Breadfruit (malangkota.go.id) – The Malang City Communication and Informatics Agency (Diskominfo) held a journalism training for citizen reporters at the Ijen Suites Resort & Convention Ballroom, Malang City, Wednesday (7/6/2023). Deputy Mayor of Malang Ir. H. Sofyan Edi Jarwoko was present and officially opened the training activity.
In his speech, the Deputy Mayor of Malang, often called Bung Edi, expressed his appreciation for the implementation of this journalism training activity. According to him, this activity is very good because the community is trained to be fond of and correct in writing a news product. That way, collaboration will be created between the government and the community in conveying information, especially those related to public policy.
"Later, if it is synergized with the government agenda, it will greatly assist the government's tasks themselves," he explained.
In the era of open information like today, Bung Edi said that the level of public curiosity is very high. Therefore, it is necessary to balance it with the ability to write, deliver news, and also the ability to socialize programs effectively and on target.
Bung Edi advised citizen journalists that in distributing information to the public to maintain the integrity of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI). He emphasized that this is the most important message from the government system. Then the importance of conveying information related to government programs, policies, regulations, and development programs that have been programmed as part of efforts to improve the quality of service.
"Regarding this policy, it must be conveyed to the public whose input and feedback are very important. Don't let it happen that regulations are made but turn out to be inapplicable to the public," he added.
Furthermore, Bung Edi said that realizing an independent society is the main goal of the government. The involvement of citizens in development, starting from the process of compiling programs, discussions, and finally implementation is very much needed. Therefore, these citizen journalists are expected to have the ability to write journalistic products professionally which will later be able to help voice the needs of the surrounding community.
Meanwhile, the Head of Malang City Communication and Information Service, M. Nur Widianto, S.Sos in his speech revealed that this activity was carried out in order to fulfill the increasing capacity of the community related to the world of journalism or better known as citizen journalism. The presence of citizen journalism, he said, can help in terms of fulfilling the information needs of the community, because various information needed by the public is not always fulfilled by conventional mass media.
However, in its development, citizen journalism products are not always positive. Currently, citizen journalism also has the potential to cause something that has a negative impact, one of which is false information or better known as hoaxes. Based on the results of the identification of the Ministry of Communication and Information for the period August 2018 to March 2023, there were 11.357 hoax issues spread across various digital platforms and have always increased every year. In line with this, the existence of wise journalists is very much needed as a shaper of the mainstream of opinion and discourse in society, this is the background to the implementation of journalism training activities for citizen reporters.
"This journalism training activity is a facilitation of the community aspiration network mechanism carried out by members of the Malang City DPRD. From the aspiration network, it was identified that it was important to relate to knowledge of strengthening literacy related to writing correct news," he explained.
The friendly man added that in the future, the Communication and Information Service will also continue to assist the public in the process of delivering public information through the Community Information Group (KIM) in each region.
"Of course we will monitor and evaluate this activity. Together with our friends at KIM, we have a kind of report card, the results of the work of these citizen journalists. From there we can measure, hopefully it can be in line and in harmony with the spirit of today's activities," he concluded. (iu/yon)
