Readers can play an effective role in making mass media more ethical and responsible through better understanding of news and its critical analysis. The media too has a responsibility to help the readers acquire such "news literacy" skills.

These views were expressed at a discussion tiled "News Literacy and Ethics" held in the capital by Management and Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) in partnership with Unicef, Bangladesh, said a MRDI press release issued yesterday.

The views-exchange meeting

recommended the formation of readers' forums; training of their members; monitoring of mass media by the forums; dialogue among readers and media organisations; opportunities for the readers to give their opinion; formation of online platforms and the inclusion of news literacy in school curricula.

Prof Dr Mizanur Rahman, chairman of National Human Rights Commission, addressed the meeting as the chief guest while Md Shahid Hossain, planning and development adviser of MRDI, presented the keynote paper.

In his key-note paper, Shahid underlined the need for increasing

readers’ ability to better understand and analyse news reports. This way, he said, readers and listeners can help improve quality and ethical standards of news...

Today, news literacy is discussed the world over, mentioned Mizanur.

He said news literacy empowered the readers with the skill to correctly understand and judge a news report. And development of such skills among the readers could also help the mass media respond to the readers' growing demand for objective, accurate and ethically-correct news, which would ultimately help the mass media achieve excellence in its reporting.

Mizanur also emphasized the

need for teaching schoolchildren values, morality and ethics so that they could better understand the ethical practices of the media.

MRDI Executive Director Hasibur Rahman in his welcome speech said, "News literacy and news ethics are interlinked. Journalists will be more careful about ethical aspects of their reports when readers are able to make a critical analysis of the news."

The discussion was part of the study MRDI is currently conducting countrywide to judge readers' sense of news literacy and ethics under a project with Unicef, Bangladesh.

Farid Hossain, former chief executive officer of INFOCUS, also spoke.