LAHORE: Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Secretary General L A. Rehman says the media needs to form a code of conduct to cover sensitive matters otherwise it may face more problems.

He was spealcing at a workshop on `Interfaith harmony and media`s role` organised by the HRCP here on Thursday.

Mr Rehman said religious intolerance was growing in society and there was need to promote both interfaith and inter-sect harmony. He said it was getting difficult to talk on matters related to faith in media as it was frightened. `Media needs to be objective. One should be allowed to speak truth (on media). The division in soci-ety may further increase if the media does not form a code of conduct and follow it accordingly,` he said.

Amid proliferation of religious intolerance in recent years it had grown ever more important to understand the response of media be that in the form of coverage of interfaith tensions or a lack thereof, he said, adding there had been instances where the role of the media had been positive and others where it had been criticised for negative or inflammatory coverage as well as instances where it had chosen to be a silent spectator on interfaith tensions.

The participating journalists and minority representatives discussed specific and relevant instances of media`s response to interfaith tensions and proposed suggestions in this regard.

The participants stressed the medianot to compromise on `fair reporting` and journalists needed regular training in this regard. They said all sides of a story were not covered and still there had been no code of conduct for media which should be evolved at the earliest and followed in letter and spirit.

They said there was a need to change curriculum to promote religious harmony and media should be mindful whether it was somehow indulged in spreading hatred. They said the media personnel should not carry their bias in reporting and talk shows.

Rights activists Hussain Nagi and Waqar Mustafa moderated different sessions of the workshop and said the deliberations would enable HRCP to benefit from the experience of media experts to review checks in place for gate keeping media responses to interfaith tensions.