MEDEC, CEPIL outdoor capacity building initiative for trainee journalists

…250 trainees targeted for training

Accra, Wednesday September 4, 2013.  The Media Development Centre (MEDEC) has in collaboration with the Centre for Public interest Law (CEPIL) launched a capacity building programme for trainee journalists with the aim of recruiting 250 new journalists to focus on environment and natural resource reporting.

The launching, which came off in Accra on Tuesday, September 3, 2013, was on the theme: “Building Media Capacities to Enhance Partnerships for Sustainable Environmental Governance.” According to Mr Okunyin Boaz Orlan-Hackman, the training programme, codenamed “Journalism Clinic for Student Journalists”, is aimed at incentivizing young journalists toward environment and development reporting.

More than 60 participants took part in the programme. They included representatives from communication and journalism training institutions, journalists associations, NGOs and students from the Ghana Institute of Journalism, African University College of Education, the University of Ghana and the Film/Music & TV Centre, all in Accra.

The Centre for Environmental Impact Analysis (CEIA), the KASA initiative, Wacam, Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and Fruit Burst company provided a variety of support for the programme.

The Chairman for the event, Mr Richard Ellimah, who is also the Executive Director for the Centre for Social Impact Studies (CeSIS), said the initiative by the Media Development Centre gladdens my heart. It was an innovative way of building the capacity of journalists to report on extractives and development issues generally.

According to him, Most of our journalists admittedly do not have the requisite academic backgrounds to be able to comprehensively report on specialised fields like health, environment, natural resource extraction, finance and economic reporting and so on. This lack of dearth in specialised reporting has resulted in poor quality reports that are inflicted on the audience.

MEDEC envisages that it can build a database on at least 250 new and mid-career specialist journalists within five years to underpin the tracking of environment and development reporting in Ghana.

MEDEC is also convinced that the Journalism Clinic is a programme that can catalyse the provision of practical orientation for young as well as trainee journalists. Also, Journalism Clinic can assist mainstream journalism training schools/institutions in preparing students for their first outing as interns.

Reportage on Ghana’s natural resources and environment – including agriculture, extractives and Water & Sanitation – was less than 10% in 2012 (KASA/CMA, 2013). Health and Education are doing far worse, thus journalists devote comparatively minute part of their time and space to resource, environment and development reporting. In 2008, politics and sports coverage alone constituted 50% of stories (NMC, as cited by KASA/CMA, 2013).

Meanwhile, it is known globally that unguarded resource management and utilization has often plunged countries into chaos. Globally, journalists are considered to play a more important role in guarding resources than even security agencies and the judiciary. Admittedly, that role can only be played effectively when the journalist is well-capacitated, especially in a resource-laden country like Ghana.

In more recent times when the country appeared to be on the edge, personalities and institutions have inundated media houses and journalists with calls for cool heads and responsible practice. 

MEDEC is mindful that there is so much to talk about in relation to environment. Among the critical things that must engage our attention as a society are environmental sanitation, environmental pollution, climate change, forest degradation and deforestation, pollution and destruction of water bodies and wetlands, and so on.