Speakers at a seminar stressed to promote environmental journalism in the country, informing the students about the environmental issues and their solutions.
A workshop was organized about Acuity Mastering in Environmental Field Journalism and Tools in the Department of Mass Communication of Federal Urdu University under Green Media Initiatives. It started with a recitation of the Holy Quran. GMI Program Coordinator Fouza Jamil explained GMI founder Shabin Faraz’s objectives to highlight the intellectual and professional potential of students in the field of environmental journalism.
Yasir Hussain, founder of Darya Lab, started his session by informing the students about the environmental issues and their solutions, he also explained how an environmental journalist can highlight the issues, how and from where they can get data for a story. Yasir Hussain said that development projects and modern construction methods have increased soil pollution and due to which human lives have also been threatened, our land is becoming barren due to the decrease in water level. As many issues need to be discussed. He further informed that in a modern way the journalist can check the levels of Air Quality Index and what measures can be taken to prevent it. He also mentioned the ethical and legal regulations of journalism.
In the second session of the workshop, Investigative Journalist, Media Research Scholar, Principal MEB College and Script Writer Muhammad Nadeem explained his professional script writing and news writing stages. Making the story clear, purposeful and lively, he imparted investigative journalism tools, resources and security training as well as evaluated the workshop training through activities to the students.Mohammad Nadeem called environmental problems as the most important topic and said that we are suffering from environmental problems every moment, while talking about plantations, he said that only 5% of the area is forest at present which is the cause of environmental problems. There is also a big reason and this percentage is gradually decreasing.
Fauzia Jamil, Program Coordinator of Green Media Initiatives and Environmental Journalist, trained the students on modern journalistic tools and conducted activities related to it. Fauzia Jameel while encouraging the use of digital platforms said that the ever-changing nature of digital media is a big challenge for journalists, to deal with which tools should be used by students of mass media from the student days. It has become indispensable for scientists. Better use of these tools, he added, brings life to environmental investigative stories. Such as info graphics and editing tools lead to better stories.
Dr. Masroor Khanum, president of the Department of Mass Communication, thanked , Shabina Faraz, and all the trainers for conducting the workshop and urged the students to be attracted towards the sacrifice training. He further said that such modern training of environmental journalism will take journalism in a new direction. Dr. Masroor Khanum said that the students would have learned a lot from today’s workshop, and information that was never heard before, surely all this information would be useful for them, adding that environmental journalism Such modern training will take journalism in a new direction.
At the end of the workshop, green media initiatives presented shields and awards to the department president, trainers and coordinators of the department and after that certificates were distributed to all the students. . GMI started a regular series of continuous training for the students, so that the future journalists can acquire awareness regarding field work, modern facilities, and tools and deal with the challenges encountered.
