Daily Times

A two-member delegation of the Germany-based Deutsche Welle (DW) international broadcaster visited the University of Karachi on Monday.

The DW Director of Programs for Asia, Debarati Guha, and the Head of the Urdu Department Adnan Ishaq visited the KU Radio station and the TV newsroom established in the KU Department of Mass Communication along with the KU Vice Chancellor Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi and the chairperson MCD Dr Asmat Ara and other faculty members.

They appreciated the television and radio labs and production work of the students. Dr Asmat Ara briefed the DW delegation about the daily radio bulletin on-aired by the KU MCD Radio 90.6 and students working on different projects in the TV news lab.

Earlier, speaking to the students and faculty members of various departments of the varsity, at the Jinnah Auditorium of the Dr A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Debarati Guha informed that DW, stationed in Bonn, Germany, aims to engage with young journalism students and provide them with valuable insights into DW’s work in Asia.

She said that they would like to give them a perspective on journalistic ethics and standards, and would like to discuss constructive journalism and opportunities at Deutsche Welle.

According to her, DW gets around 1.5 billion people views from different parts of the world in a month and she shared that DW focuses on promoting democratic values and traditions, free trade, justice, and cultural values.

She mentioned that they strive to be unbiased in broadcasts and provide unbiased analysis and mentioned that DW is providing programs in different 11 languages in Asia. “We try to prioritize youth in our broadcasts and content, we want to promote a culture of dialogue in society and our target group is mostly youth.”

Debarati Guha said that DW is not present in Iran and China due to media censorship issues, whereas in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India they face the same issues as the native media outlets, on the other hand, they have not faced any problem during covering topics in Jakarta, Indonesia. She claimed that DW journalists meet international standards everywhere in the world.

She observed that the work of the media is not to solve problems but to point them out. She added that earlier we were ahead in radio but now radio is slowly disappearing. We produce programs in 32 languages worldwide and operate with over 4,000 employees around the globe with people of 150 nationalities and have offices in 18 countries around the world.

On this occasion, the KU VC Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi said that the local media also needs to ensure training and implementation of ethics. We have tried our best to keep the communication department updated with the help of technology and advanced curriculum. He informed the audience that KU MCD has also introduced a course related to social media marketing.

He shared that about four billion people are connected to social media and the most important task of media is to convey correct information to the people rather than imposing decisions.

The KU VC Dr Khalid Iraqi observed that they always try to make decisions which are not supposed to be their job, news should be based on facts and research.

He hoped that our students, especially those in the field of mass communication, would learn a lot from an institution like DW. The training programs and internship programs offered to our students will be useful for them.

On this occasion, the DW Head of Urdu Service Adnan Ishaq briefed the audience about the ongoing operations of Deutsche Welle worldwide, the appointment process of trainee reporters, and the procedure to become a part of the DW academy.

Chairperson of KU MCD Dr Asmat Ara, and faculty members Dr Saida Mehmood and Samina Qureshi also spoke and highlighted the importance of communication and journalism in society.