Business journos should stay well equipped to handle burning issues

Journalists covering business and economy should possess basic knowledge of economics in a bid to raise critical questions and write good reports on burning issues, speakers observed at a programme on Saturday.
Besides, these journalists should also have higher moral and ethical standards to gain trust of readers in the age of fast-changing readership trends fuelled by increased internet penetration, they noted.
They made the observations at a roundtable titled "Future of Business Journalism and Ethics & Etiquette in Business Reporting" organised by Management and Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) at the Daily Star Centre in the city's Farmgate.
Moderated by MRDI Executive Director Hasibur Rahman, Second Secretary (Political) at US Embassy Dhaka Justin Halpern, the Asia Foundation Bangladesh Country Representative Kazi Faisal Bin Seraj, Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM) Director (Training) Professor Shah Md Ahsan Habib, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Senior Research Fellow Towfiqul Islam Khan spoke at the programme while daily Prothom Alo Head of Online Shawkat Hossain presented the keynote paper on the occasion.

In the presentation, Mr Hossain said future journalists need to equip themselves in such a way so that they can act as 'one man army' in the era of digital journalism.
He also mentioned that business and economic journalism had taken shape in the early 90's when Bangladeshi journalists used to chase the Finance Minister for a comment on ongoing issues and analyse reports published by organisations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Currently, almost all the national dailies have pages for business and economy while TV channels have separate slots.
The challenge of current business journalism is to write reports in the simplest possible way for comprehensibility of general readers, he noted.
Indicating to knowledge gap of journalists covering economic issues, Mr Habib said, "Professional journalists can improve their learning about core economic issues and better understand role of different financial institutions and regulatory bodies."
Terming journalists strategic partner of researchers, Mr Khan said business reporters should avoid jargons often used by economists in their reports so that readers can easily understand complex economic issues.
The MRDI executive director said his organisation has developed several training module to build capacity of entry and mid-level career journalists while there has also been some online courses available for professional journalists.
He also said MRDI has been working with several public and private universities to develop and improve course curricula of journalism departments.
The MRDI has recently concluded a training and mentorship programme for 15 journalists working in different print, TV and online media aiming to capacity building to produce in-depth reports on contemporary issues of business and economy.
ahb_mcj2009@yahoo.com