With a focus on the role media could play to help fulfill the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), journalists from Bangladesh, Burma, Bhutan, Nepal, India and Pakistan explored the responsibilities, prerogatives and areas for improvement of both print and broadcast media.

According to a majority of speakers at the roundtable jointly sponsored by the World Bank and the Bellagio Forum and organized by The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI),a leading research institute in India, the MDGs and other long-term sustainable development issues were often deemed too trivial to cover.

There is a clear preference to cover defense, fashion shows, discotheques and urban lifestyles than writing few paragraphs about health, agriculture, education, , and the changes rapid development is causing in our natural environment which actually are the core issues of any country and especially in the developing world. The commonly expressed view was that the media had a role to play and that could be effective in raising awareness and changing attitudes.

“When we talk about MDGs, we are talking about the entire population in the world,” said Ashok Jaitly, distinguished fellow, TERI. “When media takes up an issue, it becomes very effective.”

Some of the journalists lamented that stories concerning the social sector often got thrown out of the pages because of the hierarchy of news, preferably given to current affairs in urban areas and advertisements.

“It does not fulfill the criteria on which media thrives,” said one senior journalist. “The range of subject matters, the format and the discourse are all market driven.” Moreover, it was made clear that covering certain subjects was necessary to advance a journalist's career. Social and environmental issues were most certainly not included in this list.

Concurrently, it was universally recognized that the media has important responsibilities that go beyond individual career aspirations. Media must act as a watchdog of the government and the civil society. A journalist's strength, even in countries where press freedom is somewhat limited, is to create constituency for efficient governance.

“MDGs are a set of initiatives or goals for tackling some of the major problems of the world,” said the Director General for Teri, Dr. R.K Pachauri. “Often times governments take up the goals leave it with some departments in some ministries and don't necessarily lead them to an essential target.”

The executive director for TERI added that MDGs success depended on good governance and that media shaped the expectations from the civil societies, corporate worlds and government.

BFSD Executive Director, Samuel Shiroff commented, "The media are essential for a functioining democracy. They are essential to ensure that people are aware of the issues that will affect their lives both in the short and long-term. We want to make journalists and other members of the media aware that these topics are out there.  They are real and that the media has a responsibility to report them. The job of the media is not to just entertain people with what they want to read, hear and see, but rather to provide them access to the information that they need to be good citizens."