By Tione Andsen
Media Council of Malawi (MCM) has said retaliated on the need for several media houses and its practitioners in country to be accredited in order to perform their duties well.
Board Chairperson for MCM, Wisdom Chimgwede made the remarks Monday during the official opening of Media Ombudsperson orientation meeting at Riverside hotel in Lilongwe.
He noted that the industry has been a washed with a lot of individuals claiming to be journalists but they are not.
Chimgwede said in order to put the malpractice to stop there was need for every media house to ensure that accreditation should be given a priority.
“We are encouraging media house that all their journalist should be accredited in order to promote self regulation within the industry. We need to take charge of the professional where journalists should be sanctioned if they are operating without following their ethics,” the Chairperson explained.
He believed that media house should have someone to act ombudsperson in order to handle issues affecting them in the rightful matter.
Chimgwede said the setting up of such office would help to minimize the occurrence of court cases as it has been in the past where people have resorted to rush in order to seek redress through law suits and fines.
He added the the ombudsperson becomes critical person to addressing emerging issues that a media house might have bleached in the courses of discharging its work.
The Chairperson said media houses should carefully select individual in order to perform such noble task saying the work involves the provision of sound judgment.
Programme Officer for National Endowment for Democracy, Brian Ernst said his organization has been a long time partner with MCM.
He said they have worked with the institution to make sure that the country’s media industry was enhanced to better levels.
“We have been working with media houses and individual journalists on a number of issues in many countries to improve credible journalism,” Ernst added.
Over 18 media houses participated in the ombudsperson orientation meeting.