Media Foundation 360 is a multirole organization that pivots around development of journalism and journalist in Pakistan. Understanding the constant need of calibrating journalist to highest possible standards and evolving tools to practice objective journalism, one of the key areas Media foundation focuses on, is journalist capacity/skill building.
In collaboration with our esteemed internationally respected Advisory Board, our team designs time-efficient ethics and skill training modules that are taught employing the most modern teaching methods by the best trainers.
Training Sessions
Since our inception in 2014, we have conducted 53 Training sessions to-date in 41 districts of all four provinces and Gilgit-Baltistan. Diversity, both socioeconomic and gender are one of our core values. We conducted four all-female trainings while ensuring a spread of our raining to otherwise ignored districts of the country in addition to major metropolises. We have trained over 1000 journalists working as professionals in leading and emerging media organizations.
The trainings are designed to culminate with the production of high quality stories that matchup to the international standards practiced by the best. Our organization, in addition to incubating these stories during training, provides the journalist with top-notch international and local mentoring throughout the story production curve. These stories are incentivized by MF360 through monetary remuneration and publishment on our websites in four different languages.
Pioneering Webinar culture in Pakistan
MF360 is pioneer of training through webinar in Pakistan. We started training journalists through webinar in 2014 and held 40 webinars on different topics of journalism. Other than in person training sessions, we trained another 600 journalists through our webinars.
Publications
News Lens Pakistan
MF360 is the only organisation in Pakistan which not only conducts training sessions but also urges the trainees to produce content. We launched News Lens Pakistan, the first ever news cooperative of Pakistan in 2014. It produced quality stories in four languages; English, Urdu, Pashto and Sindhi which is used by national and regional languages’ newspapers. Till date, News lens Pakistan has produced over 1700 English stories with their Urdu, Pashto and Sindhi translations. Editors and mentors evaluate the content through a special tool.
Fortnightly Truth Tracker (Printed)
In November 2016, MF360 launched fortnightly Truth Tracker magazine which is largely circulated amongst politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, students of journalism and libraries of universities and colleges. Truth Tracker introduced a new innovation in Pakistani media which is called ‘Accountability through Statement Fact-Checking and Promise-Tracking. It tracks manifesto-based promises of three parties PML-N, PTI and PPP as they are running the federal and provincial governments.
Media Monitoring
Through our Media Meter initiative, we monitor and rate media organizations on criteria of content, authenticity, research and investigative effort over Prime-Time News Bulletins and printed stories. We are providing maximum security to in-field journalists across Pakistan. If not, MF360 would work to get a proper security policy implemented in media organizations.
Curriculum Development
Identifying the disconnect between curricula and rapidly evolving practice of journalism in Pakistan, MF360 partnered with the initiative of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism’s initiative to reform and reinvent courses and coursework in leading universities of the country offering journalism degrees. We are currently engaged in the process of facilitating the designing of Election Reporting course at the level of Master’s Degree in journalism. We have successfully achieved much in this regard while are striving for more.
Awards and Acknowledgements
News Lens Pakistan and Truth Tracker won six awards in total for producing best stories in the field of human rights, health and data journalism. BBC also acknowledged our innovation of promise-tracking and did a detailed report about our work.
Raising Voice for Media Persons’ Security
MF360’s President Mubasher Bukhari conducted several training sessions regarding media persons’ security for various platforms. Truth Tracker also monitors security issues to journalists across the world on fortnightly basis and publishes a regular feature ‘Media Tracker’.
Partnerships
Media Foundation360 developed its reputation as a highly professional and dedicated organisation rapidly. Its good reputation led to partnerships with United Press International, NearMedia LLC, an Atlanta-based media organisation and Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University.
Media Foundation 360 is committed to work for the protection of rights of journalists, while imparting ethical journalistic practices. We aim to cultivate a professional media environment in Pakistan that is conducive for free functioning democracy. By training professionals and keeping a close check on media outlets we intend to elevate standards of journalism in the country. Through thorough Research and studies we expose breaches in ethical standards and also propose solutions.
