The two-day conference on ‘Extreme Reporting: Conflict and Peace in the Digital Age’ was recently held at the Centre of Excellence in Journalism at the Institute of Business Administration....
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The two-day conference on ‘Extreme Reporting: Conflict and Peace in the Digital Age’ was recently held at the Centre of Excellence in Journalism at the Institute of Business Administration.
“You are never prepared enough to be in a conflict zone, regardless of how well you know the region or how much you’ve studied or learnt over the years,” said WIONews bureau chief Anas Malick in the panel discussing the dangers of reporting from a conflict zone.
CNN Producer Sophia Saifi shared the safety and security protocols that the CNN had in place for its teams. “There are many stories I want to do but due to security concerns [by CNN] I am not able to do them. But CNN is also great. They have check ins, there are hostile environment training – which are horrible but they are important especially in a digital age,” she said.
“We are all working in conflict zones and there is temptation [to cover something dangerous] but there is a need to check in and look after your team,” she added.
For Geo’s Benazir Shah while journalism is important and needed – the quality of what you read in the newspapers had gone down. “The problem with consuming news on social media is that there will always be doubt – is this accurate and authentic? I get a lot of messages from my friends who will send me a link and ask if this is fake. There is also a misconception between a journalist and reporter. A reporter provides information and a journalist will provide it in context. There are a lot of layers in a media organisation which get eliminated in social media,” she added.