ISLAMABAD: The participants of a training workshop have urged media houses and government to take effective measures for improving the ethical standards of journalism in Pakistan and capacity building of media persons.

They expressed these views during a Boot Training workshop organized by Individualland Pakistan in Murree. IL Pakistan has also organized Boot Training workshop in Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi aimed to train working journalist according to modern needs.

They said that journalists, especially young reporters must be made aware of basic ethics and must be provided adequate training that on how to take best decisions that ensures credibility. Media persons should be equipped with basic techniques; how to gather and present news, how to cover disasters, how to conduct an interview, how to write business stories and so on, they said.

About capacity building, they said that media houses as well as the government need to develop a mechanism for training of media persons, in order to improve capacity of working journalists and pay them reasonable salaries to ensure better standard of reporting.

“The Boot Training workshop has been a fabulous experience for me, as it has helped me in understanding the concepts which are needed for modern journalism including development journalism and ethics of journalism, a participant said.

Another participant attending the training workshop was of the view “This training is an eye opener for me as it has given me awareness regarding the thematic areas which are very important and essential for modern journalism.

Nasir Hussain and Fazal Ur Rehman of IL Pakistan moderated boot training workshop.

Individualland Pakistan conducted Training of Trainers (TOT) on four thematic areas development journalism, conflict sensitive journalism, gender sensitive reporting and democracy and governance.

In these trainings journalists were trained as Master Trainers and then these Master Trainers conducted five day boot camp trainings for journalists on the thematic areas in Lahore, Islamabad and Murree.—PR