Journalists in the South East have been challenged to use a credible and investigative system of reporting to expose the wrong actions of state governments in the region and to always engender good governance.
These were contained in the lectures delivered by guest speakers during a one-day training workshop organised for journalists in Umuahia, Abia State by Ikenga Media and Cultural Awareness Initiative on improving the quality of journalism in South East for good governance.
Delivering his lecture, one of the speakers, Chinagorom Ugwu tasked journalists in Abia and South East at large to brace up for the challenges of doing reports that truly represent the public interests, through investigations and fact-checking of information released by various state governments.
He lamented that a lot of developmental projects which government agencies claimed to have attracted or completed for the people were either non-functional, abandoned or never executed at all.
Ugwu therefore urged the journalists to always interact with people in urban and rural communities to understand their challenges in areas of public health, education, security, and road network.
“Relying on press releases from the government and its agencies alone to do your reports would not provide the people with the correct account of what is happening in your State or the South East at large. Meet the people even in the villages and cross-check what you are seeing or hearing from them with what the government told you in the press release”, said the Speaker.
Also speaking, a veteran journalist, Ralph Egbu who was represented by Chimdi Oluoha, regretted that certain factors such as cyber security laws, poor payment of Journalists in some media houses, lack of professional regulation and quackery in the journalism profession have affected the quality of news reports, especially in the areas of investigation.
Explaining the purpose of the training, Chido Onumah of Ikenga Media and Cultural Awareness Initiative, said it was prompted by “the apparent lack of adequate reportage, misinformation and outright disinformation on issues affecting the South East zone.”
