of media houses and less with external factors.

Hasanat was critical of ethics followed by the broadcast media and said that the media lacked basic ethics owing to lack of training. He also lamented the fact that media did not respect the privacy of public individuals with the result that the divorce of politician Imran Khan remained the topic of discussion on the media for a week.

Former department chairperson Tahir Masood in his remarks held media owners responsible for the lack of professional practice in the field. He said various attempts had been made to involve the media barons in helping with journalist training but this had proved futile. “The media house owners are more to blame for the sliding standards of journalism in Pakistan,” he noted.

In his remarks, Karachi Press Club secretary A.H. Khanzada was hopeful that things in the media would improve. “The first step to improvement is that students of mass communication have held a seminar to discuss the challenges to journalists,” he said.