AJMI - Doha

Al Jazeera e-learning platform launched the scientific journalism and medical journalism courses. The science journalism course takes place after the agonizing earthquake that shook Syria and Turkey recently, and at a time when the issues of drought, desertification, fires and others are at the forefront of Arab countries.

The course emphasized the necessity of training journalists to provide fair and accurate reporting as well as the significance that scientific journalism plays in saving lives.

The goal of the course is to introduce the rules controlling this industry. The questions to ask before writing any science stories are also listed, along with the science journalist's friends.

The trainer shares with learners mechanisms for extracting journalistic stories from scientific events and research studies, how to conduct interviews with researchers, in addition to verifying and employing scientific data.

The course also did not overlook the importance of narrative in science journalism, and devoted a number of lessons to explain how to employ it according to the "bringing science closer to the public" approach.

While the medical press imposed itself strongly with what the world suffered during the Corona pandemic and its variants, and other epidemics that spread from time to time, of which cholera will not be the last.

One of its objectives is to identify the points of commonality and differences between them and other journalistic disciplines, and to answer fundamental questions such as: Can all journalists become medical journalists? Are there any mechanisms to analyse the public and understand its expectations from this specialty?

It also refutes some of the misconceptions associated with medical journalism, foremost of which is that the medical journalist is an alternative to the doctor or that his job is to provide treatment.

In the skill component, the course teaches participants how to choose accurate medical news, check the veracity of material shared on social media, and avoid being duped by false information. It also improves writing techniques and demystifies difficult vocabulary used in medical journalism.

It also gives learners practical tips to deal with the negative impact of some health topics on the psyche of the recipient.

It is noteworthy that the Al Jazeera e-learning platform offers educational courses in self-paced and blended learning, designed by a team of experts of high quality, and are developed periodically and in an interactive manner that takes into account the challenges of virtual education.​