Information and Broadcasting Minister Arif Nizami said on Thursday that the ministry in the past used to direct the media but now it has become a facilitator to it.
Addressing as the chief guest at the inaugural ceremony of the 30th Special Training Programme of Information Officers, Nizami said the government believes in freedom of expression, which is a prerequisite to democracy.
He said the role of information officers had changed now, which is why the ministry now needed a large number of officers. He said information officers were needed to present the country in the right perspective. Quoting the founder of a leading news group, the minister said that Hameed Nizami once said that a good journalist should be educated, hard working and should be in the habit of reading extensively. “These qualities also apply to information officers,” he added.
Earlier, Information Service Academy (ISA) Director General Muhammad Khalid Sarwar in his welcome address said that the academy was established in 1980 and since then it had trained 29 badges. The ISA director general also said that the academy had also trained 400 journalists from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan.
