Interactive session: ‘Journalists need to study ethics at university’

Participants suggest media professionals should be made part of academics.

LAHORE: Ethics is one of the pillars of journalism and should be taught as a degree at university, said professionals and academicians during a conference on media ethics on Thursday.

The discussion titled ‘Media Ethics and Laws: Theory and Practice’ was organised by the University of Management and Technology (UMT) at its media and communication department.

American journalist and academician Mary Beth Marklein gave a detailed presentation on US media ethics and the questions raised on journalism ethics by the current US administration.

Other journalists included Usman Raza from Samaa, Naveed Alam and Attiqa Adnan from Express News. UMT Media and Communication Department Assistant Professor Rashid Khan presided over the event, which was divided into two parts. In the first session, a seminar was held for students in which media practitioner discussed various issues faced by journalists.

Mary said social media had changed the landscape of the media industry globally and with it new opportunities as well as challenges have emerged.

Recently, she added, with the new administration of President Donald Trump, many questions have cropped up about facts, fact-checking and media ethics. “We never had to fact-check a president before,” she said while commenting on the situation.

The second part of the event was a roundtable discussion between academicians and media practitioners.

Opening the session, UMT Director-General Abid Sherwani said the discussion would be used in research to improve the way journalism was taught at the university.

The university, he added, had signed an agreement with the George Mason University of the US, and Mary’s visit to Pakistan was a part of the initiative.

The discussion discussed gaps between academia and the media industry and ways to improve the interaction.

Around half-a-dozen media practitioners from several news organisations participated in the discussion and gave suggestions to improve the gaps between the two. The participants suggested that professionals should be made part of the teaching profession.

They suggested that journalists could better teach the professional aspects, while academicians could focus on the theoretical parts. Another aspect pointed out by the participants was the evolution of curriculum, which they said should be regularly upgraded.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2017.