The second workshop on 'Covering Monetary Policy' in August, 2018
The second workshop in a series of six training workshops for economic journalists was held at the State Bank of Pakistan Learning Resource Center in August. The topic was Covering Monetary Policy and the purpose of the workshop was to make economic journalists familiar with the fundamentals of monetary policy, how it works and what effects it has on the economy. The workshop was divided into three sessions. In the first session, an SBP expert gave a detailed presentation about monetary policy. He explained how the policy is determined and communicated. In the second session, the media trainer presented on why monetary policy is covered, how to write a news story from the announcement and how to prepare reports on the ripple effects of the policy rate. The journalistic ethics involved in handling monetary policy were also discussed. Additionally, several examples of monetary policy stories from the international press were discussed in class as examples of good journalist. In the last session, workshop participants were given a SBP monetary policy press release which they used to prepare a story based on the principles learned during the workshop. Through the group critique carried out after the final assignment it was determined that the participants learned about monetary policy, how to cover it and how to look for follow-up stories.
Presentation delivered in Workshop: