Bauchi State Information and Communication Commissioner, Usman Dan Turaki, has tasked broadcast journalists in the North East to build bridges among different people and avoid sensationalism, falsehood, rumors and slanders.
The commissioner also asked the practitioners to not just gather and disseminate news, but also educate the public by abiding by the ethics of the profession while avoiding vulgar and cheap publications that tend to glorify conflict, brutality and violence.
He spoke in Bauchi at the two-day workshop for broadcast journalists organised by the Broadcasting Organization of Nigeria (BON) with the theme ‘Contemporary Issues In News and Programme Production’ saying the press has a responsibility to constantly engage in self-examination to ensure that it operates in tandem with national goals and in line with global ethical practices.
Declaring the workshop open, the BON zone ‘B’ chairman, Yusuf Alhaji Isah, assured that the organisation would continue to train and retrain its staff to build their capacities and impact knowledge, especially on those in the newsroom and programmes department to keep them abreast with modern techniques in the broadcast industry.
He said the workshop under BON zone B that comprised the six states of the North East Zone which was conceived during the organisation’s last zonal meeting, was primarily geared to surmount challenges in day-to-day broadcasting, especially among broadcasters and programmes presenters.