Media Academics Resolve To Upgrade Media Standards
It is a history of sorts. The 3rd All India Media Educators' Conference 2018, Jaipur, through the participation of nearly 200 media educators, researchers and practitioners from all over India, calls for upholding for the first time certain values, aspects and needs of Indian media and its education. Their resolve shows where all are the problems that plague the Indian news media today.
Media Literacy Promotion:
Media Literacy education – which teaches students to apply critical thinking to media messages and to use media to create their own messages – is a key 21st century skill. uAll our universities and media departments must strive to bring in Media Literacy formally in our classrooms, and take it down the line in the schools and colleges. Media Literacy can be effectively used in gender sensitization and ensure gender and other social dynamics well covered in news stories.
Development Communication and Journalism Promotion:
Development communication is about such communication that can be used to support development initiatives. It is about using communication to bring about a change or improve quality of life or transform behavior and society. Its slogan is: "Real people, real voices". Alongside, Development or Community journalism aims to achieve larger objectives - environment protection, social justice, improving health, education, protecting rights of children, and bringing people together. Marginalized people's voices should not be lost in the maze of dominant cultural and political narratives. This implies extensive research rather than quick-fire reportage, and this must be the bedrock of our journalism and communication education on campuses.
Combating false and fake news through the use of technology:
Technology allows for greater expansion of mass media outlets, starting with the Internet, and sadly it can lead to fake and false news through the use of WhatsApp, video manipulation, doctored pictures, and amplification through the social media. Media organizations and institutes, on their own, and in partnership with Facebook and Google, among others, need to combat fake and false news headlong, especially in the context of lynching based on rumors and communal tensions.
Safety and security of the Journalists on the ground:
Media organisations have a duty of care and moral responsibility for the safety of all their journalists, in particular, news gatherers, staff or freelancers, to provide hostile-environment safety training and equipment, medical care and life insurance. The media editors have a responsibility to systematically publicise crimes against journalists, and investigate them as thoroughly as possible.
Promotion of MoJo (Mobile Journalism), and Citizen's Journalism, Community Journalism, and Data Journalism:
The multimedia age requires new skills for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and distributing messages within a digital, global, and democratic society. New age stories need to understand Big Data and identify the news points from among huge maze of information using Data Journalism, going beyond echo chambers, and often taking mid-path and not partisan stands, protecting sustainability of the media organizations as well. This Conference believes that good journalism involving people and data, and good media business can go hand in hand. Several delegates threw light on this aspect of creating good business rationale through good content. Hence, sourcing stories from the community and individual citizens, and producing stories of real life on the go using mobile technology and multi-media tools, and good media business practices, need to be learnt and practiced, both in the media schools and in media organizations.
Need to protect RTI and its advocates and promote Peace through media:
It is important to understand how Right to Information can be effectively used in the promotion of the cause of good journalism, and in the process protecting the RTI advocates and activists. Also, good journalism should seek to mitigate violence, and promote peace and well being in society, bringing in hope towards life and future of the nation and its people. Such content creation should be taught on campuses and promoted in media organizations.
The AIMEC Jaipur 2018 appealed to the media educationists and practitioners, including researchers, to focus on these six cardinal needs of the domain in days and months ahead. And to take this discourse further and create content and initiatives, a ten-member team is being made from this Conference which includes the following stalwarts of media education and practice: IIMC Director General KG Suresh, Kushabhau Thakre Journalism University Vice-Chancellor, Dr MS Parmar, IIMC Dhenkanel Director Prof Mrinal Chatterjee, Kolkata Press Club President and Doordarshan News Editor Snehashish Sur, eminent advertising research stalwart and former IIMC Advertising & PR Head, Jaishree Jethwaney, Head, Centre for Media Studies, Rajasthan University, Dr Sanjeev Bhanawat, Lok Samvad Sansthan Jaipur Secretary Kalyansinh Kothari, Pandit Deendayal Media University Media Head Dr Pradeep Mallik, Shivaji University Kolhapur Media Head Dr Nisha Pawar, and Pearl Academy Head of School of Media and former Symbiosis Dean Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury. This committee is expected to meet soon to deliberate on the activities ahead to take these goals forward.
* Author is the Media School Head of Pearl Academy, Delhi and Mumbai, and former Dean of Symbiosis and Amity Universities.
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