RECORDER REPORT

LAHORE: Sensationalism in media is disturbing the society while competition of breaking news is affecting the media’s credibility and shrinking the viewership. There is a need that the media professionals, owners and regulators should revisit their working strategy to provide quality content to the viewers and readers.

These views were expressed by the experts in a seminar on ‘Quality of media content, role of regulators, media professionals and owners’ here at School of Media and Communication Studies (SMCS), University of Central Punjab (UCP).

Addressing the audience, Dean of SMCS Dr Mughees Uddin Sheikh said that violent content was disturbing the society, besides giving birth to lawlessness and terrorism. He went on say that the trend of digital communication was growing globally while junior or inexpert journalists should not be allowed to comment, speak and write on sensitive and religious issues. He said media code of conduct, and ethics existed but not implemented by the regulators and media owners. Besides, international institutions are also violating the code of conduct and ethics, he observed.

He suggested that voice should be raised against the content created from the foreign funding of the US and other western countries in order to bring in notice these fund givers as all the Pakistanis are not agreed with the content given by them. He believed that reservations raised by the media professionals and other stakeholders on foreign-funded content would be helpful in producing better content.

Veteran Journalist Salim Bokhari said that electronic media of Pakistan is galloping like unleashed horse. He said everyone in electronic media speaks without thinking which is mother of all evils. He was of the view that the government did not provide required opportunities for media development and growth. Similarly, no step is being taken by the government to strengthen the media industry. He believed that the media should not be controlled by the government.

An analyst Salman Abid said that research was not being carried out in the media while wide gap existed between the media and educational institutions. He said good quality journalists could be created by reducing this gap. He said the media owners were compromising quality of content in the run of rating. He said the useless political debate was aired from 7:00 pm to 12:00pm. In the wake of such content, development and social journalism was left behind while businessmen had captured the media to achieve their targets. He said the social media was going out of control which needed to be controlled.

He commented that journalists were also out of control as they don’t want to be answerable to anyone which was increasing the problems. He suggested that the young journalist must come in practical journalism to bring the change.

Muhammad Usman said the Pakistan electronic media is in teething phase which will gradually mature. He said the electronic media itself pushed the viewers and audience to this level by playing and airing dramatized crime show and news and made it entertainment for them.

He said young journalists were attracted to glamour of the electronic media while no one wanted to join newspaper which was actual academy for journalism. He suggested that prior experience of newsroom should be made mandatory for the electronic media so that they were aware of the prerequisites of the news.