A seasoned journalist and Managing Editor of The Herald, Victoria Ruzvidzo has called for specialized business and financial reporting training for journalists to enable them to inform, educate and interpret statistics and figures for investors who rely on the media as their source of information.
Speaking at the Media and Business Stakeholders symposium held in Harare on Wednesday, Mrs Victoria Ruzvidzo said journalism training institutions must train students business and financial reporting in detail such that they will be able to interpreted statistics and figures when writing stories.
“Training institutions must provide short courses and long courses on business and financial reporting because it’s so specialized and you can’t expect a reporter to just do it.
“We also need researches on the Zimbabwean economy, Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and other aspects of the economy,” said Ruzvidzo.
She added that there is need for research papers on economic issues so that journalists are able to analyze and interpret that information for the benefit of investors who rely on the media as one of their sources of information.
Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, Product Development Manager Anymore Taruvinga said the major functions of business reporters is to inform, educate and analyze information for the benefit of investors.
“In our perspective, the major functions of the media are to inform, educate and monitor as well as to interpret.
“Before investors make decisions, investors first need to analyze something and on this aspect, we find that business reporters are very critical, when someone is making a decision to buy Econet, its not like they like the name of the company but it’s the information that they have about the company which makes them to expect returns in their investments and this is based on information from reporters.
“Business reporters are whistle blowers but it doesn’t mean that they must sniff for scandals but must play an important role to ensure that capital markets are functioning properly,” said Taruvinga.
He added that some stories that were published about ZSE proved that reporters have limited financial literacy blaming it on the absence of specialized business and financial training institutions in the country.
