‘Mainstream media’s role during disasters crucial due to disinformation on social media’

Urging journalists working in the area of health and disaster reporting to highlight the sufferings of poor people, besides presenting solutions to their problems, Sindh’s Parliamentary Secretary on Health Qasim Siraj Soomro said Thursday unauthentic and unverified information on social media was creating hopelessness and disappointment among the masses, especially those affected by recent floods and natural disasters.

“Unprecedented rains, floods and their aftermath were out of the control that caused colossal damage to the province and its people. Unfortunately, unverified information or disinformation is misguiding people and spreading hopelessness and despair among them. In these circumstances, it is responsibility of the mainstream media to highlight people’s sufferings and also present their solutions,” he said in his address a national training workshop for journalists.

He was speaking at the augural ceremony of a one-day national training workshop entitled “Building Capacity of Health Journalists on Reporting Disasters Triggered by Natural Hazards and Human Activities”, held at the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi.

The workshop was also addressed by Prof Dr Mohammad Wasay, the secretary of the PAS Karachi chapter, Dr Hideyuki Shiroshita, the founding president of the Avoidable Deaths Network, Prof Dr Nibedita S. Ray Bennett, associate professor in risk management, University of Leicester, UK, Waqar Bhatti, special correspondent health, The News International, Dr Aditya Ghosh of University of Leicester, Dr Nimra Iqbal of Avoidable Deaths Network (AND), Julian Coetzee (AND), and Dr Humaira Zafar, Prof Dr M. Iqbal Choudhary, director of the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, and the COMSTECH coordinator-general.

The national workshop was jointly organised by the ICCBS, the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, the Avoidable Deaths Network, and Sindh Innovation Research Educational Network. The parliamentary secretary said that fake information required to be replaced with research-based news stories by qualified journalists.

Soomro said that although the floods and its aftermath were unprecedented, the provincial government had made its all possible efforts to provide relief to the affected people in the province. He pointed out that journalists, especially health reporters, needed proper training to write about natural disasters and health-related issues. He appreciated the ICCBS administration for organising such a useful training session for health reporters. He offered the organisers all government support for holding more training events like this.

Prof Mohammad Wasay underlined the importance of a positive collaboration between the academia and Pakistani media, and said that there was a dire need to apply a filter to check the spread of fake news on social media. In the training session, he described statistics regarding the prevalence of diseases in Pakistan. He said, “An estimated annual incidence of stroke in Pakistan is 250 per 100,000, translating to 350,000 new cases every year (1,000 every day).”

Waqar Bhatti said the journalists’ community was in a state of demoralisation, which required support and encouragement at the government level. He said that although Pakistan was one of the countries most affected by climate change, media outlets deputed junior reporters to cover events pertaining to natural disasters.

Nimra Choudhary said, “Health journalism is a highly technical branch of mass communication that requires not only writing skills but also fundamental understanding of various health issues, complex reasons behind them, and their socio-economic impact.”

Murtaz Noor highlighted the important role of health journalists and said media outlets were required to have health reporters even at the district level. In the training session, Prof Nibedita S. Ray Bennett said that disasters deaths were avoidable through preventative measures. Over the past decades, extreme weather events and climate disasters have led to more than 410,000 direct disaster deaths. Dr Hideyuki Shiroshita highlighted the importance of disaster education.