Linda Roth and Terry Anzur delivered lecture at SAFMA
Lahore: Two top American journalists Linda Roth and Terry Anzur while delivering their lectures maintained that working journalists must follow media ethics because this practice is a shield of them in compelling and dangerous circumstance journalists face in the field and even within the organizations.
South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) arranged a training lecture of two American leading journalists Terry Anzur and Linda Roth for sharing their experiences in field journalism.
An interactive session titled “Improving the journalistic skills” dealt with practical dangers faced by working journalists in the field and within the organization. Terry Anzur who is a Fulbright Specialist in Broadcast Journalism, shared her experiences with students of mass communication regarding evolutionary process of media development in United States. Terry has won a Golden Mike award from the Southern California Radio-Television News Association for Best Prime Time Newscast. Her hands-on approach to anchoring also contributed to a Golden Mike and Associated Press awards for Best News Writing. She has also won an Emmy for breaking news coverage.
Linda Roth who is an executive producer on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” talked about media ethics, reporting and shared with students her understanding how a journalist should behave under pressures from field demands as well as pressures from within the organization.
While emphasizing the need and quality of strength that should be exhibit by media houses to protect journalists, she narrated an incident about case of year 1976 when a reporter for the Arizona Republic, Don Bolles, was given a tip-off about organised crime by a source and asked to meet him at a hotel and his car was blown by a planted bomb. He died after 11 days of this incident. Apart from being a reporter for the newspaper, he was one of the founding members of a consortium of investigative reporters called, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). “Though shocked, the IRE decided to send out a dozen reporters to work on the same story. `They ended up publishing a 23-part series on organised crime in various newspapers across the country. His car is now part of a museum in Arizona, where children are informed about his courage and strength,` she added.
It was this kind of camaraderie between reporters from various news organisations which was missing in the present circumstances when it was needed most, she said. It may be mentioned she cited same example of strength among media houses during her Karachi lecture just to emphasis that Pakistani journalist who are victim of wrath of terrorists and criminal groups must join hands to fight them back.
It was an excellent lecture for students and also for working journalists.
Linda Roth most recently booked and produced programs that featured world leaders such as Afghan President Hamid Karzai, former Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Israeli President Shimon Peres. She is part of the political team just awarded a Peabody for CNN”S 2008 campaign coverage. She began her journalism career over two decades ago at CNN headquarters in Atlanta and has worked as a producer in the network’s bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington DC. She is an avid world traveler and adventurer.
Terry is co-anchor of “In Depth,” a two-hour, daily, interactive news program on America’s Talking, the NBC cable network that became MSNBC. She was nominated for a national CableACE award as Best Anchor.
Terry is now anchoring weekend morning newscasts on KFI-AM 640, the most listened-to talk radio station in America! She has experience in talk radio and voiceover.
