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Nineteen journalists representing national and local media outlets participated in a training focused on professional approach to topics concerning minorities and socially vulnerable groups organized by the Independent Journalism Center (IJC) on 28 February and 1 March this year.
The event gathered participants from Balti, Chisinau, Comrat, Ciadir-Lunga, Bender and Tiraspol, and it aimed at improving the journalists’ skills of writing on such topics while observing the principles of journalistic ethics and promoting the values of quality journalism. The training was moderated by Petru Macovei, executive director of the Association of Independent Press, Alina Radu, director of the Ziarul de Garda newspaper, and Tyrone Shaw, media expert from the USA.
Petru Macovei began the training by saying that topics on minorities or socially vulnerable groups usually appear in the media on certain occasions and rarely at the personal initiative of a reporter: “A journalist should first of all be a defender of human rights, in particular a defender of minority groups’ rights,” Macovei underlined, encouraging journalists to cover such topics more often, and not only on the occasion of the Day of the Disabled or other special events.
Speaking about producing media materials focused on minorities and socially vulnerable groups, Tyrone Shaw called participants not to limit themselves to official sources of information when making such reports, but to find stories from life and write complex articles with the person or their achievements on the foreground, and not their disability, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
The trainers presented and analyzed together with participants several reports/case studies. Based on concrete situations, Alina Radu recommended participants not to treat such people in their articles like “poor things”, because they often show us positive examples or success stories. “Any person can be valuable, even if he or she is born different,” Alina Radu concluded.
The training was a practical learning experience, with participants being involved in exercises on planning, documenting and producing articles on minorities or socially vulnerable groups. “The training was highly useful for us; we learned the rules that we should follow when producing materials on minorities and socially vulnerable groups, the ways to avoid stereotypes and to discover more sources for producing well-documented materials,” said Maia Sadovici, journalist of the public company Teleradio-Gagauzia.
The training agenda included a session moderated by Elena Ratoi, responsible for public relations of the Motivatie organization.
The training program has been organized as part of the project “Promoting the rights of minorities and marginalized groups from Transnistrian and Gagauzian regions through the media” implemented by the IJC with the financial support of Civil Rights Defenders (Sweden), partner of the IJC.
