Garowe, November 5, 2023: The Media Association of Puntland (MAP) in partnership with the International Media Support (IMS) has concluded yesterday a three-day course for 25-journalists on gender balanced news coverage in Bosaso.
The overall objective of the course was to raise awareness on the imbalance of gender coverage in the local news and equip participants with the know-hows on getting the balance right during their news production.
‘’ it is no surprise and unfortunate that the Somali media sector is still dominated by men.” Today we meet here to address a little portion of this domination – the gender inequities in news coverage and how best we can do professionally in providing the public with full news stories,” said Naima Musse Elmi, MAP secretary general, during her address at the the training’s innaugrual session.
Participants were given a factual overview while prejudices such as disparities in gender representation in the media were highlighted; women were not included in stories as sources and were not targeted as an audience were highlighted.
MAP urged the executives and chief editors in this training to be committed to promoting gender parity by developing internal strategies that take into account balanced news sourcing, including women as sources and experts; ensuring that a balanced representation of both sexes appears in reporting; and avoiding sexist statements and ideas.
Participants stated their desire to continue the training’s effect and offered initiatives to increase balanced media coverage at the end of the session.
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