WASH Media Award competition 2012 WASH Media Forum has been established since 2008 in response to the scanty coverage given to WASH issues in the media outlets in Ethiopia. According to the survey conducted in September 2008 which assessed 25,000 news and articles sampled from both broadcast and print media outlets, only 2.3 percent were related to WASH issues. Even those media reports were sketchy as they were mainly concerned with inauguration ceremonies and related events of water supply projects which did not show the impacts of WASH in the lives of people. As a result WASH Media report was established to increase the quantity and quality of WASH media coverage in the nation by providing the various platforms which are intended to build the capacity of the media professionals so that they are able to provide frequent media reports of WASH issues with greater quality and depth. First WASH Media Award Competition One of the ways to help improve the coverage of WASH in the media is to organize annual WASH Media Award competition on selected WASH issues. Accordingly the first competition was conducted on theme of Sanitation Financing in which six media reports were involved. Based on the evaluation conducted by a team of professionals according to the assessment criteria set, three finalists were chosen for the award. These included Beniyam Tamene from IRIN, Genanaw Lemma from Debub FM radio station and Daniel Amare from FANA Broadcasting Corporate. Second WASH Media Award Competition The second WASH Media Award Competition was organized on the theme WASH and Marginalization (Gender, HIV and Disability) to put in the spotlight the challenges of those marginalized groups of the society particularly in the provision of WASH services. A dramatic improvement was noted in the level of participation in the second round of competition as the number of participants leaped into 16 representing nine media outlets. Ten of these media reports were radio productions, while four were from print media and one from web media out¬let. There was only one TV production from Debub TV program which was also the case in the first round competition as there was only one entry from Addis TV program. Seven of the media reports including the TV production were from Debub Mass Media Agency which is the regional state owned media organization of SNNPR. This was noted to be encouraging which showed the greater emphasis the media organization placed on the coverage of WASH issues. The media reports were evaluated based on the assessment criteria which included clarity and focus of presentation (20%), relevance, appropriateness and variety of sources (30%), Fairness, balance and ac¬curacy (20%) and overall technical presentation (10%) that altogether added up to 80% of the overall assessment. The remaining 20% was used to assess the special features of the media reports which took into consideration the variations in the nature of the media outlets used. Hence, language use (10%) and sound quality (10%) were considered in the case of radio production while picture quality was given more weight (10%) in the case of TV production as language use and sound quality carried equal weight of 5% each. In the case of print and web publications, language and the use of visuals each received 10% of the overall assessment. Based on the assessment criteria described above, a panel of three technical experts selected eight out of the sixteen media reports submitted to the competition in the first round and then rated them individually and aggregated the results to identify the top five media reports. The whole selection process was reviewed by a panel of six professionals including the three raters before the results of the com¬petition were finally endorsed and publicized. The 16 media reports submitted to the competition covered the different aspects of WASH and Marginalization which included WASH and Disability, WASH and Women (particularly female students in relation to menstrual hygiene management), WASH and HIV, WASH and Children as well as WASH and Marginalization as a whole. The formats of the media reports were also varied including news features, investigative report, case stories, comparative report of the impacts of WASH at different places, phone-in discussion and documentary production. Some of the media reports were particularly strong on some aspects while others had some common weaknesses which are highlighted be¬low in general terms. According to the observations made during the assessment of the media reports, the following suggestions are made for further improvements for other media reports to be produced and submitted to the next round of media award competition or any other WASH related media reports. • Balanced approach in reporting which would give the appropriate weight for both the strengths and weaknesses of any WASH issues being covered is required. Some media reports appeared to provide a completely positive coverage of WASH success stories overlooking the remaining gaps and challenges while others seem to provide a bleak picture of the WASH realities ignoring some improvements made no matter how small they might have been. • Fairness in media coverage should be closely observed as some individual institutions or sources of information were not given the chance to respond to some criticisms made against them which would unfairly put them in a negative light. • Appropriate use of sources: sources of information should always be indicated clearly and appropriately to increase the credibility of the media reports. Information without sources or vaguely indicated sources of information would be open to dispute and hence decrease the impacts of the media re¬ports on the target audience. • Conclusions should be more than just a summary as it should be more memorable highlighting the central idea of the report. • Using pictures along with the reports in print media is very important to attract the attention of the readers and increase the communicative impacts of the media reports. The kind of pictures used should have a good story telling content which are directly related to the central theme of the media report. Pictures should also be accompanied with descriptive captions to help readers understand the context. Based on the assessment results of the second round of WASH Media Award competition, the following media reports were selected as finalists according to their rank order from one to five: • WASH Realities of the Disabled and the Neglected in Hawassa, Gezahegn Abera, Debub FM radio • The Challenges of Physical Disability, Metasebiya Kassayie, Addis Admas newspaper • The Man with a Pit Latrine in his Bedroom, Ayenew Hailee Steinfeldselassie, The Daily Monitor newspaper • WASH and Marginalization (Gender, HIV and Disability), Selam Seifu, ZAMI FM radio • Girls’ Nightmare: Going to School during Menstruation, Etu Geremew, Mishiriya magazine According to the final results of the assessment, winners were awarded with various items such as laptop, video recorder and still camera as well as sound recorders to recognize their achievements and encourage others to follow suit. We hope that more number of media reports will be submitted to the successive WASH Media Award competitions which improve on the quality of reporting by avoiding the common weaknesses observed in WASH media reports being produced at present.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 08:31:35 +0000
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