The Faculty of Modern Media in Arab American University and under collaboration with Al Jazeera Media Institute concluded a free-of-charge training course entitled “Introduction to Scientific Journalism”
The course, which was lectured by Mr. Mohammad Ahdad- the journalist in Al Jazeera Media Institute, targeted 15 journalists working in the Palestinian Media Organizations, in addition to other people who are interested in the Scientific Journalism field.
Dr. Hanadi Dwaikat- the Dean of the Faculty of Modern Media thanked journalist Mr. Mohammad Ahdad and Al Jazeera Media Institute for the great welcoming from their side to organize this course especially during the COVID-19 situation. She said that the number of students and media workers who were interested in this course reflected the needs of the news community in Palestine, especially because the pandemic has revealed that the Palestinian press and media organizations are in severe need to such specialized press.
Dr. Dwaikat continued that it is rare to find a journalist specialized in the field of health or sciences in general, and this is a major problem that makes us only reporters to foreign newspapers and do not present journalistic materials with scientific topics, although scientific topics are very important.
Mr. Ahdad expressed how happy he was to train this group of Palestinian journalists, and considered this experiment as an important one. He asserted that the three-days training reflected the eagerness of the trainees to acquire new knowledge about scientific journalism.
Mr. Ahdad emphasized that Al Jazeera Media Institute has published a special guideline specialized in Scientific Journalism in light of its keenness to continue working to provide journalists with information that makes their awareness and understanding of the problems of scientific journalistic clearer.
The three-days training that was through zoom, provided an explanation about the Scientific Journalism, the obstacles that face this work, the difficulties in contacting other scientists and researchers, how to write a scientific journalistic story, and the mechanism to simplify scientific knowledge in order to reach the readers.
The training came as part of “Al Jazeera Ambassadors’ Initiative” and participants got certificates accredited by both AAUP and Al Jazeera Institute.
This training reflects the interest of the Faculty of Modern Media that was established recently and provides three programs related to media community. The faculty provides free-of-charge courses for journalists that are up-to-date and follow up the current issues and the technology developments.
