Internews Trains Journalists on Elections Reporting
By: Laymah Kollie
Monrovia-March 21,2023: Internews, USAID Liberia Media Activity project, in partnership with the Publisher Association of Liberia (PAL) through its electoral reporting fellowship today concluded a three (3) day intensive elections reporting training for twenty (20) Liberian Journalists.
Participants were trained on research-based journalism and storytelling, conflict sensitive reporting during elections, fact-checking, electoral reporting code of ethics and amongst others.
The training is part of fellowship is a ten (10) month elections reporting project implemented by Internews and Publishers Association of Liberia and sponsored by USAID. It is also part of USAID Media Activity and expected to run from February to October of 2023. Beneficiaries of this fellowship are expected to acquire training opportunities, mentorship and a modest grant from Internews Liberia in order to fact-check and report exclusively during the electoral period.
Remarking at the start of the training, Internews Chief of Party Lien Bach admonished Journalists to make maximum use of the knowledge acquired to produce factual coverage of election activities during this 2023 elections. In our Fellowship program we only got twenty best journalists across the country to report happenings in the October elections. We have all the best trainers, mentors to drive you through the next eight months. As for this training we will encourage you to network with your colleagues and other professional journalists here to provide the best coverage during this October elections.,” Lien Bach noted.
Also speaking, the Elections Coordinating Committee (ECC) and other partners encourage media practitioners to work accordingly. “For this elections year ECC is going to observe the election in two different approaches, the first approach is that we gonna conduct long-term observation and by this we will train and deploy the total of ninety-two long term observers, each recruited from the fifteen counties and the seventy-three electoral districts . They will observe voter registration exercise, exhibition, the claims and objection processes and candidate nominations. On election day we are going to deploy one thousand two hundred observers and they are going to observe the election in polling centers and will be reporting on a systematic database process,” Barwudu Williams, Coordinator ECC lamented.
“Services being provided are important to our newsrooms so we will support the process. We have few of our members who participated in the training of trainers workshop and we are here to support, Othello Garblah President Publishers Association of Liberia .
The elections reporting Participants were drawn from thirteen of the fifteen counties of Liberia, to include: Bomi, Maryland, Bong, Nimba and River Gee. Other counties are: Grand Gedeh, Grand Cape Mount, Lofa , Margibi, Montserrado, Grand Bassa, Rivercess and Gbarpolu counties. Media practitioners from print, electronic, broadcast and online are beneficiaries of the fellowship.
Internews is an international non-profit organization dedicated to giving people the news and information they need, the ability to connect, and the means to make their voices heard. Since its formation in 1982, Internews has worked in more than 100 countries worldwide while the Publishers Association of Liberia (PAL) is the umbrella body of print media owners in the Liberia.
