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Journalists asked to highlight issues of social sector

Bureau Report 2015-06-11
PESHAWAR: Speakers at a ceremony here on Wednesday asked journalists to highlight issues of social sector and avoid sticking to politics.

They said that many development and positive activities were happening around but media organisations had little space for such activities.

The certificate awarding ceremony was organised on completion of the threemonth development journalism course atthe department of journalism and mass communication, University of Peshawar (UoP).

Speaking on the occasion, Prof Altafullah Khan, the chairman of department of journalism and mass communication, highlighted the concept of independent project reporting (IPR) and emphasised the importance of development journalism. `Development reporting does not get space in our media and this is due to lack of quality work in the field,` he said.

He added that journalists could only achieve due space for development by producing good quality products. `We expect from these graduates to highlight development activities through their respective media organisations,` he said.

The three-month course is a joint venture of UoP and Fata Development Programme, which is commissioned by theGerman Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and co-funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and French Agency for Development (AFD).

The programme is being implemented by Fata Secretariat and GIZ.

`Media should focus on the positive aspects of our society as well. We are living in tough circumstances and have survived brilliantly. We are a brave nation and besides politics, talk shows and militancy, this also must be communicated throughout the world through responsible development reporting,` said Prof Adnan Sarwar, the dean of faculty of social sciences, who was chief guest on the occasion.

Mohammad Atif, IPR coordinator from Fata Development Programme, said that the training was an agent of change for development. University provided the bestavailable resources to the students including top experts from media and academia, he said.

`Now the responsibility rests with the graduates to utilise it through responsible journalism for the development of their communities,` Mr Atif said.

The participants were told that five batches of the training were already concluded while the training of sixth batch was in progress. About 80 people including journalism students and professionals from various media and development organisations have been trained so far through this programme.

Selected video and audio packages prepared by the students were also presented at the ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, certificates were distributed among 36 students offourth and ñfth batches of the course.