By Tunde Akanbi Nasarawa, Nigeria
> Nigerian journalists tasked to broker change for development
>> Tunde Akanbi,Keffi , Nasarawa State
>> The Executive Director of International Society of Media in Public Health,ISMPH ,Mrs Moji Makanjuola has challenged Nigerian Journalists to position themselves to embrace and broker change whenever necessary to engender development.
>> According to her , journalists need to stay in the place of knowledge, trust, truth and growth.
>> Mrs Makanjuola made these remarks in her opening and goodwill message at a training workshop on Reporting Trending and Development Journalism holding at Minki Suites Conference Hotel in Keffi, Nasarawa State.
>> According to her, no true development can take place without partnership with the media and urged the media to always report from the point of knowledge adding that the media has the onerous task of passing the message succinctly and unequivocally to the populace.
>> Mrs Makanjuola who was a former President of Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) commended the United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) for sponsoring the workshop .
>> In her remarks, one of the resource persons at the workshop,Mrs Janet Mba Afolabi, a CNN award winning journalist and Publisher Scroll Report, an online publication stressed the need for the activities of operators of social media in the country to be properly monitored .
> According to her, the activities of the unregistered social media is affecting journalism profession and the image of the country as most of their news items are of no standard and written by quacks.
>> Mrs Afolabi expressed worry that many people rely on what is published by the social media than even the traditional or the conventional newspapers hence the need for government to urgently check their excesses so as not to mislead members of the public.
>> The Resource Person who defined NEWS as North, East , West and South stressed the need for journalists to be accurate, fair and do a lot of research before publishing or broadcasting their news reports.
>> Another resource person, an International Journalist and Media Specialist, Mr IIiya Kure who spoke on Understanding Journalism, condemned the idea of propaganda in news reporting and appealed to journalists to go extra mile to go into research and ask probing questions.
>> According to him, any event that is not reported in any media is not news and that anything that is written for internal consumption is not journalism and therefore appealed to journalists to water down any news item no matter how objective if it’s for the sake of peace.
>> Mr Kure urged journalists to ensure that they are current and social media compliant so as not to be out of journalism practice.
>> Journalists were drawn from all parts of the State to attend the two-day programme .
>> The workshop ends on Saturday. END
