By Judithpride Nkwanda, Published on Insight244
Journalists in the centre region have been trained on how to promote peace through the media landscape. This was during a 3 day workshop that was held at the Chambers of commerce Yaounde from the 26th to 28th August 2021.
Participants at the training
During these 3-days workshop, media practitioners were trained on how to frame and report through an angle that will avoid conflict since they have the power to manage and promote peace through their reports.
Eugene Nforngwa was the main facilitator during this workshop and urged journalists to be activists and advocates of community affairs including conflict resolution.
“Journalism is a moral enterprise and has the duty to change the society for the better”. Eugene told the Journalists.
Eugene Nforngwa, facilitator at the workshop
He added that journalists need to be more of activists than observers of an event or conflict. “The journalist should be able to distinguish the ‘good guy’ from the ‘bad guy’ in order to actively participate in the debate.” He furthered.
Journalists were equally urged to avoid hate speech and fake news in conflict sensitive reporting, they need to respect the principles of news gathering like accuracy, fair and balance,factual and finally be objective though its not always possible in to remain objective when it comes to brutality and inhumanity.
The facilitator insisted on the need for Journalists to remain an impartial pipe of information for the citizens, a forum for the masses’ voices to be heard and finally, a monitor of government. This as journalists need to contribute to peacemaking, peace enforcement, peacekeeping and peace building thereby exposing all the issues about the conflict on both sides of the coin.
Defyhatenow encourages the media to avoid misinformation and propaganda, to think before clicking on the share botton and also to stop sharing fake news.A journalist therefore needs to fact-check in order to avoid fake news and to promote peace minded journalism. This is to help in combatting hate speech which causes violence and hatred.
Participants pose with facilitators
Defyhatenow has so far organised and trained media practicianers in 8 different regions of Cameroon and is still ready and available to do more work to promote peace minded journalism in Cameroon.
