Bridging the Media

Ali Abbas Zai­di inter­views Sahar Habib Ghazi of Hosh Media about social media, main­stream media and ways of link­ing the two.

Hosh media is a vol­un­teer based orga­ni­za­tion led by estab­lished jour­nal­ists and blog­gers. It aims to trans­form Pakistan’s media indus­try, by empow­er­ing and engag­ing Pakistan’s youth in qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism online, and then syn­di­cat­ing their work to estab­lished TV, radio and print out­lets across the coun­try.

Ali: Can you tell us about your­self? How did your romance with writing/journalism begin?
SH: I began to ride the media wave in Pak­istan before break­ing news took over the 24/7 news cycle. At Geo News in Islam­abad, I report­ed on the 2005 earth­quake, inter­viewed Malaysian oppo­si­tion leader Anwar Ibrahim, and pro­filed a human traf­fick­ing vic­tim. In 2006, I moved to Karachi to help launch Pak­istan’s first Eng­lish lan­guage TV chan­nel, Dawn­News. As a pro­duc­er and lat­er senior duty edi­tor, I man­aged a team of reporters, copy edi­tors, pro­duc­ers and anchors while set­ting the day’s head­lines and direct­ing cov­er­age of break­ing news events. In 2009, I pro­duced the first doc­u­men­tary series on U.S.-Pakistan rela­tions, “The Dis­pos­able Ally.” I have also report­ed for the New York Times in Pak­istan.

I grad­u­at­ed with a bachelor’s degree in polit­i­cal sci­ence and eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, Ann Arbor in 2003. In 2010, I was select­ed to join the pres­ti­gious Knight Fel­low­ship at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. The pro­gram focus­es on entre­pre­neur­ship, lead­er­ship and inno­va­tion in jour­nal­ism and that is where we launched Hosh media in May 2011.

Ali: Why did you feel the need to start such a plat­form?
SH: Two in three Pak­ista­nis have yet to cel­e­brate their thir­ti­eth birth­day. Pak­istan is an over­whelm­ing­ly young coun­try, yet the youth voice is large­ly miss­ing from our main­stream media. We at Hosh want to make our media more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the majority—the youth—because we believe the more young voic­es straight from the ground, the more demo­c­ra­t­ic our soci­ety will be.
Since inter­net pen­e­tra­tion is only 10 per­cent in Pak­istan, we men­tor and work with our con­trib­u­tors to pro­duce qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism online, then syn­di­cate their con­tent to main­stream news organ­i­sa­tions, so their work can have more reach and impact.

Ali: What is cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism?
SH: In its broad­est term, cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism is when indi­vid­u­als with­out jour­nal­ism train­ing use the tools of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy (Inter­net and mobile) to cre­ate and dis­trib­ute con­tent.

Ali: Is cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism trust­wor­thy?
SH: All jour­nal­ism-main­stream and cit­i­zen-comes down to cred­i­bil­i­ty. And cred­i­bil­i­ty is root­ed in exper­tise and trust­wor­thi­ness (estab­lished reli­a­bil­i­ty). Just like it takes time for news orga­ni­za­tions to estab­lish cred­i­bil­i­ty, it takes time for cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists to estab­lish indi­vid­ual cred­i­bil­i­ty before they are con­sid­ered trust­wor­thy.

Ali: How do Hosh media work?
SH: Our cit­i­zen con­trib­u­tors, we like to call them ‘Hoshyaar’ reporters, they get indi­vid­u­alised men­tor­ing from our team of vol­un­teer edi­tors. When Hoshyaar reporters (a mix of blog­gers, tweet­ers, aspir­ing jour­nal­ists and ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phers) upload news and tips on to our site, www.hoshmedia.org, our team of vol­un­teer edi­tors and pro­duc­ers sift through con­tri­bu­tions, curate uploaded sto­ries and even­tu­al­ly men­tor and work with indi­vid­ual Hoshyaar mem­bers to make their con­tri­bu­tions pub­lish­able and broad­cast-wor­thy.
Ali: How can plat­forms like Hosh media impart basic jour­nal­is­tic ethics to them?
SH: At Hosh, we aim to impart jour­nal­is­tic ethics to cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists and main­stream jour­nal­ists work­ing in Pak­istan, because the exist­ing media land­scape in the coun­try leaves a lot to be desired. 10 years ago there were no inde­pen­dent news chan­nels, now there are dozens. Fre­quent bomb­ings and sui­cide attacks have pushed these inex­pe­ri­enced TV reporters and pro­duc­ers into a dizzy­ing envi­ron­ment of break­ing news. In the hec­tic news envi­ron­ment, organ­i­sa­tions strug­gle to set aside resources and time to train reporters. In response to this chal­lenge Hosh has pro­duced video tuto­ri­als avail­able on our site. Our first batch is a six-part series called ‘Crash-course in Jour­nal­ism’ star­ring vet­er­an Pak­istani jour­nal­ist Abbas Nasir. In the series he talks about the six sticky sub­jects or eth­i­cal dilem­mas jour­nal­ists in Pak­istan now face.

Ali: Due to inter­net rev­o­lu­tion, the world (and media) is just at a tran­si­tion­al point where it’s fig­ur­ing out what its future holds, what do you think is the future of media in Pak­istan?
SH: Mobile. The future of media is mobile. And the future of Pak­istan is mobile media. Pak­istan is cur­rent­ly the fastest grow­ing mobile mar­ket in the world. Soon, ‘smart phones’ will be the only avail­able mobiles in the mar­ket and they will also be cheap. The only thing stop­ping growth in ‘mobile Inter­net’ in Pak­istan has been low data rates. Cur­rent­ly only 4–5 mil­lion mobile users have access to Inter­net through GPRS/EDGE ser­vices. But in Novem­ber, the Prime Min­is­ter gave the green light to auc­tion 3G licens­es. In 3G ser­vices, cus­tomers can get data speed of up to 2Mbps, while the high­est pos­si­ble speed in GSM is 50Kpbs and in EDGE is 387Kbps. With in a few years of 3G being avail­able in Pak­istan, everyone’s cell phone will have the poten­tial to become a mobile radio, TV and news­pa­per.

Ali: What mes­sage would you like to give to aspir­ing cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists, blog­gers and dig­i­tal cam­paign­ers?
SH: Pak­istan faces many problems—a crum­bling edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, cor­rupt offi­cials, stran­gu­lat­ing extrem­ism, intol­er­ance, infla­tion, a bro­ken health sys­tem, chron­ic injus­tice, an ener­gy cri­sis and the list goes on and it will con­tin­ue to go on if we keep think­ing about it alone in our rooms or aloud on our blogs.

We need to build on oth­er peo­ple’s ideas and sto­ries; we need to ask ques­tions and exper­i­ment with answers, we need to pool our col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences and intel­li­gence to tru­ly fig­ure out solu­tions.

If you are under 30, you are now the major­i­ty in Pak­istan and have an addi­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. Your voice will shape this coun­try. So don’t keep your opin­ions and thoughts bot­tled up in your head. The Inter­net cou­pled with mobile tech­nol­o­gy has com­plete­ly bro­ken all bar­ri­ers to broad­cast one­self. Tell Pak­istan and the world what you think. But you need to go beyond the dig­i­tal space because Inter­net pen­e­tra­tion is still low in Pak­istan. So reg­is­ter with Hosh media and let our team give you reach beyond the dig­i­tal space. And always remem­ber: your voice mat­ters.