Moses Matenga recently in Windhoek, Namibia
Established media houses should adapt to new media trends or risk sliding into oblivion in the current digital media growth, a United Nations agency has said.
Speaking in Windhoek during the UNESCO and Public Media Alliance Indaba on social media guidelines for media professionals and journalists in Southern Africa, Djaffar Moussa-Ekadhum head of office UNESCO representative to Namibia said there was need for media companies to invest more in digital media to survive under the circumstances.
Journalists from Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mauritius, Seychelles, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Zambia gathered in Windoek to develop social media guidelines for media professionals and journalists in the region.
“To survive and thrive, established media companies need to embrace social media platforms as an intrinsic part of their daily editorial, production and commissioning processes,” Moussa-Ekadhum said.
“The media business is being shaken to the core by the rise of digital networks and social media. Citizen journalists are redrawing the boundaries of journalism,” he said.
He said new threats to confront the media needed fresh guidelines to be formulated to maintain professionalism in the digital era.
“At UNESCO, we need clinical, original and well researched journalism guided by high professional ethical standards and quality media education – combined with audiences that have the right media and information literacy skills,” he said.
Moussa-Ekadhum said in the discharge of duties and using social media, journalists must maintain professionalism despite a barrage of attacks especially targeted to discredit their work.
He said UNESCO was running several programmes to promote free-flow of information and enhance development.
Several countries the world over are faced dots challenges to deal and make use of digital media platforms. This comes also as the platforms we’re being used to propagate “fake news” with most people using pseudo names.
Meanwhile, a United Kingdom based digital media expert who was part of the programme said there was need for journalists and digital media users to maintain professionalism on social media hence the importance of guidelines.
Robert Freeman who was coordinating a social media indaba on guidelines for media professionals and journalists said digital media must be guided by basic tenets of journalism.
