"In today’s climate in the media industry, reporters are expected to cover a broad range of issues. They no longer have the luxury of concentrating on a small piece of a larger puzzle, and at times, they may feel as if they need a better understanding of the background information before moving fo
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rward. Covering eight different topics, this book is not intended to provide reporters with in-depth information on any single topic. It is, instead, intended to provide the necessary building blocks on a variety of themes, and to assist journalists in seeing each story they tackle through a variety of ‘lenses’. This book is also based on a belief that a holistic approach to reporting is important in today’s media industry. The links between the economic recession, poverty, food insecurity, water issues, rural issues, xenophobia, gender issues and children’s issues cannot be emphasised enough." (Introduction)
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"The book’s narrative structure intentionally uses minimal theoretical academic abstractions. Instead, it adopts a pragmatic approach – journalistic to an extent – to speculate what works best for journalists in Asia given the political constraints and resource limitations that many are compel
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led to work under, and which journalists in richer developed countries would take for granted. As the title of the book implies, speculative discussions, commentaries and interviews with journalists aim to rediscover “development journalism” as a viable model for working out the recognisable benchmarks of best practice in the Asian context. Case studies and interviews were mainly conducted with English language newspapers – excluding the local language community radio, which is arguably the most influential medium in developing societies – for no other reason than language accessibility." (Prologue, page xv)
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"Most of the current water problems in southern Africa arise from inadequate or improper management of water resources, rather than shortages. Thus it is essential to raise awareness of water availability and use, and of management approaches that are sustainable. A challenge for media practitioners
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when researching water issues is the problem that accessible sources of information tend to be cluttered with scientific and technical jargon. Statements commonly used in water expert circles often tend to be misunderstood or lose their meaning outside the profession, such as “…Water sustains ecosystems that provide valuable services to both the environment and people.” While water professionals and academics may get their information through peer-reviewed publications, specialist websites and water workshops, the public obtains knowledge of water management from television, radio, newspapers, magazines and sometimes through opinion leaders in their communities. The Internet is also becoming a useful tool in the search for knowledge about water resources due to its ability to offer access to large and varied amounts of information, although this can also be a liability, causing information overload.
Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), which is a holistic approach to managing water and related resources, is widely discussed among water academics, practitioners and professionals involved in the management of water resources, who consider water an abundant “good” with social, economic and environmental value. While the IWRM concept is not well appreciated among some policy makers and the public, the media is quickly catching on to reporting the many users and uses, and on the need to foster economic efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability in water resources management [...] It is thus the intention of this media guide to demonstrate that water reporting is not a technical specialisation but a bread-and-butter debate of today and tomorrow. This guide does not intend to make scientists out of journalists or the public, but to offer a quick reference to the main issues and policies as applied in southern Africa, to suggest ways to cut through the jargon, and to provide further references for reading and contacts for interviews." (Introduction, pages 9-10)
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"This paper has highlighted that the mass media can play an important, if not critical, role in both enhancing the flow of information and improving public-private dialogue in the local context. The paper therefore recommends explicitly incorporating media into the approaches of LRED. This means wor
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king to build government and private sector capacity to interact with the mass media and to build the media itself to be an effective institution that can be a catalyst to positive local economic development. Applying both media development and development communication to private sector development, and particularly LRED, is a relatively new area of endeavour. As such, those who tackle this will need to be innovative and adapt existing tools or develop new tools and approaches to working with mass media in the LRED context. The potential benefit of taking this innovative approach will be in making LRED better understood, more participative and more relevant by involving mass media that is the channel for information to and from mass audiences and a potential platform for public debate." (Summary and conclusion, page 17-18)
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"According to this report the media in low-income countries is too often left aside as a serious player in the fight against poverty. ‘It’s time that those active in poverty reduction realise the media is a public good and in a prime position to monitor whether poverty reduction is taking place.
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’ says the co-author Jon Barnes. The report assesses the media’s potential to scrutinise the progress of plans to tackle poverty including Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). At the same time, based on findings from six countries in Africa and South Asia, this publication analyses serious political, commercial and professional obstacles to stronger media coverage on poverty reduction. Therefore, it highlights the importance of policy actors needing not only to recognise media potential and strengthen engagement with individual journalists, but also needing to support the media sector as a whole more effectively." (CAMECO Update 2-2008)
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"The state of the media report consists of two parts: a media content analysis and a media and civil society organisation (CSO) data survey. The media content analysis deals with news, current affairs, and documentary content produced by a sample of Papua New Guinea (PNG) media organisations that us
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e radio, print and television for the purpose of disseminating content on governance and development. The content analysis involved an intensive three-week period of data collection and coding of material from 23 different media, government departments/agencies and CSOs. The second stream of the project involved a media, government department/agency and CSO data survey of organisations that produce media content on governance and development. This database will provide MDI with information on the capacity of these organisations to produce media content (print, radio, television, video, and online) for governance and development." (Introduction, page 7)
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"The Development Gateway is an Internet portal that seeks to promote sustainable development and poverty reduction through knowledge and resource sharing. Initially conceived and designed by the World Bank, it commenced operations as an independent not-for-profit organisation in July 2001. However,
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its launch and operations have been dogged by controversy as civil society organisations have objected to the Gateway’s links with the World Bank and its potential for disseminating the World Bank’s vision of development at the expense of more diverse and pluralistic views. In particular, criticism has centred on the Topics and Country Gateway sections of the web site, as being ill-conceived and biased, leading to the further marginalisation of southern knowledge, and the crowding out of other knowledge aggregators. This study evaluates the Topics and Country Gateway sections of the Development Gateway in light of the stated objectives, the initial criticisms and generally recognised principles for knowledge sharing. It combines an extensive review of documents and detailed analyses of the website to evaluate the governance of the Development Gateway, and the relevance and quality of the Topic and Country Gateway content. The key findings of the study corroborate the civil society criticisms in finding that the Development Gateway remains closely linked to the World Bank at both operational and strategic levels, that the information is predominantly from northern sources, that its operations are not transparent or accountable to civil society, and that it does not have any criteria or systems for measuring the impact of its services. More surprisingly, given the stature of the World Bank and the level of investment, there is no clear identification of who the beneficiaries are and how they may be benefiting. The content is not comprehensive and it has a strong bias towards technological topics at the expense of social and political topics. Also, it is poorly organised and is not cost-effective in comparison with other existing Internet portals. In fact the other development portals, rather than being crowded out, are thriving precisely because the performance of the Gateway is so poor. As an example, the global civil society portal OneWorld has substantially more content, twice as much usage, and eight times as many partnerships as the Development Gateway, all achieved for about a quarter of the spending. The Gateway has consumed more than $30 million of funding since its inception and is seeking another $40 million of public funding. This without having achieved many of the goals it set itself and with major question marks over its ability to deliver, as acknowledged, despite their limited scope, by the two evaluations of the Development Gateway undertaken or commissioned by the World Bank’s Operations Evaluation Department." (Executive summary, page 3)
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"Aspiramos con esta iniciativa a que las organizaciones no gubernamentales puedan incorporar a sus proyectos herramientas de la comunicación y el periodismo, para que puedan convertir sus programas en actividades noticiables y a la información que generen, en fuente de los medios de comunicación.
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De esta manera, estaremos cumpliendo con el segundo objetivo de Infocívica; el primero consiste en procesar la información que generan las organizaciones no gubernamentales y convertirlas en noticia para que, por un lado, la tarea de los periodistas de producir notas y editar artículos se vea aliviada y por el otro lado, consolidar a la sociedad civil como una usina de noticias de alto interés público y sumo valor social." (Introducción, páginas 8-9)
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"Diese Publikation beschreibt über 140 in der Bundesrepublik erscheinende Periodika. Neben bibliographischen Hinweisen werden Themenschwerpunkte, Zielsetzung und Anspruch der Zeitschrift benannt." (commbox)
"Die Forderung nach mehr Gerechtigkeit zwischen "Nord" und "Süd" stellt die metropolitanen Gewerkschaften vor große Herausforderungen. Für eine globale Umverteilung scheinen tiefgreifende Einstellungsänderungen bei Gewerkschaften und ihren Mitgliedern notwendig. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht
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, wie deutsche Gewerkschaften in ihren Mitgliederzeitschriften im Zeitraum von 1960 bis 1988 über das Nord-Süd-Verhältnis berichten, welches Bild sie dabei von der sog. Dritten Welt zeichnen und wie sie ihre eigenen Handlungen in diesem Zusammenhang darstellen. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Frage, welches Selbstverständnis und welche Deutungsmuster zu dieser Problematik die Gewerkschaftsmitglieder in ihren Verbandspublikationen vermittelt bekommen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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