Highlight rural issues in media
Say experts
Dr Atiq Rahman, executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, addresses a panel discussion on “Rural poverty reporting: how, when, where and why”, organised jointly by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Thomson Reuters Foundation and The Daily Star at the Daily Star Centre in the city yesterday.Photo: STAR
Rural smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs should get more media focus to draw the attention of policymakers as increasingly volatile food prices and climate change are likely to affect the rural poor, mostly farmers, experts noted yesterday. Politics, urban issues and entertainment have predominantly dominated media coverage, but it is time to highlight the problems as well as innovations in agriculture and disaster management through the media, they said. The suggestions came at a panel discussion on “Rural poverty reporting: how, when, where and why”, organised jointly by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Thomson Reuters Foundation and The Daily Star at the Daily Star Centre as part of a workshop for Asian journalists in Dhaka. Around 20 journalists from different Asian countries are attending the workshop. An IFAD report in 2010 says global poverty remains a massive and predominantly rural phenomenon--with 70 per cent of the developing word's 1.4 billion extremely poor people living in rural areas. The farmers until now have been growing food based on their indigenous knowledge, but now with climate change effects, they will face difficulties in adapting to new technologies, said Dr Atiq Rahman, executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. In such a context, experts and journalists suggested highlighting rural issues in a more interesting and humanised way. Astrid Zweynert, deputy editor of Reuters AlertNet news service, said instead of highlighting only the problems, journalists should go for simple solutions like new energy solution, new crop varieties like one that sustains submergence, salinity etc. Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of The Daily Star, said a major share of gross domestic product in Bangladesh and many other Asian economies comes from agriculture. While the majority of people live in rural areas they do not get adequate media coverage. “We need to open up our minds to beyond our day to day coverage,” said Anam, moderator of the discussion. He added that development journalism that was once termed as "propaganda" was now the need of the day. Italian journalist Ugo Tramballi and Yamada Masaru of Japan Agricultural News also spoke at the discussion as panelists.
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