Journalism has moved away from objectivity | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

Journalism has moved away from objectivity

Pakistan Press Foundation

LAHORE: Journalism, particularly on television, has moved away from objectivity and towards partisanship, skewing the traditional definition of what a journalist is supposed to do.

“I was always taught that a journalist provides facts and figures and doesn’t have any position as regards to an issue. In my view, a journalist is someone who is impartial to the story and remains honest to the craft of providing information to the masses,” said television journalist Rizwan Khan, popularly known as Riz Khan, in a Skype talk at the Khayal Festival of Arts and Literature on Sunday.

Khan, who has worked for the BBC, CNN and now Al-Jazeera, said that when he had started out, journalists didn’t have any editorial position. But the way news was viewed and reported had now changed, with television channels positioning themselves with regards to issues. In the late 1990s, when FOX News started out as a channel that positioned itself clearly on certain issues, CNN followed the lead.

The situation had created great difficulties for journalists trained to work with facts and figures. “Colleagues often complain that their editors push them to hammer the interviewee. This loses objectivity and simply makes things worse for the journalist,” he said.

Khan studied medicine but began his journalism career as a trainee at the BBC. While training is vital, he said, it constituted just one part of the larger picture. Training was important, particularly in technical terms, but it alone didn’t make a ‘good journalist’.

He advised media professionals not to switch from one organisation to another too much. “It takes a long time to build a reputation and when journalists hop often, it becomes hard to understand what the real person is all about,” he said. About ‘vigilante journalism’ in Pakistan, Khan said that it was regretful, but not unique to this country. “In such a case the only way to get some balance is to have media laws in place so that there is a clear line between what is classified as news and what isn’t,” he said.

Express Tribune