Participants identify media training as vital
Pini Bothoko | Tuesday March 28, 2017 16:10
Mosanako was speaking at a two-day consultative workshop on partner collaboration between media and training institutions.
Mosanako said media professionals often face challenges such as non-ethical professional conduct, media unfriendly legal frameworks and at times, a seemingly undemocratic political system. She stated that media training is endless because of the transitioning newsrooms, giving an example of changes in the newsroom that can be technology-related. “We are living in a changing technological environment.
There is digital journalism hence the need for regular media training,” Mosanako said. She said training is important and endless as issues change and called for more training giving climate change as an example, electronic voting systems and hung parliaments.
Mosanako said numerous studies and reports on the status of newsrooms point to the need for training. She gave an example of the Knight Foundation report on digital training that emphasise the importance of up-skilling professionals especially in the digital age.
“State of the newsroom South Africa carried out in 2013 concluded that training was needed, newsrooms were under-resourced and that the training provided was generally agreeable with the newsroom,” Mosanako said. Mosanako said newsrooms should reflect on the use of new platforms like online training as compared to in-person training.
“There are some online resources for personal training that can be used like Youtube as well as existing resources within and outside, such as the use of veterans or mentorship programmes,” she said.
The workshop co-convenor, Methaetsile Leepile stated that the workshop follows the declining standards in reporting of news in both private and public media over the last couple of years.
“This is borne out of a multiplicity of factors, amongst which are failure to adhere to ethical and quality standards, the juniorisation of the newsroom in our country and the growing malice of checkbook journalism,” he said.
Leepile said that the workshop has identified problems like the absence of training programs that address the specific needs of the industry.
“This is at the level of academic, on the job and in-service type training. The problem applies to journalism and business disciplines like advertising, marketing, management and sale to mention but a few,” Leepile said.
He said quality of training affected by lack of resources has been identified as the problem as schools depend on government sponsorship to train people entering the profession. He stated that the training of such persons has no bearing on the carrying capacity of media institutions something that reflects media institutions as poorly resourced.
“In the last year’s media Pitso that was organized by The Voice newspaper and the Editor’s Forum, the absence of partner collaboration between the media houses and training institutions was identified as one of the areas that needed to be addressed,” Leepile said.
He stated that the importance of the workshop was to discuss approaches to enhancing quality standards through academic training, in-service training, on the job training or attachments.