Workshop on ‘Coordination/cooperation between media and LEAs under prevailing security environment’
Call to reduce communication gap between media, LEAs
KARACHI: Better coordination between media and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) is direly needed so as to tackle prevailing security issues in the society in an efficient way.
This was agreed by participants of a media workshop on ‘Coordination/cooperation between media and law enforcement agencies under prevailing security environment,’ arranged by Pakistan Rangers Sindh at Rangers Auditorium, Toll Plaza here on Thursday.
The daylong media workshop was held to understand the dynamics of media reporting after any untoward incident and also apprise media of the security considerations.
Senior journalist Haroon Rasheed in his lecture said looking at broader picture we know that we as a nation are not habitual of following law, as in our history we ruled or were ruled over, adding but this is time to learn obeying law as great and developed nations of the world reached their destinations through this way.
He said that there was an urgent need to set up media desks in all departments of the government, including rangers and army to help and provide information to the media persons, who could reduce communication gap between media and law enforcement agencies.
Participants of the workshop insisted to provide them security equipments by owner of the organisations, and professional training of self-security by law enforcement agencies to journalists covering the crime spot.
Colonel Shafiq Niazi of Sindh Rangers said media and law enforcement agencies could assist each other to deal with any unfortunate incident or to perform their duties and a good way.
He said whenever any bomb blast or untoward incident happened, media and law enforcement agencies rushed to the crime scene in order to perform their respective duties; therefore, there was a room of collision between the both in absence of proper coordination which could cause nuisance to the both institutions. He conceded that sometimes they got information from media men earlier than their own resources.
Bureau chief of BBC in Pakistan Jafar Rizvi, answering a concern presented by Col Munir that journalist’s endeavours to catch footage of crime scene could destroy evidence which could be manipulated by anti-social elements, he said that ‘Yellow and Red Tape culture’ at crime scenes should be introduced in Pakistani society which are used to cordoned off the crime scene in developed contraries to preserve evidences of that can help to catch criminals.
Participants of the media workshop were of the view that law of Yellow and Red Tape should be introduced, strictly enforced and no one should be allowed to cross the tape.
“If one cameraman is allowed to make visuals of the crime scene, other TV channels also force their reporters on the front to provide the visuals. This is how chaos and interruption occur in performance of officials of the both institutions.”
Bureau chief of a local TV said high-ups sitting in news rooms should not pressurise reporters working to take undue risks in order to get breaking news as such pressure could result in so many problems.
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