The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
MEDIA practitioners have been urged to be gender conscious and sensitive in their reportage of governance issues in a bid to increase the voice of women and the disadvantaged members of the community.
This was said by veteran journalist Mr Chris Chinaka during a gender sensitisation training workshop for journalists organised by Gender and Media Connect in Harare last week.
“Media must treat gender as a central issue in its reportage and ensure that they deliver justice to everyone in the media. Again for political, social and economic reasons, we must attend to issues of gender for development to take shape,” he said.
He said Zimbabwe is still lagging behind in reaching the desired goal of mainstreaming gender in the media and said there was need to fill in the gaps. Mr Chinaka said women must not be given prominence in the media only when they are being portrayed as victims but must also be represented as leaders.
“We as the media need to change these perceptions by rebuilding relationships with women in the society be it Parliamentarians, women leaders and other achievers and offering them a chance to be heard through the media.
“This in turn, builds their confidence and they become more assertive in whatever they do,” said Mr Chinaka.
Gender and Media Connect national director Mrs Abigail Gamanya said gender was not being highlighted and that the media must improve coverage of women.
“The initiative of training journalists seeks to improve skills among them in reporting governance issues including by bringing strong gender lens in their reporting work.
“Together with the Parliament of Zimbabwe, we are greatly concerned that statistics and research still show that women MPs are under-reported or misrepresented in the media.
“We are therefore continuing with our efforts to build the capacity of primarily journalists — who are the foot soldiers in gathering news — and also the editors to have greater appreciation of gender issues,” she said.
“To this end, we will also be conducting networking meetings called Newsroom-Newsmaker-Meetings between the journalists and the MPs so they can get to know each other in an informal atmosphere and away from a story,” added Mrs Gamanya.
