Islamabad, 10 August 2017: Media Matters for Democracy hosts specialised orientation sessions for journalists and anchorpersons to assist them in breaking down Internet governance and digital rights issues and produced more nuanced journalistic content with a strong focus on public interests.
In the digital world that we live in today, digital rights and Internet governance issues affect us all. Be it a ‘casual’ network shutdown to avert an ‘unforeseen’ threat or a repressive legislation to curb civil liberties and expression online, all of us have a stake in policy making around cyberspace. However, for citizens to truly understand the implications of flawed policy-making decisions on their fundamental rights, the journalists need to be able to break down these issues and make more relatable with the general public.
To assist journalists in understanding the digital rights issues, and laws that govern Pakistan’s cyberspace, Media Matters for Democracy conceptualised ‘Report for Digital Rights’, an initiative to build media’s capacity to add nuances to their reporting on these issues.
Th series of orientation sessions in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad was an extremely important component of ‘Report for Digital Rights’. Through these sessions, we were able to reach out to nearly 50 journalists covering IT and telecom beat and 15 anchorpersons hosting regular current affair shows, who are often at the forefront of reporting curbs on civil liberties online.
MMfD team will continue to engage with this group for a longer term assistance and to help where we can in the production of public interest news stories on related issues.