Working Conditions

Despite a phenomenal growth in the media, journalists here have to put up with poor wages and working conditions, and the hazards of working in an insurgency troubled state.  Journalists' organisations are now no longer willing to stay silent, says 'The Hoot's' Nava Thakuria.

HONG KONG, May 8 (Asia Media Forum) — The growth of social media is pushing 'traditionally minded' media to dabble in it in order to interact with its online audiences, and giving journalists room to shape their individual identities on the Internet away from the news organisations they work for.

   "Social media are overturning very fundamental things," said Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific director for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide's 360 Digital Influence, the firm's global social media marketing arm based here.

By Lynette Lee Corporal

HONG KONG, May 3 (Asia Media Forum) - Newspapers threatened with lawsuits across borders. Journalists feeling lost as they seek redress in cases where the state is less than impartial in investigating the killings of journalists. Media caught in attempts to use religion to curtail room for public debate.

By Feizal Samath

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Apr 14 (IPS) - About eight months back, delivery boys for this northern city’s main newspaper were accompanied on their rounds by government soldiers – the first time a Sri Lankan broadsheet was being delivered under armed guard.

 By Lynette Lee Corporal

BANGKOK, Mar 5 (Asia Media Forum) — ‘Grey’ might just be the right shade of colour to give the world of freelance journalism, one where norms differ from one media organisation to another and where ethical dilemmas arise that lead to judgement calls shaped by individual definitions of what is ‘professional’.

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
 
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 12 (Asia Media Forum) — The election of a woman as general secretary of the Khyber Union of Journalists (KhUJ) — the first ever in the male-dominated Pakhtun society— may well encourage more women to enter journalism.

   On Jan. 30, Aneela Shaheen was elected as the first female general secretary of the 320-member journalists’ organisation based in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) capital of Peshawar.
 

BANGKOK, Jan 14 (Asia Media Forum) - This month’s assaults on Vietnamese journalists on investigative assignment has stirred the local media, leading them to examine how vulnerable they are to threats and attacks.

   By Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, May 4 (Asia Media Forum) - Till two months back, Shireen Zada of the private television channel Express News would carry a pistol wherever he did coverage from the restive valley of Swat in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

   “But the day the peace accord was signed between the Taliban and the government, on February 16, I put away my gun,” he said.