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MEDIA
MUSHROOMING IN MOZAMBIQUE
CUAMBA Planning Community Radio
Economic, Financial and Rural
Development Reporting
Media
Training Materials
 Media Mushrooming in Mozambique
More than 130
media, of these 91 actively on the street and on the air, have been
the focus of the in-depth ‘Media Pluralism Landscape’
study carried out by the UNESCO Media Development Project
from April to July. A team of 15 researchers and technical
specialists have visited all the provinces of the country under the
supervision of our Senior Researcher and Research Coordinator
Marie-Hélène Bonin, Head of the Department of External Projects at
the Nordic SADC Journalism Center.
The study has as such worked with assessments of daily as
well as weekly, fortnightly and monthly newspapers, newsletters and
magazines; public as well as commercial, religious and community
radio stations; public as well as private TV stations; and finally
electronic media. The in-depth study of all of these different media
has been carried out with four main objectives:
·
to
identify all media initiatives in the covering
questions of ownership, target audience, circulation/transmission
capacity, staffing, management, financial situation as well as some
100 additional questions;
·
to
assess the human capacity of the media among others through profiles provided by media managers;
·
to
assess the technical capacity of the media among
others through the assessment by the media managers as well as
through technical studies carried out;
·
to
prepare a ‘media pluralism map’ of the country providing
information on which media are received where – providing at the
same time an assessment of where very few or no media are received.
The core
report
is kept neutral, respecting the agreed confidentiality of the
oftentimes sensitive information provided by the media for the
study, providing trends and recommendations.
A
separate media directory
will therefore also be brought out independently, presenting each
medium - already active – individually, including replies to more
than 40 core questions. Finally, a separate technical report
has been produced on the radio stations.
With core
project mandates to assist in the decentralization of the media, the
ever-increasing independence of the media and the pluralism and
diversity of the media, the ‘Media Pluralism Landscape’ study
will be an important tool for the project management. Together with
its advisory committees UNESCO will base a number of important
decisions on this report.
The report will be released once presented formally to the
project’s Project Monitoring Committee on August 19.
CUAMBA
Planning
Community
Radio
July 27 a room packed of citizens of Cuamba vowed to work for
the creation of a community radio, and elected a representative 14
member ‘preparation committee’.
Once elected by the committee, its president and vice-president
called the first meeting of the committee, which agreed to work for
having the ‘Radio Cuamba Association’ legally registered by
September.
When the association is a reality, it will prepare a strategic plan
for the important preparatory process including a com-munity mobilizing
plan, a training plan, and economic viability assessments.
The above development was the culmination of a three week intense
preparatory process, getting contact with all important civil
society actors in Cuamba.
During the week leading up to the July 27 meeting, the Media Project
conducted separate consultations with different segments of the
community including local and international NGOs, Women’s
associations, religious groups, traditional chiefs (regalos), the
Cuamba Mayor and Administrator,
and political parties.
Showing a firm commitment to ensure a strong and widely
representative community organization to carry the development of
their new medium, the community agreed that preparatory and
management committees would be made up by persons as individuals,
not as representatives of political parties, specific religions or
other organizations.
It was furthermore decided that persons holding official and public
positions, would not be eligible for election.
With the above in place the Community Radio pilot phase of the Media
Development Project moves into a new phase of actual preparation of
the first station of the three pilot sites selected: Cuamba in the
north, Homoine in the south and Marromeu in the centre of the
country.
Economic, Financial and
Rural
Development Reporting
July 25 – August 6 the final of three training courses
takes place on the above subject for journalists from the northern
part of the country.
The 18 journalists meeting in Nampula will as a final result
of the training course produce two newspapers using the
methodologies and approaches learnt.
Media
Training Materials
Having finalized the cycle of three Media Project training
courses on ‘Democracy, Governance and Human Rights Reporting’,
the Media Project has decided to find ways of making the training
materials available for others working with training of journalists.
Whether the materials will be turned into a package of reference
materials, or whether it will actually be possible to prepare a more
fully-fledged training package, will be decided in a meeting of the
course monitors, the NSJ and UNESCO at the project office in August.
Media
Development Project
c/o UNESCO, P.O.Box 1397 Maputo, Mozambique
Tel. +
258.1. 498752/ 490840 Fax +258.1.498717
E-mail: unesco@mediamoz.com
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