A three-day training workshop for tribal journalists on 'Conflict Reporting' concluded here at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication (JMC), University of Peshawar on Sunday. Main purpose of the workshop was to train Fata journalists to professionally report sensitive events in tribal areas.
The JMC organised the workshop in which journalists from North Waziristan Agency and FR. Bannu participated. It was the fourth training workshop of the five training workshop series, which the JMC had planned for the journalists of Fata. Likewise, the JMC would organise one more training workshop for tribal journalists of South Waziristan agency in the coming days.
The tribal journalists were imparted training in conflicting reporting, report writing, journalistic ethics and proper use of journalistic terminologies in the workshop.
Dean, Faculty of Management and Information Sciences and Chairman of the JMC, Dr Shahjehan Sayed, during concluding session of the training, urged the tribal journalists to keep journalistic ethics in mind while reporting events in tribal areas. "Journalists should work for maintaining peace and defusing conflict in their areas," he observed.
He said that the JMC would organise such training workshops for tribal areas and districts correspondents of NWFP in future to improve their professional skills.
"Besides conflict reporting, journalists should focus on developmental activities, social and cultural values and peoples' problems in their reporting," he added. Speaking on the occasion, Assistant Professor of the JMC Dr Altafullah said that district correspondents were the backbone of electronic and print media but they lack professional skills.
"There is dire need to train them to enhance quality of reporting," Dr Altafullah stressed. He hoped that such training workshops would enhance district correspondents' professional ability to report events in professional manner.
During three-day training workshop, Assistant Professor, Dr Altafullah Khan delivered his lecture on 'Ethics in Journalism', Assistant Professor Naeem Gul on 'Conflict Reporting' (theory), Lecturer Inam-ur-Rehman on 'Conflict reporting' (Practical), Faizullah Jan on 'Media Framing Conflict' and Gul Wahab on 'Conflict Management through Reporting'. Besides, journalists were also given practical training in story writing during the training workshop.
The teachers of the JMC urged the journalists that they should play positive role in defusing conflicts in the Waziristan while reporting. Journalists from Waziristan should make balanced and factual reporting to show actual situation of the areas to the people, they urged. Speaking on the occasion, the journalists said that reporting from Waziristan was a risky job as they face threats while objectively reporting the incidents. "Besides threats, we also face difficulties and hardships while reporting from the restive areas as we lack professional skills and cannot cover different events in professional manner," they added.
The journalists said that they were harassed by tribal chiefs, political administration, militants and local Taliban when they publish that news, which were not publish according to their desires. They said that journalists working in tribal areas could not work freely and objectively as they face numerous threats. "Some time we hide actual situation in our report to safe ourselves and our families from threats," they added.
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