The panellists discussed the state of world media, the importance of questioning ourselves as journalists, how “relevance” plays a vital role in presenting news to the audience, use of technology and how newspapers are surviving in the digital age.
Nayla, UAE's first female director and producer said, "One thing that always vibrate in us as humans, is innate, to get a great story. As a filmmaker you are not worried how people see your work, that’s not your job. There has to be a narrative that needs to be told" and added, "Film is very powerful."
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Roland also spoke about adding value with each story, each narrative as journalists. He reflected: We have 200-300 fascinating stories on our desk, for us to leave the office but that's not relevance. It's not getting us to reality. The beautiful thing is we are not alone in this race of losing trust. But who is providing value?”
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Vicky Kapur, executive editor of Khaleej Times said, "We all understand that content is important. The digital platform has changed the game, the way content is presented."
Speaking on whether news has changed in the time of technology, he said,"News business if serious business. Digital presents 'Cats in the jar' kind of content, not that it is less important but newspapers have not evolved. It's still about putting ink on paper."
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Roland said, "We need to get back to where we were when we started, get back the courage that we had. We spend a lot of time talking about terror attacks. I come from, a country where we talk of state terror attack. We learned that the terrorist can no longer be a terrorist, if he is not finding a sympathy climate around him. As long as we give terrorists front page we create 100 terrorists.”
(Photograph:WION)