 I see a few wary faces, a few hungry faces. I'm feeling very proud to announce that we moved to our final panel discussion for the day, ladies and gentlemen. We'll be discussing the motion of status of media education in India. The panel chair for this session, please welcome Mr. Suman Kejha, Executive Editor BW Business World. Joining him on stage to debate the motion, please welcome Professor Stephen Quinn, Principal Mojo Media Insights Professor Devesh Kishore, Professor Emeritus Makanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Mass Communication Noida Campus Professor Biswajith Das, Director Center for Culture, Media and Governance Jamia Milya Islamya New Delhi Professor Sike Sardana, Member Academic Council Kushabhau Thakre University of Journalism and Mass Communication Raipur Professor Ujwal Chaudhary, Dean School of Media Pearl Academy, Delhi and Mumbai Mr. Sajal Mukherjee, Director APJ Institute of Mass Communication Dwarga New Delhi Professor Hemant Joshi, Course Director H.J. IIMC, now will be Hindi Journalism Professor Sunil Khan Bahra, Head Tejpur University, I request all my panelists to please join the chair on stage. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, so in a way we have been discussing this since this morning, the status of media education in India we have a very distinguished panel here, now you know in a different context we say that we get the democracy we deserve similarly we get the media we deserve, but then do we have the necessary apparatus of the media world to create a world of media persons, to create the infrastructure to support democracy, to support the fourth state we have a very distinguished panel here and maybe start with Professor Stephen Quinn, Principal Mojo Media Insights what do you think, what do you think about the discussion sir? I feel like for 32 years and I don't understand India, so how can I talk about education in this country? I'll talk about the result of the cricket last night. The result, second point that what is your combination between the different areas and imparting it through labs in the morning session it was said that the example was given of that film where it was said entertainment, entertainment, entertainment I would say no, not that you can have give the emphasis on reading, writing and practice these three elements have to be kept in mind, while we are imparting education in India we do not have any organization which can train the faculty members in imparting the education I am surprised in this country when a teacher is appointed in intermediate class in high school he should have along with the master degree a beard degree also but when he or she comes to the university he can have the same master degree without beard well what does it mean? it means that our teacher who comes as a faculty member he has no training whatsoever how to impart teaching program to the students this is my second point there should be a national council of education, media education, research and training which is very important if this council is given this responsibility maybe it can be located at Indian Institute of Mass Communication or it can be located in any university but the point is that there should be a certified national council of media education, research and training where we can organize time to time the courses related to media training for our faculty members third point I wanted to mention it we should have media labs we find in many institutions media labs are missing print media lab should be there where you should have all the softwares to bring out a daily newspaper or weekly newspaper you should have a broadcasting lab at least you should have equipments in case of television you should have all those rating equipments along with camera and all that what I am trying to emphasize is if you do not have the labs then how are you going to train him so therefore this council will also be given the responsibility to find out whether these organizations have all these facilities are not I think if these three small points which I have raised are taken care of there will be lot of improvement in the present status of media education in this country thank you now it said that like actors, actors cannot be created they are born actors similarly journalists cannot be created in classrooms you know they are born journalists so professor Biswajid Das you come from distinguished Jamiya it is not here so can we go on to professor Sardana please professor Sardana what are your thoughts can we create journalists in the classroom good evening everybody even though I did my PG diploma in journalism from Punjabi University in 1955 but the basics of public lessons I have learned the hard way I spent 31 years in BHEL starting from PRO and ending up as general manager and then took to teaching I spent another 18 years in teaching my impression is that the teachers in media schools they need to be given orientation in the exact working of that particular media what kind of situation is this that a person who is a gold medalist in MA, APR or journalism or something he does MP, he does PhD and he becomes assistant professor and becomes professor and he has not entered into a newspaper office even one day I also know that he has not entered a corporate public lesson department even in one day so what is important is that these teachers they should be seconded to the media houses they should go and see there what kind of work is there number one and second is that the senior persons who have spent lifetime in the practice of media they should be actively associated with the media schools so that they can bring all the experiences that they have learned I have seen right from the state level, local level, state level, national level, international level how public lessons is done and there is no shortcut there is no injection or capsule that you just take and there is no question of whining and dining it is a very serious matter and it has to be dealt with very carefully and intelligently then only PR can be taught and third point which I would like to make is that the students somebody asked a question how can we make the students fearless we cannot make the students fearless it is just it is inborn it is inherent in the person what kind of and then but and last point which I would like to make that the history of media teachers or media persons they should be made compulsory to be read by the students those so that they know how a person what kind of challenges he faced and how did he rise from A to B and C and ultimately on the top thank you very much thank you sir one important point he raised was that the classroom does not serve much purpose in fact we learn the hard way when we are on the job you know so it is on the job training when we learn on the job in the newsroom that the real learning starts so next question that I want to pose to Prof. Ujwal Chaudhary is has the classroom become redundant the entire process of communication that we imbibe in the newsroom in the journalism lessons that we imbibe in newsrooms or say in the PR consultancy so what is the role that the classroom fulfills here I would not say that the classroom is redundant I would rather say that the classroom can be made much more impactful if certain changes are done and I would not restrict to journalism I would rather look at the entire domain of media and communication so from platforms like print and TV the focus now has to also include mobile journalism and convergent journalism where the same story is actually expressed in various manner in different volumes and sizes across various media so 256 characters for Twitter 2 to 3 paragraphs for online 7 to 8 paragraphs or maybe around 500 words for newspaper a more detailed story for magazine a podcast for radio or online so therefore there has to be the same story ability given to our youngsters to transform the same story into various formats and sizes cinema earlier it was cinema focus in the classrooms as well we moved on to television focus what we now need to make the classrooms also aware and alert to web entertainment because it's the web entertainment that's calling the shots in the times to come earlier in Brandcom the focus was only on advertising we moved on to PR and events as has been already mentioned but what's now needed is an integrated brand communication or a digital brand communication now this part of the awareness is still very low in the classroom we had a lot of discussion on academic research we moved on to communication research what we perhaps now need to bring research centricity in the practice of communication we need to bring in contextual or applied research due to lack of time I'm not giving examples and detailing verbose expression our expressions were very verbose lot of words were used what we need to move is visual expression and data based expression so infographics use of infographics use of visuals audio and video both to tell the same story which we used so many words to tell earlier we need to also move we have traditionally thought that journalism as a reporting is about 5Ws and 1H and views are about opinions opinionated articles we need to move to a new formula of storytelling storytelling through multiple means again I'm not getting into details of it we had our education which is very degree centric in fact the only purpose that many of the universities serve is only dishing out degrees we need to move to job and then we brought in job centricity with the talk of placements in the private sector what we perhaps now need is to move to career centricity skill centricity beyond jobs and degrees there has also been the functions of communication which were information, entertainment, education perhaps we need to now move to new areas of engagement and interaction so it's not how many people you reach the power of the media is understood by that rather how many people you engage even if you reach a smaller number so engagement is the key word earlier our focus was to learn more of media vehicles pre-in TV, radio now the focus is shifting to communication and conversation rather so it's not it doesn't matter if a particular brand in the communication in the ecosystem is criticized in a social media what's important is that people are engaging with the brand good or bad for both sorts of conversation earlier almost no management media management content was there limited media management was brought in still now in most places what's now needed and I would like to humbly put almost entire media education of India does not have media sales as a paper does not have OTT as a content of media education there is not sensitive to the new requirements of audience measurements people do talk about TRPs and all but there is bark now hardly it's a part of any education there so audience measurements, media sales media management, understanding of OTT and web entertainment these are the new areas we believed in recorded shooting we did armchair or within studio recorded shooting we moved on to practicing live shooting but what's now is required to go beyond and bring about augmented and virtual reality shooting AR, VR shooting again not getting into details we always had a concept centricity we were focusing on ideas and concepts we moved to context perhaps now what's required as well is a design thinking in the context of media design thinking which brings concept context and packaging of the content together and the last point we always believed that media is about agenda setting and the classrooms taught that I would rather would suggest and then we said mirroring the society but today what's required is to understand media to open the gates not close it as agenda setters and bring about a lot of user generated content into the media the whole concept of new media and mainstream media this division has to actually be broken and there has to be a seamless continuous media between so called mainstream and so called new media without detailing I just wanted to put these points in front thank you professor thank you very much now a journalist without credibility is no journalist at all so what is the role that the classroom can play in instilling values like credibility in a journalist so I would request professor Sajal Mukherjee director APJ to hold forth on this piece since morning we were attending all the panels we heard all the panels and most of the points were covered there but to Chris and give you the answer the credibility of an institute college or centers is dependent on the kind of curriculum that they are conducting how balanced they are industry interaction industry interaction that how they are inviting or encouraging the industry professional to come and take classes and interact with the students the kind of infrastructure and facilities that they are providing and the kind of placement they are giving they are legacy now these are the basic points where credibility of an institute is being judged and there are also institutes which are creating their credibility or through their marketing or PR effect so basically you have two streams one is the credible institution and there are a lot of visible institutions now in this the most preferred institute where people like to go and take the industry people take their students for their jobs and all they offer is the institute which are more credible and visible they are an institute which are low on credibility but high on visibility but they are just attracting the students and there are institute which are low on visibility and high on credibility their focus is basically to create and turn out students which are industry ready they are students which can go into the academics and the research and pursue their knowledge pursuit so this is how broadly you can look at the institute and judge the institute in terms of the credibility parameter thank you Professor Sajal Mukherjee now may request may request Professor Sunil Kanth Behera head Tehpuri University I will go there I am basically a teacher you know so I request you to wind up the discussion and also pass the continuity I will, I will I might be a little caustic I was not here the whole day very good evening to all of you I know we are in a very informal setting that makes me feel that I am in Delhi and we are talking about a very serious subject the panel was for status of media education I have been teaching communication for the last 38 years I do not call myself a media educator I am teaching communication of which media is a part a component may be a very important component but I teach communication we are here in Delhi we talk in unison about the requirements of education today we do not talk about the commitment we do not talk about the difficulties we do not talk about the challenges we simply talk about a sugar coated view that it should be like this I will not agree to it I will stay for 5-7 minutes I am sure you will not listen but that is my job as a teacher education communication education there is growth in India when we started in 60s maybe there were 20 institutions educating on communication but today we have about 1000 institutions of varied nature varied nomenclature offering these courses but there is lot of diversities and widespread disparities in education today if we think about the geographic disparity a university in Delhi cannot be equal with an institute in Odisha we have metro centers of education capital cities have universities and colleges and institutes and in rural areas also we have communication departments and there is a lot of disparity what we teach here in Delhi will not be acceptable to the students of northeast or to the students of Odisha they come from different backgrounds talking about the institutions again we have government universities central universities, state universities private universities media and journalism schools they have different hizndas they have different problems we cannot standardize in one session I was listening to standardization of communication education that itself is not possible and also not feasible maybe we can have some commonalities in the curriculum but those need to be contextualized in different institutions and in different settings talking about the nomenclature again we are giving them diplomas we are giving them short term skill based courses we are teaching them at graduate level we are teaching them at post graduate MPL and PSA level but unfortunately in the UDC communication is still today a vocational subject we do not have that kind of recognition as other disciplines have still it is being offered as a vocational subject and of course we have grown quantitatively we have grown but qualitatively it is much less than desired there is a change of if we look at the journey of we are talking much about media growth media has changed education has also changed earlier we were teaching journalism today we are teaching communication as a discipline we are teaching not only the skills but we are teaching the sociology of communication the ecology of communication the economics of communication we are teaching them all because we are not simply training them to be employed in the media organizations we also have a duty to train them to become teachers train them to become policy makers that is our purpose our purpose is not simply to be job driven and again there is a difference earlier we were teaching journalism we are now teaching communication we were teaching earlier writing skills today Prof. Chaudhary talked about we have to teach them not only writing skills but we have to teach them visual skills we have to teach them audio visual skills we have to teach them the digital skills and moreover we have to teach them the technological skills because media has become technology driven today and honestly speaking if this teaching them the technological skills have somehow is over set out the creative skills of the discipline students are more into I will take two more minutes earlier education media education was content driven now it is technology driven earlier we were teaching what is news today we are teaching them what is fake news earlier we were teaching them information scarcity today we are teaching them information overload earlier we were teaching them only functions of communication and today we are teaching them dysfunctions of communication we were teaching them the information order today we are teaching them what is information disorder what is misinformation What is misinformation? What is disinformation? What is mal-information? So we have moved lot of if we are teaching them print and analog we are now teaching them digital and mojo so Growth is there qualitatively and quantitatively, but certainly there is a lack of commitment I will say from ourselves Over these 45 or 50 years we have failed We have been debating on how to make media education more relevant, but we have been debating even today much depend on the younger faculties, I'm very Proud to say that today we have a Band of younger faculty members who are keen to take this education forward But again the UGC has made it they Running after this API is forced. I don't blame them for that, but that is the reality So think about these things and I have tried to show you the mirror Not with sugar coated words, but that is the reality go to a Department in a rural area and you will find the low-intake quality Not all the students are like the deli student. So when you think about education think about the family perspective and Think about the solution. Thank you very much very relevant points. Thank you so much professor Please have you see So that brings to an end this enlightening session of discussions on the state of media education in India Over to you Thank you so much gentlemen. I'd like to call upon Mr. Sagar Kaushik Go founder please and strides foundation to kindly come on stage and felicitate all of our speakers Mr. Kaushik Thank you gentlemen, thank you so much I'd request professor Stephen Quinn to stay on and deliver the guest of honor speech to round off the day Sorry friends This is my duty. I believe to thank extent for media and business world and particularly Prapsasurvi Dahiya for taking of this and also Publishing the directory Which perhaps? No other teacher in the country has succeeded in doing this a big round of a plot for Surabhi Dahiya thing for her wonderful work of publishing the directory. Thank you very much