28 Mar 2017

The managing partner of Motlabaseyo Integrated Management Services, Mr Metlhaetsile Leepile said the workshop had been in the making for the past eight months and that they also took off from where others have left.
Speaking during the consultative workshop on partner collaboration between media and training institutions, Mr Leepile said they identified the problem as being multi faceted, and among problems identified was the decline in the standards of reporting news by public and private media over the last couple of years.
He said this was borne out of the multiplicity of factors which include failure to adhere to ethical and quality standards.
He said the other factor was juniorisation of the newsrooms in the country and the growing malice of check-book journalism.
The other problem, he said, was the absence of a training programme to address the specific needs of the industry, adding that this was at the level of academic on the job and in-service training.
He noted that quality of training was affected by lack of resources, citing that schools depend on government sponsorships to train people entering the profession, adding that training of such people has no bearing on the carrying capacity of the media houses.
“The media houses themselves are poorly resourced,” he said, adding that most of them do not have training budgets. He also added that there has been a dis-connect between media houses and training institutions.
He observed that the problem was exacerbated by the lack of dialogue as there was a syndrome of working in silos and the absence of partner collaboration.
The regional chairperson of Media Institute of Southern Africa, Mr Modise Maphanyane said the interaction would set issues of training and desire for collaboration. ENDS