President Ramotar urges practise of journalistic ethics in State media

FOLLOWING an intensive six-week training session for State media on the Fundamentals of Journalism in the Print and Broadcast Media, President Donald Ramotar has urged media operatives to be more ethical in their journalistic pursuits. 

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the event last evening, the President recalled lessons learned from the late Former President, Mrs Janet Jagan, whom he said was mighty with the pen after spending most of her life as a journalist.
“She had one guiding principle,” he said, “to never be accused of printing distortion and lies in particular.” Mr.Ramotar lamented that spinning stories could oftentimes lead to a loss of credibility.
Casting light on what could be called a degeneration of culture, President Ramotar urged a change in the culture of “loving to look for the negative news.” Mr.Ramotar highlighted however that he is more convinced that there is more good than bad news to be put out to the public.
The President did allude to Government’s greatest challenge since 1992 as being “the ability to communicate our message to the broader section of the Guyanese people.” He lamented that this reality has seen some of the efforts of the Government being understated.
Mr.Ramotar called on the media to relieve the many perceptions that are “engineered” since it is the job of the state media to bring truth to the frontline and make it part of the national conservation.
While acknowledging that this is the first intensive state media training session cutting across all three state media agencies, Presidential Liaison Kwame McKoy noted that this is only the beginning.
In his address, McKoy said: “… it is the start of a whole new process for us as state media operatives,” further adding, “The onus is going to be on the state media entities themselves to be able to run with this momentum to take it to the next level, to ensure that built in to their daily work programme is the whole question of training and retraining.”
McKoy,who was the driving force behind organising the programme, called for operatives to challenge themselves by adapting to the changing world of journalism and communication. His final words to the gathering were: “Keep the momentum, sustain the effort and let us make ourselves and the state media proud.”
While coordinating a programme of this nature was no easy task, Dr.Rovin Deodat who is a veteran to the media fraternity and a valued asset took great pride in his task, although flaked by a few hiccups which came as no surprise, considering the magnitude of the cross-cutting exercises.
As the curtain fell on the state media training session, if there was something that was more evident now than ever is that there is now a union of three sister agencies, where previously they seemed to function in a vacuum.

(By Derwayne Wills)