On the last day, journalists demonstrate their acquired skills

Participants were asked to prepare a report based on a press release.

ISLAMABAD:

On the concluding day of a training workshop on reporting and labour issues, participants demonstrated what they had learnt in the last two days.

Each participant was required to write a report based on a press release, issued by Sargodha District Headquarters Hospital on a 17-year-old Asghari Bibi’s case of overdose on sleeping pills and her death at the hospital.

Bibi was presented as a victim of gang rape a month prior to her death. The trainers, Masud Alam and Ziagham Khan, played the roles of her father and the Station House Officer (SHO) respectively.

Both trainers planted hooks to make reporting more challenging and faulty for the participants. For instance, Khan said the victim was unconscious on her arrival to the hospital, which contrasted with the report from the hospital.

Furthermore, Alam presented himself as a person firmly entrenched in his role of a man. “I didn’t even know she was sad. It is the job of mothers to talk to their daughters. I only saw Asghari when I came back home from a hard work’s day and she served me my meal,” he said.

He added other gender elements to his character as well, which fitted in with the issues and concepts discussed in the previous days of the workshop.

Journalists had an option to write a feature or a report. Some journalists misspelt the names and places in their stories, while others took the SHO’s version of the incident instead of the hospital’s version.

All in all the hooks placed by the trainers proved very useful as they tested how attuned participants have become to gender issues.

Participants were briefed about research, interviews, structuring, writing and presenting their stories and how women’s perspective can be weeded out when necessary.

It was also stated that it is false to assume if a newspaper or a television channel has a women’s page or beat that only women should be assigned to them. Men should be just as well equipped to cover women’s issues using objectivity and empathy as shared in previous sessions.

The workshop was organised by the International Labour Organisation under their project “Gender Equality for Decent Employment”.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 11^th, 2011.