Media Baithak discusses COVID-19 and Media, The Pandemic Journalism, World Press Freedom Day, and Unstoppable Women in Media

Karachi based, Media Baithak is holding a series of online sessions with eminent members of the media to discuss various issues by the media. The interactive session is broadcasted through Facebook Live and it is hosted by the ace broadcast journalist and the founder of Media Baithak, Najia Ashar.

The first session of the series was under the title of COVID-19 and Media. Najia Ashar hosted Syed Masood Raza and Salman Hassan to discuss how COVID-19 pandemic is transforming newsrooms? A conversation with senior journalists and Najia Ashar.

Commenting on how COVID-19 has affected the life of a journalist, Masood Raza said:

“In Pakistan, we do not have concept of health and safety training let alone to be prepared for something like COVID-19, like anywhere in the world we were not ready for this. This has affected the life of journalist greatly especially those who are supposed to go for field reporting. It is not easy.”

News anchor and TV presenter of GNN, Salman Hassan said:

“Media has played an important part in creating awareness about this pandemic, especially electronic media. However, there is a trust deficit and many viewers are of the opinion that media is not reporting what is correct. That is not the case. Media has been reporting the authentic news, all the public service messages ran on electronic media. There is also an interesting factor that many among us (educated ones) still do not believe that this virus is a reality this behavior is more counterproductive.”

The second session of the series was on the topic of “disinformation and fake news remain difficult to stop during COVID-19. How to cope with this infodemic?” To discuss this topic award-winning journalist and anchorwoman Amber Shamsi and news anchor turned programme anchor Ayesha Bakhsh were the panellists. 

Ayesha Bakhsh, while talking about fact checks in today’s electronic media, said:

“It is a very interesting debate about how much truth the media reports. There is a race to flash the bigger number (blast casualties or corona cases), this race causes sensationalism, that is where the media needs to take the responsibility. If there are 20-25 news channels then it is not possible that all of them are reporting the same thing, the access to data is a key factor here. There has been another interesting development lately that the electronic media started carrying news taken from social media. Now social media is a source to many breaking news. Hence fact check gets ignored and that issue needs to be addressed.”

Talking about the responsibility of media, Samaa TV anchor Amber Shamsi said:

“These are unprecedented times and we need to be very careful while reporting about COVID-19, it is not a political statement that we can spin the way it suits us, this is serious and our reporting can put lives in danger.”

Answering another question about if media can run a campaign in regional languages to create awareness about corona-virus, Amber said:

“There are such things being done in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with messaging in Pashto language and similar being done in Sindh as well. But this is done on electronic media. The area where we actually lag is community outreach, even the government be it federal or provincial have ignored it. Lady health workers could have been an efficient source to create awareness among masses in remote areas.”

The third session of the series was held on  the World Press Freedom Day. The award-winning broadcast journalist Asma Sherazi was the special guest for the special edition to talk about Disinformation Pandemic and Threats to Journalism.

When asked how can journalism sustain its reputation amid a global crisis of COVID-19 and one of the worst media censorship, Asma Sherazi said:

“There are many imposters in our media industry who are not journalists but try to act like one and they are playing to discredit the media. In 2007, when journalists and anchors have become influencers, this realisation was alarming for many stakeholders, hence, to neutralize this many non-journalists were injected in the media. This is planned polarisation. Yes, the media has lost credibility but the real journalist is not responsible for it.”

News anchor turned morning show host, Madeha Naqvi and anchorwoman Maria Memon joined Najia Ashar and the topic was “unstoppable women in media.”

On how an anchorwoman is perceived in Pakistan Madeha Naqvi said:

“We tend to hear praises for the appearance of the anchorwoman, not the content she presents, if an anchor is chubby or fat her content will be ignored no matter how worthwhile it is. I am pretty certain that had Oprah Winfrey been a Pakistani she could never be as successful as she is, just because of her skin colour. We often hear, ‘ yeah we saw your dresses in the show and then changed the channel.”

Commenting on women in media and why there are not many examples of women in top managerial positions, Maria Memon said:

“To be brutally honest, most of the women in media are not ambitious, when I speak to women in media I seldom get to hear that they want to be in a top managerial position. This is perhaps because they think it will disturb their work-life balance. Even if I talk about myself, I do not want to compromise my work-life balance.” 

Talking about her early days in the media Madeha said:

“When I started as a news anchor at Dunya news, the female news anchor were get to read light-hearted news only whereas male anchor were there to break critical news and they always used to get good beapers. This situation starts giving ideas to the anchorwomen that is just an eyecandy on screen. This have changed now to some extent we now have some news anchors (the number is still very limited tough) who have their say, here I would like to mention Sadaf Abdul Jabbar she is great at what she does.” 

Talking about her transition from news anchor to programme anchor, Maria said:

“I was very fortunate to have a very smooth transission, when I joined ARY, I was doing News@3 it was one hour news bulletin this programme helped me greatly to understand progamming. Now I do an independent current affairs show, and I am fortunate enough to have full control and ownership of the cotnent of my show. My team and I have 100% content freedom on all the aspects of the show. This empowerment has taught me leadership skills at the same time it is very intense and demanding job.”

While talking to MediaSpringPK, the founder of Media Baithak Najia Ashar Said:

“I believe, every adversity has an opportunity and hard times present us with the chance to change the course and reinvent ourselves. When all the Media Baithak activities were put on hold due to Covie-19, lockdown and social distancing, we experimented with some innovative virtual sessions, Facebook live, Webinars and Online talk shows from our digital platforms. And I am glad that these virtual programs received an overwhelming response from journalists, civil society and other communities. The rise of online journalism brought much of the innovation in reporting which was lost in the shrinking space of mainstream media. Now, It is inexpensive to produce content and require only modest resources.”

The series continues with more such videoconference sessions expected int the future.