1st Workshop:
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Media-judiciary relations discussed on day 2 of BIFD-NED workshop
QUETTA, 2 April 2010: Tools and techniques to cover issues pertaining to reporting in the print and electronic media on democracy and human rights was discussed for the second day in a three-day long training program held by Balochistan Institute for Future Development (BIFD) with the collaboration of National Endowment for Democracy at Quetta Press Club.
It is the first time in the history of Balochistan that a training workshop has been held for journalists from remote parts of the province in order to acquaint them with modern tools and techniques, such as blogs and social networks, to reach a wider range of audience in the conflict-stricken province to report on democracy and human rights.
Journalists belonging to various print and electronic media outlets working in sixteen different districts of Balochistan are attending this unique training program. District correspondents from Quetta, Mastung, Kalat, Pishin, Naseerabad, Jaffarabad, Khuzdar, Sibi, Awaran, Chagai, Noshki, Panjgur, Kharan, Bolan, Lasbela, Jhal Magsi, students of Department of Mass Communication at the University of Balochistan and two professional journalists from Quetta attended the event.
Speaking on the second day of the workshop, Mohammad Hayat Baloch, a lecturer at the Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Balochistan, informed the participants about the Pakistani media and the issues it faced. Hayat cited statistics from Reporters without Borders to argue that the state of press freedom in Pakistan was abysmal while the media in Balochistan worked under worse circumstances. With a background in TV journalism, Mr. Baloch taught a number of pre-production and post-production techniques to the journalists. During the question answer session, the district correspondents mentioned that it was encouraging that some television channels had begun to give some space to remote districts as well. However, district correspondents remain unable to report properly due to unavailability of equipment, insufficient training about television journalism, which is a relatively new phenomenon in the country.Baz Mohammad Kakar, president of Balochistan Bar Association, spoke in detail in a session on “the role of the media in the movement for the restoration of judiciary in Pakistan.” He said the suspension of Justice Ifthakar Mohammad Chaudhary had triggered an organized movement against former dictator General Pervez Musharraf but it, at the same time, provided the newly liberalized Pakistani media a chance to fight its war of freedom.
“Media must be given 90% credit for the success of the judicial movement. Had it not been the media, our movement would never succeed,” he acknowledged, adding that media had continued to keep the lawyers intact at times when they were either too disappointed with the military regime or thought of giving up their struggle. “The media people gave us hope. We thought we could win the battle for a free judiciary with the help of the courageous media,” he said.
Kakar stressed the need for better media-judiciary relations for the sustainability of democracy in the country. He regretted that the partnership built during the movement against dictatorship could not last longer and it needed to be revived.
During the Q&A session, the district correspondents asked questions about making contacts with the bar associations, court reporting, judicial code of conduct, alleged corruption in the judiciary and the fear that the judiciary in Pakistan was posing threats to the fledgling democracy in the country.
The participants discussed methods to write press releases and conduct interviews while covering issues pertaining to women’s rights in a session headed by Zeb-un-Nisa Garshin, a senior lady reporter affiliated with Daily Jang. The participants also did individual and group works on the techniques taught to them. The participants said covering women’s issues was still a hard job in Balochistan’s tribal society where reporters hardly had access to the primary sources that face domestic violence. Likewise, men strictly discourage reporting on issues like honor-killing.
It is the first time in the history of Balochistan that a training workshop has been held for journalists from remote parts of the province in order to acquaint them with modern tools and techniques, such as blogs and social networks, to reach a wider range of audience in the conflict-stricken province to report on democracy and human rights.
Journalists belonging to various print and electronic media outlets working in sixteen different districts of Balochistan are attending this unique training program. District correspondents from Quetta, Mastung, Kalat, Pishin, Naseerabad, Jaffarabad, Khuzdar, Sibi, Awaran, Chagai, Noshki, Panjgur, Kharan, Bolan, Lasbela, Jhal Magsi, students of Department of Mass Communication at the University of Balochistan and two professional journalists from Quetta attended the event.
Speaking on the second day of the workshop, Mohammad Hayat Baloch, a lecturer at the Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Balochistan, informed the participants about the Pakistani media and the issues it faced. Hayat cited statistics from Reporters without Borders to argue that the state of press freedom in Pakistan was abysmal while the media in Balochistan worked under worse circumstances. With a background in TV journalism, Mr. Baloch taught a number of pre-production and post-production techniques to the journalists. During the question answer session, the district correspondents mentioned that it was encouraging that some television channels had begun to give some space to remote districts as well. However, district correspondents remain unable to report properly due to unavailability of equipment, insufficient training about television journalism, which is a relatively new phenomenon in the country.Baz Mohammad Kakar, president of Balochistan Bar Association, spoke in detail in a session on “the role of the media in the movement for the restoration of judiciary in Pakistan.” He said the suspension of Justice Ifthakar Mohammad Chaudhary had triggered an organized movement against former dictator General Pervez Musharraf but it, at the same time, provided the newly liberalized Pakistani media a chance to fight its war of freedom.
“Media must be given 90% credit for the success of the judicial movement. Had it not been the media, our movement would never succeed,” he acknowledged, adding that media had continued to keep the lawyers intact at times when they were either too disappointed with the military regime or thought of giving up their struggle. “The media people gave us hope. We thought we could win the battle for a free judiciary with the help of the courageous media,” he said.
Kakar stressed the need for better media-judiciary relations for the sustainability of democracy in the country. He regretted that the partnership built during the movement against dictatorship could not last longer and it needed to be revived.
During the Q&A session, the district correspondents asked questions about making contacts with the bar associations, court reporting, judicial code of conduct, alleged corruption in the judiciary and the fear that the judiciary in Pakistan was posing threats to the fledgling democracy in the country.
The participants discussed methods to write press releases and conduct interviews while covering issues pertaining to women’s rights in a session headed by Zeb-un-Nisa Garshin, a senior lady reporter affiliated with Daily Jang. The participants also did individual and group works on the techniques taught to them. The participants said covering women’s issues was still a hard job in Balochistan’s tribal society where reporters hardly had access to the primary sources that face domestic violence. Likewise, men strictly discourage reporting on issues like honor-killing.
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Journalists from 15 districts discuss media, democracy and human rights
QUETTA 07 April 2010: A three-day training program on media, democracy and human rights organized by Balochistan Institute for Future Development (BIFD) with the collaboration of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) commenced here on Monday at Quetta Press Club.
It is the first training program of its type, which is being attended by journalists from fifteen districts of Balochistan in the first phase, aimed to teach the mid-career district correspondents about the new media techniques such as online journalism, blogs and social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Balochistan is Pakistan’s most backward and least reported province where journalists rarely get modern media training to improve their professional skills. The largest province of the country area-wise is currently in the grip of a deadly nationalistic insurgency which has further jeopardized the working conditions for the media persons.
The workshop was inaugurated by Noor Khan Mohammad Hassani, Director Public Relations, Government of Balochistan, who said in his inaugural address that the media in Pakistan was currently being seen by the masses as a savior as well as an intruder which refused to follow a code of ethics. He regretted over the poor state of reporting from rural parts of Balochistan. The participants informed Mr. Hassani, who heads the government department that is responsible to propagate the official news, that they faced dire threats and, in some other cases, threats to their lives in interior Balochistan. These threats, they said, were posed mainly by the Frontier Corps (FC) which tried to create stumbling blocks for the reporters when they attempted to report from the area objectively.
Malik Siraj Akbar, project director of the series of trainings on media, democracy and human rights, introduced the participants with a twenty-five page booklet on the same subject. The booklet in Urdu language has reintroduced the journalists about the international declaration on human rights, the articles in the constitution of Pakistan that deal with human rights issues and a report based on the hardships the media professionals in Balochistan faced.
Journalists working in different districts shared the multiple threats they faced in a session moderated. They said it was very hard for them to report objectively. Majority of the journalists working in rural Balochistan neither get paid by their newspaper owners nor we they provided any kind of facilities to report from the underdeveloped and neglected parts of the province.
“We have become journalists because we are in love with the profession,” exclaimed one of the participants, who acknowledged that the economic state of district correspondents was miserable. They also pointed out that the newspapers and television channel owners hardly cared about their employees’ economic needs, safety and medical insurance.
Urooj Zia, a Karachi-based journalist, held an interactive session with the journalists hailing from assorted districts of Balochistan. She asked the participants as to why they chose to become journalists in spite of knowing the grave threats the profession entails for them. Almost all journalists confessed that journalism was still not a full-time profession for those reporting from rural parts of Balochistan, they still decided to become journalists because they felt they had a role to play to change their respective societies.
“Even though working in a tribal society involves a lot of risks,” said Mohammad Khan Sasoli, the president of Khuzdar Press Club, “I am satisfied when I start counting the achievements I have made as a journalist to force the government to look into certain neglected aspects of social development or corruption in the government.”
Speaking on “Forms of Journalism and the Role of Journalists in promoting Human Rights”, Urooj Zia, said press freedom was often compromised by the owners of different media outlets or the governments. The media is largely, she argued, controlled by corporations that use their advertisements not only to help in sustaining these newspapers but also set their policies. Likewise, so-called “state interests” were used as a pretext to curb the press freedom.
Masooma Qurban, one of very few working female journalists of Balochistan who is affiliated with Samma TV, discussed with the participants about the coverage of women’s issues in the media. She said reports on women of Balochistan and their basic human rights were rarely reported as women in the province were still largely voiceless. A women’s perspective is missing in the local media because male reporters hardly have access to female members of the families while female reporters would face the same problems if they tried to report on women’s issues because women would not agree to talk to the media without the prior consent of their parents and brothers.
The workshop is being attended by journalists from Quetta, Kalat, Mastung, Naseerabad, Jaffarabad, Kharan, Awaran, Panjgur, Sibi, Bolan, Khuzdar, Noshki, Chagai, Pishin and Jhal Magsi districts as well as the students of Department of Mass Communication and Media Studies, University of Balochistan.
Every session on the first day of the workshop was followed by enthralling and informative questions and answers sessions in which the district correspondents ventilated their views on the issue of media, democracy and human rights.
It is the first training program of its type, which is being attended by journalists from fifteen districts of Balochistan in the first phase, aimed to teach the mid-career district correspondents about the new media techniques such as online journalism, blogs and social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Balochistan is Pakistan’s most backward and least reported province where journalists rarely get modern media training to improve their professional skills. The largest province of the country area-wise is currently in the grip of a deadly nationalistic insurgency which has further jeopardized the working conditions for the media persons.
The workshop was inaugurated by Noor Khan Mohammad Hassani, Director Public Relations, Government of Balochistan, who said in his inaugural address that the media in Pakistan was currently being seen by the masses as a savior as well as an intruder which refused to follow a code of ethics. He regretted over the poor state of reporting from rural parts of Balochistan. The participants informed Mr. Hassani, who heads the government department that is responsible to propagate the official news, that they faced dire threats and, in some other cases, threats to their lives in interior Balochistan. These threats, they said, were posed mainly by the Frontier Corps (FC) which tried to create stumbling blocks for the reporters when they attempted to report from the area objectively.
Malik Siraj Akbar, project director of the series of trainings on media, democracy and human rights, introduced the participants with a twenty-five page booklet on the same subject. The booklet in Urdu language has reintroduced the journalists about the international declaration on human rights, the articles in the constitution of Pakistan that deal with human rights issues and a report based on the hardships the media professionals in Balochistan faced.
Journalists working in different districts shared the multiple threats they faced in a session moderated. They said it was very hard for them to report objectively. Majority of the journalists working in rural Balochistan neither get paid by their newspaper owners nor we they provided any kind of facilities to report from the underdeveloped and neglected parts of the province.
“We have become journalists because we are in love with the profession,” exclaimed one of the participants, who acknowledged that the economic state of district correspondents was miserable. They also pointed out that the newspapers and television channel owners hardly cared about their employees’ economic needs, safety and medical insurance.
Urooj Zia, a Karachi-based journalist, held an interactive session with the journalists hailing from assorted districts of Balochistan. She asked the participants as to why they chose to become journalists in spite of knowing the grave threats the profession entails for them. Almost all journalists confessed that journalism was still not a full-time profession for those reporting from rural parts of Balochistan, they still decided to become journalists because they felt they had a role to play to change their respective societies.
“Even though working in a tribal society involves a lot of risks,” said Mohammad Khan Sasoli, the president of Khuzdar Press Club, “I am satisfied when I start counting the achievements I have made as a journalist to force the government to look into certain neglected aspects of social development or corruption in the government.”
Speaking on “Forms of Journalism and the Role of Journalists in promoting Human Rights”, Urooj Zia, said press freedom was often compromised by the owners of different media outlets or the governments. The media is largely, she argued, controlled by corporations that use their advertisements not only to help in sustaining these newspapers but also set their policies. Likewise, so-called “state interests” were used as a pretext to curb the press freedom.
Masooma Qurban, one of very few working female journalists of Balochistan who is affiliated with Samma TV, discussed with the participants about the coverage of women’s issues in the media. She said reports on women of Balochistan and their basic human rights were rarely reported as women in the province were still largely voiceless. A women’s perspective is missing in the local media because male reporters hardly have access to female members of the families while female reporters would face the same problems if they tried to report on women’s issues because women would not agree to talk to the media without the prior consent of their parents and brothers.
The workshop is being attended by journalists from Quetta, Kalat, Mastung, Naseerabad, Jaffarabad, Kharan, Awaran, Panjgur, Sibi, Bolan, Khuzdar, Noshki, Chagai, Pishin and Jhal Magsi districts as well as the students of Department of Mass Communication and Media Studies, University of Balochistan.
Every session on the first day of the workshop was followed by enthralling and informative questions and answers sessions in which the district correspondents ventilated their views on the issue of media, democracy and human rights.