By Sainabou Sambou
The Media Academy for Journalism and Communication (MAJaC) has on Monday 14th March 2022 organised its MAJaC week. During the three days event students at the school are expected to demonstrate their talents in poetry, drama, news presentation and sports activities such as football and athletics. The event started with a march past from Westfield, Traffic light to the MAJaC ground.
Sang Mendy the Managing Director of MAJaC said journalism is created for strengthening democracy and strengthening democracy is by media development. When media practitioners are developed it is they who go out and hold the government accountable for their actions he said.
He said MAJaC has over the years continued to produce quality media professionals some who work as editors, producers and some in government service helping to strengthen the state’s communication mechanism. Revealing that the current GPU President and Secretary-General were students of MAJaC.
He further noted that MAJaC started in 2010 when he was a student with only one class and in 2013 the school got another class.
“When we combine 2010 and 2013 students, we have 22 people working in the media some of them have moved from mainstream media to the communications sector, “the GPU President said.
“In 2015 to 2018 we started developing to become a school that would produce mass communication graduates and today we are talking about eight active classes and three classes taking their internship in total. We have two hundred and fifty or more students. It is not only an achievement for us but an achievement for the media looking back to 2010 there was no journalism training institute, “he said.
Making her presentation Fatu Camara CEO of The Fatu network said being a journalist you have to be credible and if you are not credible there is no way you can make it the field of journalism. She said that as a journalist before writing a story you need to do a lot of research and fact-checking.
She added that in the media everyone wants to rush and post things on their Facebook page but encouraged journalists that when they write their stories, they should give it to someone to double-check it so as to avoid mistakes.
“There is no money in the media all the media owners are suffering we have to pay tax, buy equipment and also pay our staff. Sometimes the amount of tax sent to us is in millions. I think this is something that we could talk with the GPU president about and see how we can talk to the government. They should know that this is not an industry where you make a lot of money,” she stated.
She told the MAJaC students that they must research and edit any item they share like a professional journalist. “Some people will rush and post something on social media and there is a big mistake on it, and everybody will screenshot it and start sharing it,” she said.
Moreover, she said as a journalist you are to be creative and do things that others are not doing. That is how she said you get the attention and people will follow your stories. “Go to the provinces and look for human interest stories,” she encouraged.
Muhammed S Bah Gambia Press Union President said the media gives food to the people because information is so powerful that it empowers the citizens to make decisions.
He added that as a journalist you have to know your role which is holding government accountable.
“Government collects taxes, how are they going to utilise those taxes? the media should play a role to ensure that every butut is spent correctly,” he said.
