Development Has To Go With Environment

By Akshita Singh

Delhi School of Journalism organized  a web lecture on 5th September, 2020. Special correspondent and Journalist from Pioneer Newspaper Ms Archana Jyoti,  delivered lecture on the topic Environment journalism and its challenges.

    In her lecture Ms Archana express her views and basic facts and challenges that a journalist  have to come across during environment reporting. She said, "Environment is amongst one the most sensitive issues of contemporary times, and environment journalism is to commute information about those unspoken, unnoticed sensitivities of the environment". Environmental journalism is all about making people aware of the surrounding they're living in, and it includes people who think differently.

    Ms Jyoti elucidated on the critical issues India is facing regarding the environment. The first major issue is the apathy of the people, people are lacking enthusiasm in environment and environmental issues. People generally don't want to pay the amount of attention they must pay towards these issues, basically because they generally are not sensational in nature. Another major issue is the mistaken model of development adopted by various governments at state and centre level. In the name of development, many serious environmental issues are being neglected.  The last but not the least, the amount of coverage that Indian media provides to such important environmental issues. Media is the fourth pillar of democracy, democracy, the form of government that is people oriented, for the people, to the people, by the people, if it's really about us, how can such important issues that directly are affecting our lives could be given almost no coverage in the media.

    Further in the session, Ms Jyoti elaborated on what challenges a journalist has to face while reporting on the environment. She elaborated that there are basically four major issues, first that there's limited access to the government data that journalists have, second, Indian reporters and journalists mostly don't prefer to write primarily on the environment. In result , the reporters themselves lack interest in their jobs and hence, become failures in terms of gathering attention of people on these issues. And at last, there're no such institutions that could train reporters the skills that are required for environmental reporting.

    She concluded her lecture by emphasizing on the ingredients of environmental articles and reports. She said, "Convey what the science has revealed, explain what is not understood by people, analyze the whole issue, explain the situation and amount of uncertainty amongst people, and the future aspect of the step"

    In the end the lecture went interactive. Students, teachers, and professors asked their questions to Ms Jyoti. She entertained each and every question with full enthusiasm and answered them really well.

The lecture started with the introduction of Ms Jyoti by Dr Mansvini Yogi, OSD, DSJ. Yogi introduced the speaker and threw light on some of the great achievements of the speaker, Ms Jyoti has experience of about 16 years in the field of environmental journalism.

 At last, M. Yogi, OSD, DSJ, proposed a vote of thanks. It was a memorable web event.