Standard of journalism low

Caption:   Journalism students (L) Elly Kalava and Memo Hauke taking footage of the days celebration.

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, May 4, 2014 (PNG)

IT was the observation of speakers and veteran journalists, Cletus Ngaffkin (Advisor to the Attorney General) and the Managing Director of the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) Memafu Kapera, speaking to journalism students at the celebration of World Media Freedom Day, last week at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby.

Both speakers revealed that the quality had dropped over the years in terms of the quality of news presentation and balanced reporting.

Mr Ngaffkin pointed out that with the newfound importance place in the profession by the private and public sector organisations- the profession had yielded purpose that exceeded the boundaries of the newsroom.   

“We are one of the luckiest countries in the whole wide world that we question and scrutinise the government to provide a check and balance for our people to know what is happening in the corridors of power, either politically or bureaucratically,” Ngaffkin said.

“I have been professing for over 20 years that journalism is one of the lowest paid professions in the country.”

“Until very recently when multinational corporations, ministers and members of parliament, government departments, and financial institutions realised the good things the profession can bring to their organisation.”

He said that the demand for journalists in the workforce was now high, because of their awareness of society at all levels, to put them up on the list of knowledgeable individuals that can compile reports and asses situations for various organisations.

He added that despite all the changes- the quality of the product that journalists were putting out in the mainstream media has dropped.

“For the electronic media- the voice that you hear on radio has dropped in quality, with journalists for radio and television that are poor in presenting.”

“The kinds of reports coming out are very disappointedly raw, which need a lot of cleaning and editing,” he said.

He concluded that improvements would only come about with trainers in the newsroom who give constant counsel to journalist in all the mediums.

NBC boss Memafu Kapera reiterated the importance of impartiality in reporting reminding the students of their role not to influence, but the interpret information for audiences to decide.

“Information plays a very important role- you can build bridges, roll out habour services, but without information to explain these developments people will not understand- they need to have properly processed information,” he said.

“Bougainville is a classic example where even the current LNG project is creating problems because most people do not understand what is going on.”

“At the same time a lot of journalists get carried away by writing a lot of one sided stories, and my policy as the head of the national broadcaster is to balance both sides of a story.”

Both speakers’ payed respects to colleagues in the industry worldwide that have lost their lives while trying to inform the masses. 

The celebrations to observe that day were organised by the Journalism and Public Relations Strand of the University a day before the sanctioned date of May 3 (Yesterday).