LAHORE – The Faculty of Humanities, Forman Christian College (a chartered university), in collaboration with Journalism & Media International Centre (JMIC), OsloMet–Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway, hosted a one-day workshop on climate journalism education on Tuesday.
Academicians, students and journalists from all over Pakistan and abroad attended the event. Dr Altaf Ullah Khan, Dean of Humanities at FCCU, inaugurated the workshop and said, “In the current environment, students need to have basic knowledge of climate change and we plan to make this into a skill set for them by introducing a course climate journalism in journalism institutions in Pakistan.”
Syed M. Saqib Saleem, Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, FCCU recommended the best practices and shared the course documents developed by different universities in Pakistan.
He shared alternate learning pathways for climate journalism in Pakistan and ideas for course content in Pakistan. He said, “For improving the quality of climate news coverage, journalism students need to be trained in the universities and be motivated for climate action.”
Chairperson Department of Mass Communication and Assistant Professor, Dr Firasat Jabeen, Prof Elizabeth Eide, JMIC and Co-Director Media Climate Network and Professor of Journalism gave an introduction to the workshop and welcomed all the speakers and participants.
They highlighted how climate journalism education in Pakistan is the need of the hour considering the major climate crisis situation in Pakistan. The first speaker of the workshop was Ms Farahnaz Zahidi Moazzam, the Pakistani Editor at The Third Pole. She called Environmental Journalism the next big thing in Pakistan. She said that The Third Pole specializes in doing value addition stories in climate journalism to better understand an ordinary reader.
Prof. Andreas Ytterstad, Professor at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, OsloMet shared that while science journalism sets the base for climate change reporting, we also need to report on societal changes and how it is being affected by climate change. He was of the view that “Climate change is really just global warming which is causing havoc all over the world. The word climate change has been politicized.”
Mr Mofizur Rahman, Professor University of Dhaka, highlighted the need for climate journalism education all over the world and shared the course outline of the course on climate journalism that he is teaching.
Mr Daud Khan, an award-winning multimedia journalist based in KPK, Pakistan and a member of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network gave a presentation on visualizing climate change. He shared some tools and resources that could be used while doing climate coverage which included Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA), Global Forest Watch and SkyTruth Flaring Map.
A group activity was done where participants brainstormed student learning objectives and course activities and presented their ideas on teaching climate journalism. In the end, certificates were distributed among the participants.
