Workshop on Securities Markets for Journalists

SEBI and NISM organized a Workshop on Securities Markets for Journalists on “Reporting on Securities Markets – Issues and Challenges” on November 24, 2012 at Mumbai.

The event started with Mr. N. Hariharan, Chief General Manager, SEBI welcoming the panel members on the dais. In his brief remark he emphasized on the role of media in educating the investors. The panel included Mr. U. K. Sinha, Chairman, SEBI, Mr. Raghav Bahl, Group Editor, Network 18 and Mr. Tamal Bandyopadhyay, Deputy Managing Editor, Mint.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Sinha mentioned that the idea of this event was to provide a forum for interaction between the media community and SEBI on various issues.

Mr. Sinha pointed out that the SEBI’s job is very technical in nature and hence, capital market reporting has some added responsibilities.

He said if a news is reported without proper appreciation of the larger repercussions, it can do unintended harm to the larger investor community.

While emphasizing on the need for better understanding of SEBI’s activities, Mr. Sinha also complimented the role played by the media in certain areas in being critical of SEBI.

Following the introduction by Mr. Sinha, Mr. Raghav Bahl shared his thoughts on the subject. “In today’s time, reporting on securities markets is a technical matter.

If you are reporting on regulatory bodies like SEBI, your level of understanding of issues has to be virtually that of an expert”, he said. Mr. Bahl opined that often principles of journalism conflict with the principles of a regulator. Hence, he advised the media community to exercise a lot of

judgment.

In his address Mr. Bandyopadhyay said that the entire matrix of reporting has changed since his days as a reporter. He urged the media community to give more importance to the accuracy of a story than the speed. “Miss two stories, I don’t care, but do not write a wrong story,” Mr. Bandyopadhyay said.

After the panel shared their thoughts, the forum was open for questions from attending journalists. There were a lot of questions from the participants which were answered by the panel. The question answer session was followed by a series of technical sessions on the working of SEBI. These sessions were conducted by senior officials of SEBI.