Day 1 of national seminar on media crises dwells upon coverage and writing of news

Chandigarh, March 9, 2019: Two day national seminar on 'Crises in Media: An Existential Conundrum' organised by School of Communication Studies Panjab University and ICSSR begun, here today. The day one saw speakers discuss various aspects of reporting during crises situations, the ethics of journalism as well as the spread of fake and paid news. The seminar began with the P P Singh Memorial Lecture wherein the speaker Manraj Grewal, Resident Editor of Indian Express, Chandigarh shared her experiences of working as a journalist. While asking journalism students to be fair and fearless, Grewal added, "Journalism has been localized and focusing on relevant proximity".She said that news can make impact if digging below the surface is done. Balance, credibility, and getting close to news as much possible will go a long way in making a good story. Syncing Technology and ethics with hard work will create balanced and credible news, she added. The first technical session saw three research paper presentations which was chaired by Prof Bindu Sharma. Divya Jyoti Randev presented a paper on 'The use of quotes from anonymous sources: A content analysis'. Sumedha Singh presented a paper on the topic "The relevance of spiritual leadership in the life of crisis reporters: A review". The third paper titled "Rape reporting: An analysis of local coverage of top circulated English and Hindi daily newspaper in Chandigarh". The second session saw two paper presentations, one titled "ICT device consumption by farmers: usage or addiction" which was presented by Neha Saroj and the other titled, "Prevalence of journalistic malpractices afflicting objective reporting- a study" which was presented by Gurjeet Kaur. Earlier, Prof Bhavneet gave detailed background of Prof P P Singh, founder of Journalism education in India. A short film showcasing journey from pre-Partition to post - Partition days was shown. Day two of the seminar is to be held on Sunday and has two similar technical sessions which will dwell upon 'Evolving code, content and treatment' and 'Managing crisis through advertising and public relations'. The seminar will end with a panel discussion on 'Existential crisis'; the panelists for the same include Jyoti Kamal, Manu Moudgil, Mohammad Shoaib and Mukesh Kharbanda. The event will be moderated by Prof Akshay Kumar.