SJMC STUDENTS TRAINED ON MEDIA RELATED LAWS AND ETHICS

By Sam Gidori

Students of the University of Dar es Salaam, School of Journalism and Mass Communication (UDSM-SJMC) have received a two-days training on media related laws and media ethics as to familiarize them with the laws governing their profession.

The training took place at SJMC located in Mikocheni A, from 19^th to 20^th August 2019, where 50 students pursuing diploma and bachelor degree in different fields of communication. The training is part of a six-weeks training conducted by Internews, a non-governmental organization that facilitates training  on  radio journalism to help young journalists improve their skills on the field.

Speaking during the training, Mr James Marenga, a facilitator, an advocate and a re-known journalist has urged the students to be familiar with media related laws since they are going to be in and around them for the rest of their career.

“The bad thing about law is that it doesn’t care if you knew about it or not. It is going to cut through anyway. You better be on the safe side,” he said.

However, some of the students argued that they are taught media related courses  as part of their university curriculum. But they all agree that what they learn in this training is different from what they learn in class.

“Here we are trained by people who have lived what they teach. Their experience is the most important thing to us,” confirms Aisha Mohammed, a mass communication student.

Mr Gasirigwa Sengiyumba a facilitator in the training and the National Director of MISA Tanzania, a non-government organization which aims to promote media diversity and pluralism by campaigning for freedom of expression and right to information in Tanzania together with Internews, made successful the two-days training on the media related laws at SJMC. He says that they provide such training because they want to create better journalists.

“The reason behind this training is passion for profession. We teach journalists to understand laws, ethics and constructive journalism because we want to have journalists who understand what they do,” he told The Hill Observer as he was heading to St. Augustine University of Tanzania in Mwanza for similar training to journalism students the following day.

"The reason behind this training is passion for profession."- Gasirigwa Sengiyumba

This training on media related laws is part of six-weeks training facilitated by Internews and USAID to journalism students in three universities, University of Dar es Salaam, St Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT Mwanza) and Zanzibar School of Journalism.

In an interview earlier with Mlimani TV, the Internews Assistant Program Officer, Miss Deborah Lwila said that they provide such training to help student learn more practically than in theory.

“Students learn a lot in classes, but they do not really get an exposure to the field. Through this six-weeks summer training, the students are going to learn more from practical training they undergo,” she says.

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Sam Gidori is a student at SJMC taking BA in Mass Communication. Besides writing he is also a producer and editor of both radio and television programs at Mlimani Media.