Editor-in-Chief Daily Minute Mirror Ali Sajjad, while addressing the IMC highlighted that media ethics must be rethought and reinvented for today’s media to reduce avenues of fake news and propagation.
The Minute Mirror chief editor said that a media revolution was transforming the very nature of journalism and its ethics as well. The means to the dissemination of information today are also in the hands of common people, while the internet encourages new forms of journalism that are interactive and immediate. Like the professional journalists the bloggers, tweeters, citizen journalists, and users of various social media networks also show their abilities as information handlers.
Ali Sajjad on the occasion also said that the news media requires fresh media ethics – guidelines that apply to not only professionals but also to those who write blogs, tweet, broadcast or write for newspapers. This is the best time that media ethics must be rethought and reinvented for today’s media.
Talking about why Daily Minute Mirror was launched, he said that the purpose was just to create a visible balance in the flow of information as sometimes we observe that we are all ‘encircled’ by ‘fake news’ and ‘misinformation’. He said the first of the four objectives he defined before launching the media outlet was a balanced expression.
The goal of Daily Minute Mirror, he stressed, was to cover the news as impartially as possible, and to treat readers, news sources, advertisers and others fairly and openly. The reputation of our newspaper rests upon such perceptions, and so do the professional reputations of our staff members. Thus, Daily Minute Mirror and members of its news and opinion staff exercise an unbiased approach. Daily Minute Mirror strives to maintain the highest standards of journalistic ethics. He said that a journalist is not a public relations officer. Moreover, if a journalist is biased he is not a true journalist, he added.
Ali Sajjad also criticized too much commercialization in journalism that he said had unluckily snatched objectivity and made news outlets a commodity. He said that the news outlets should prefer exclusives instead of breakings. The undue pressure of breaking news has badly affected media norms, he held. He proposed that all the media owners should place national interests first. He also criticized audio-video scams that appear often. The need is to regulate social media as well, Sajjad stated. He also expressed his mind to launch an English news channel.
Sajjad further said that our professional team includes editors, reporters, opinion writers, photographers, art directors, designers, graphics editors and researchers. Our basic purpose is to protect impartiality, neutrality and integrity while reporting news stories. In our print and online editions, we tell our readers the complete and unvarnished truth. He said that he had an experience of an interactive session with a select group of media students of the Lahore Garrison University. Keeping in mind those interactions, he said “I have a good offer for those students of the Department of Media Studies of this university to join Daily Minute Mirror as interns in our smart newsroom as editors; join us as bloggers with our digital team, and as a reporter in our reporting team besides a unique opportunity to work as a photojournalist”.
At the conference, he also offered, Media Studies Department head Dr. Amir Mehmood Bajwa to refer the best students of his department to join Minute Mirror’s team as interns if they are interested to join any media house. The Editor-in-Chief also lauded the joint efforts of the universities to conduct such a wonderful conference for media students.
