ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said on Thursday that the government was taking initiatives for capacity building of the media professionals.
In this regard, she said, it would establish a media university in Islamabad with the help of China in near future.
Speaking as chief guest at a seminar on `ethics in disaster reporting' at International Islamic University (IIU) here, she said that due to mushroom growth of media in the country during past few years, no proper arrangement could be made of capacity building of media professionals.
The role of electronic media has been positive overall but it is a fact that it is still in its evolutionary process and will improve with passage of time, she added.
About disaster reporting, she said that creation of sensation on the occasion of disasters could create a new crisis, so it was responsibility of media to report such incidents very carefully. she said the disaster reporting was a specialized job and all over the world specially trained journalists were sent to such assignments as a single wrong information could cause immense damage.
She appreciated the media efforts in reporting the disasters during past few years and expressed the hope that it would learn from its past mistakes and improve its performance.
The minister said that the government wanted to work for capacity building of the future media persons, and proposed that the IIU students should be involved in the process.
She offered that her ministry would send selected students of the university to both private and state media offices on internship.
She also said that she wOULD direct the officials of Press Information Department to train select students from the IIU and then they should play the role of master trainers in educating their fellow university students.
The minister said that handing of media mike to an untrained person could be dangerous as he or she does not know the ethics of the profession. She proposed that there should be a norm that every person who joins journalism should have masters degrees in mass media.
She said that the government will not impose any code of ethics on the media, rather it will hope that the media will follow the code of ethics approved by all stakeholders including the organizations representing the media,civil society etc.
The minister regretted that some media persons give twist to events and try to dictate to national institutions.
Dr.Firdous said that India also passed through this phase but finally sober elements in the media there came forward and took responsibility of adopting a code of conduct for themselves. She said that Pakistani electronic media will also learn and adopt some code for itself in future.
Chairman NDMA Dr. Zafar Iqbal Qadir,President IIU Dr. Mumtaz Ahmed,its Rector Fateh Muhammad Malik and senior journalists Shafqat Muneer,Mateen Hyder and Ahmed Barkat,President IIU also spoke on the occasion.
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