Children's Media Monitoring Project Consultative Workshop Report

How are children like these reflected in the Malawi media? This is one of the questions the needs assessment sought to explore . Photo by George Mwika Kayange

11 – 13 June 2008

The purpose of the workshop was to provide input and offer suggestions and advice on the implementation and design of a Children's Media Monitoring Project.

On the first evening prior to the worskhop, Mr. William Bird, Director of Media Monitoring Africa (formerly known as Media Monitoring Project) in South Africa, met with Mr George Kayange and his colleague Earnest Kapeleta of CRIDOC. Media Monitoring Africa has promoted democracy and human rights through the media since 1993. It acts in a watchdog role to promote ethical and fair journalism that supports human rights.

The objectives of the meeting were:

• To get to know each other, and share information about the organisations they represent;
• To discuss issues relating to children in the media with a particular emphasis on the proposed project
• To plan the following days activities.

The following day we met with a a group of journalists. The objectives of the meeting were to:

• Discuss issues relating to how children are portrayed in the media;
• Understand some of the challenges being faced by journalists and reporters in Malawi and how these might impact coverage of children;
• Outline the proposed project and establish the level of support for the project.

After Mr Beird provided an outline of some of the key trends in how children are portrayed in the media there was some general discussion and the following issues emerged:

• Ethical challenges about showing children in the news, including discussion about the “strip” over the eyes;
• Reporting on HIV stories;
• The imperative of showing/including government people which marginalises children;
• Personal experiences of reporting on and working with children.

Mr. Kayange then discussed the idea in some more detail and the following issues were raised:

• There was a clear desire expressed to work on understanding children and media issues and to work with MMP and CRIDOC;
• The importance of consulting with additional key stakeholders was highlighted;
• Limited skills and resources were listed as key challenges;
• Access to up-to-date information on children was difficult;
• There is a need for editorial buy-in and support, often it is senior editorial staff that undermine ethical reporting;
• A culture of silence prevents some of the issues from being discussed and addressed, challenging this is core element of work for journalists;
• There was also a clear desire for greater skills and capacity in terms of having the necessary skills to engage with the issues. It was agreed that a workshop on reporting children's issues would be valuable.
• The general feedback form discussion with the journalists was very positive, with the common view being that the project proposed was a good initiative.

William Bird, Executive Director - MMA	George Mwika Kayange, Executive Director - CRIDOC

In terms of future recommendations it is clear that it will be necessary to conduct specialist journalist training for the media on reporting on children.

In the afternoon we traveled to a Plan Malawi supported Child Rights Club to meet up with some of the children.

The experience was very rewarding and the children were most welcoming and the teachers and principal were helpful in answering additional questions.

Following some brief performances from the children which included plays and singing we had the opportunity to talk to the children and ask them questions about their media habits. during this discussion we learned the following:

• Almost all of the children had access to radio, and tended to listen to music programmes;
• More than half of the children had some access to watching television. In response to how they had access when there was no power where they lived the children informed us that they used car batteries;
• Only a few children had access to newspapers, but all said they would read them if they could get access to them

While demonstrating potential and an eagerness to learn it was clear that we will have to build and develop the children's reading, writing and analytical skills in order to enable them to participate fully in the media monitoring project.

The children and the school principal all expressed a clear desire to participate in the project.

On return from the school we were fortunate to have a brief meeting with the former Plan Malawi Director and Mr. Beird had the opportunity to outline the aims and objectives of the children's media monitoring project. The meeting had a positive outcome as it was clearly a project that Plan Malawi wished to strongly support, and there was also a sense of urgency in getting the project underway.

In the evening Mr Kayange and Mr. Beird discussed CRIDOC proposal in detail and various suggestions were made to ensure that all areas would be covered and that the project would be properly resourced.

On my final morning over a breakfast meting, the Plan's Project Manager, Ms Tiferanji Aryee, discussed the concept with Mr. Kayange and Mr. Beird and we outlined some key elements, including a training workshop with journalists, as well as a series of workshops with the children, that needed to be added. We also agreed that in its current form the project would have to be scaled down to start with three schools.