KARACHI, May 30: The genetics department of the University of Karachi will hold a three-day national workshop on “Science in mass media” at its premises from June 7 to 9. About 30 senior scientists and personalities from both the print and electronic media would speak and share their experiences and perceptions about the reporting of scientific dissertations and other significant developments made nationally and globally in the media at the workshop which would be attended by a number of scientists, journalists, writers, television and radio producers and directors.

The workshop is being organized in collaboration with Pakistan Scientific and Technological Information Centre, Pakistan Science Foundation.

At a press briefing on Monday, the organizing secretary of the programme, Dr Shakeel Farooqi, said that there existed a lot of room for the improvement of news reports, features and specialized articles, which were meant for readers, viewers and listeners in the country.

Dr Farooqi said that he personally felt that what was being printed about science and scientists in the newspapers and broadcast by different media was not all technically correct and as such needed to be revisited and reviewed both by scientists and the media personalities.

He said that the workshop had been aimed to train the journalists reporting science and researches by bringing the stakeholders together and interact under well defined guidelines.

The topics likely to be covered in the workshop are: the common man and the scientific information, science culture, scientific integrity, media, element of story structure, reporting and presentation, content analysis, contemporary trends in science on media.

Experts are expected to conduct the case studies pertaining to human cloning, human genome project and DNA testing, genetically modified food, AIDS, TB and Hepatitis epidemics, contaminated blood supply, nuclear proliferation and environmental disasters.

According to Dr Farooqi, Dr Farad A Mali, Dr Rafiqul Hassan Baqri, Dr Humayun Rathore, Prof Zakariya Sajid, Prof Tahir Masood, Prof Iqbal Mohsin, Dr Iqbal Choudhary, Dr Abdul Ghaffar, Aslam Azhar, Iqbal Haider and Soofia Afifa al-hussaini, among others will speak at the workshop, which will be inaugurated by chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman.