The country’s first-ever journalism awards are being organised by Mishal Pakistan in collaboration with the leading press clubs across country, local and international media development bodies, regulatory authorities, private sector and other stakeholders.
The awards have been termed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting as an important initiative towards improving the state of journalism in Pakistan.
“The Agahi initiative is about increasing the capacity of investigative journalism and responsible reporting – which aims to use institutionalised sustainable media structures in Pakistan to raise the bar of journalistic standards,” said Amir Jahangir, CEO Mishal Pakistan and a young global leader with the World Economic Forum, while sharing his views on the awards.
“The initiative is carried out in collaboration with press clubs and journalists’ associations, whereby the journalist community is being encouraged to undertake the responsibility of creating such initiatives on their own,” he added.
Pakistan lost hundreds of journalists since its inception in 1947. However, the trend has been on increase since 2004, when media in Pakistan was deregulated and it saw a mushroom growth of the number of media outlets. Puruesh Chaudhary, Ambassador to Pakistan from the Centre for International Media Ethics, said, “Due to a lack professional trainings and capacity building opportunities, journalism in Pakistan has been confined to a few issues coming to public debate, that too at times falls short on the ethical benchmarks.”
According to a survey conducted by Mishal Pakistan, the Pakistani media was perceived by the viewers to be indulging in sensationalism and unwittingly supporting the violent extremist ideologies of non-state actors operating in the region.
The Agahi Awards will be creating inspiration and appreciation for journalism in 15 different categories including business, economy, conflict, corruption, crime, education, infotainment, the nexus between water, energy and food security, gender and governance. In addition issues like human rights, interfaith, judiciary, media ethics, terrorism and extremism have also been included to create more media space for social issues impacting the society at large, thus creating media diversity across print, television, radio and the online media.
The Awards have two special categories on “Current Affairs Anchor of the Year” and “News Channel of the Year” in Pakistan. Both these categories are on the basis of people’s choice, which includes voting for these two categories by reaching out to more than 6 million stakeholders in Pakistan via social media engagement, SMS and direct feedback.
The Agahi Awards 2012 has been able to engage organisations such as the Center for International Media Ethics based in Brussels and the US, the BBC College of Journalism in UK, the Media Helping Media from the UK and the press clubs across Pakistan.
Education of the different and types of the subjects is increasing and expanding. The role of the students ND teachers is very necessary to be conducted and enrolled for the impetus and perfection.
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