Online journalists must get professionally organised, said the Free Media Movement issuing a media release last week. This was following a workshop for online journalists, at the Ocean Hotel, Colombo on December 5 and 6. It was attended by online journalists active in various spheres of digital media such as webs, blogs, you-tube and facebook.
Recommendations of a report titled ‘A small scale study about Digital Media’ produced jointly by the FMM and the Working Jounalists’ Association paved the way for the workshop conducted by the FMM under the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Union to Union program sponsorship. The Resource persons for the Workshop were FMM Convenor, C. Dodawatte, Secretary, Lasantha de Silva,Treasurer , Thaha Mussamil and Executive member , Attorney-at Law Jagath Liyanaarachchi and Complaints Officer, Press Commission , Kamal Liyanaarachchi. Dhaneshi Yatawara of the FMM moderated the Workshop.
The journalists discussed various problems faced by online journalists and the need to get organised into a professional body in overcoming the same. The first day’s two sessions were under the themes ‘ Digital Media and the Law’ and ‘The current challenges faced by Digital Media Personnel and how to face them’ respectively. The first session of the second day was on ‘Media Ethics and Digital media while the second session was on ‘Identifying future activities’.