Journalists covering crime have been tasked to humanise and employ multimedia techniques in their reportage.
The Editor-in-Chief, Daily Trust Newspapers, Naziru Mikailu, handed the charge at the opening session of a-two-day training on Understanding Crime Reporting organised by the Daily Trust Foundation, Monday in Abuja.
Mikailu stated that the training, which was organised with support from MacArthur Foundation, was aimed at helping journalists improve the quality of crime reporting in a more creative way.
The media boss, who noted that crime reports usually involved real life stories that affect human beings, said there was need to make them more appealing to the people by taking advantage of available multimedia techniques.
He, however, noted that there were risks involved in crime reporting and urged the journalists to be conscious of their safety while covering crime stories.
On his part, the Director, Daily Trust Foundation, Dr Theophilus Abah, pointed out that crime reporting in Nigeria was mostly about figures, which often scared people, without much attention on the demography and spread of these crimes.
Abah urged participants to go beyond the peripheral reportage of crime and focus on in-depth analysis of the situation surrounding crimes and the effects on the people and the society.
According to him, the training would equip the journalists on how to write crime stories that would not scare people but would serve as deterrent and discourage crime.
The two-day training would feature paper presentation on Map of Crimes in Nigeria; Humanising the Crime Story; Law and Crime reporting; Dos and Don’ts of Writing Crime stories among others.
