The Director of the Association for Media Development in South Sudan (AMDISS), Irene Ayaa, has urged media managers to encourage gender equality in their programs and reporting.
Ayaa expressed the sentiments during a two-day workshop for station managers and editors from the Greater Upper Nile and Equatoria regions that commenced in Juba on Tuesday.
The workshop is being conducted under the theme: Media management countering hate speech, gender-responsive, elections and conflict sensitive reporting, fact-checking, ethical, and accurate reporting.
“I urge you to encourage the reporters and programmers in your media houses to promote gender equality. I also want to encourage you to do your job as gatekeepers, we all know that journalists will always go to the field, collect information and bring it to you as editors and if you don’t go through it, the stories go out with errors and the blame will come back to you,” she said.
Media houses in the country, added Ayaa, were barely surviving because of the current economic crisis, thus the station managers should utilize their resources carefully to feed the community with information.
“I want to talk especially to the managers. I know how difficult the economic situation is right now, the media houses are barely surviving. Sometimes radio stations go without being online or on air because of lack of mere fuel.
“You need to take care of them properly in order to keep surviving until that time South Sudan will overcome this economic crisis,” she said.
UNESCO Country Director Julius Banda said it was critical for the community media houses to be sustainable and dependent on their own resources.
Community media is important because it is an alternative to the public and the commercial outlets, and I urge you to be the pluralistic that we all are aspiring to, he said.
“It is important that these community media are sustainable, because sustainability is the key, so that we don’t just establish them for a short duration. The drive towards self-sufficiency is important so that you can depend on your own resources and you can maintain the survival and viability of your stations.”
Banda added that the media plays a bigger role in peace building since South Sudan has been facing numerous inter-communal conflicts since independence.
“This country has known a lot of conflicts, this country has known a lot of division, this country has and continues to experience sub-national level conflict and you are right on the ground. You are in a better position to speak about peace building at the community level,” he said.