By Abdul Bari Masoud
Dehradun: UNICEF is striving to combat the threat of fake news by holding Critical Appraisal Skills (CAS) workshops for working journalists. Over 150 media professionals from across India participated in two workshops on evidence-based health journalism hosted here by the international organisation from October 28 to October 30 as part of this mission. The value of fact-checking and evidence-based reporting in health journalism was taught to working journalists and journalism students through UNICEF’s Critical Appraisal Skills (CAS) programme.
Zafrin Chowdhury, Chief of Communication, Advocacy and Partnerships, UNICEF India, who joined the workshop online, said, “Misinformation is perhaps the only thing more contagious than the virus. It spreads fast and poses an imminent threat to public health safety.”
According to her, CAS is crucial in developing a comprehensive, 360-degree science-based communication narrative and strengthening media capacity to combat misinformation.
“Media has an essential role as a stakeholder to ensure an effective two-way communication, so that ground realities are channeled back to policy makers for an effective uptake of vaccination and overall health management,” Zafrin Chowdhury added.
Dr NK Arora, Chairman, COvID-19 Working Group, National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization interacted with journalists virtually on the COVID-19 vaccination.
He exhorted the media to develop creative strategies to combat information overload and motivate those who are eligible to get all of their immunizations on schedule.
Pankaj Pachauri, Founder GO News, who has been a key founding member of the CAS Committee, claimed that throughout the pandemic, CAS had been very useful in separating fact from fantasy. He recommended that CAS be made a requirement in the journalism and mass communication curricula and that steps be taken to forward the concept to the University Grant Commission.
Additionally, he suggested that senior editors and media owners sign up for the CAS course, which may be pitched through professional organisations like the Press Council of India, News Broadcasters Association, Editors’ Guild of India, and numerous Press Clubs.
Saniay Abhigyan, Executive Editor, Amar Ujala, Dehradun, claimed that Amar Ujala was one of the few publications that introduced CAS into their operations at an early stage. “An infodemic—a wave of false and misleading information—was brought on by the pandemic. We were able to control several infodemics because of CAS. In the future, we aspire to be able to train not just our health journalists but also our management and journalists from other beats on CAS, “he stated
Abhigyan also gave various examples of stories Amar ujala covered during the pandemic and how CAS helped the journalists in the field and at the desk introduce data journalism in these stories.
UNICEF’s Urdu media specialist, Dr. Muzaffar Husain Ghazali, also spoke at the event. He emphasised that because of CAS training, Urdu journalists now give health-related subjects the attention they deserve in the media.
Under UNICEF’s Critical Appraisal Skills (CAS) programme, journalists from Amar Ujala, The Tribune, Times Group, Urdu media as well as students from Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Himachal Pradesh University, and radio journalists from private FM, learned the value of fact-checking and evidence-based reporting in health journalism.
It is to be noted that for working health journalists and journalism and mass communication students, the CAS programme was created in 2014 by UNICEF in collaboration with Oxford University, Thomson Reuters, and IIMC. IIMC and MANUU later incorporated the programme as an elective mode in their curriculum. This year, CAS was included in the curriculum for third-semester students at the Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The workshop brought together practitioners of CAS, journalism students and subject experts, including Sanjay Abhigyan, Former Executive Editor, Amar Ujala (Dehradun) and CAS Mentor; Pankaj Pachauri, Media Editor, GO News, and CAS Mentor; Dr N K Arora, Chairman of India’s cOVID-19 Working Group of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization; Prof (Dr.) Rajib Dasgupta, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Somasekhar Mulugu, former Associate Editor, The Hindu BusinessLine; Muralikrishnan Chinnadurai, Internews Health Journalism Network; immunization, health and nutrition experts from UNICEF, senior journalists and RJs from prominent newspapers and private FM respectively to discuss the importance of evidence-based journalism in areas that impact children such as Routine Immunization, CoVID-19 and Vaccines, Antibiotics, Nutrition and Primary Healthcare.