UN media awareness workshop first in Central Africa
A mock news conference at Brazzaville workshop
In another, senior UN officials were fielding difficult questions at a news conference dominated by allegations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers or humanitarian workers.
The ceremonies were for real. The news conference was an exercise organised as part of a May 27-28 Reuters Foundation media awareness workshop.
“It was very useful to increase the competencies of staff in media relationships,” Dr Koen Vanormelingen, the Congo Republic representative of UNICEF, said afterwards.
Reuters Foundation consultants Nick Kotch and Nick Phythian ran the workshop in the Congo Republic capital, Brazzaville.
Commissioned by UNICEF, it was the first in central Africa to bring together heads or deputy heads of different UN agencies around the theme of media awareness.
“A secondary benefit (was that) it strengthened the team spirit between the different agencies,” said Vanormelingen, a Belgian and one of the 13 participants.
The peacekeeping anniversary coincided with a Save the Children Fund report which said the sexual abuse was more widespread than previously thought.
The UN officials organised the mock news conference, which offered insights into the way in the press corps responds to such a story. Some were journalists posing awkward questions. Others explored different techniques for handling negatives, a major theme of the workshop.
TV techniques and identification and presentation of key messages were the other major themes. Participants gave interviews, prepared news releases and watched replays of themselves performing in front of the camera.
The workshop ended with a series of filmed ambush interviews designed to knock them off their guard and force them to think on their feet.
The heads or deputy heads in the Congo Republic of UNICEF, the UN Development Programme, the UN Population Fund and the World Health Organisation attended the workshop along with the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The deputy head of UNICEF in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo also took part.
Selected senior staff and press advisers working for the UN in Congo Republic completed the line-up.
Facilitators Kotch and Phythian ran a one-day media-awareness course for 12 UNICEF staff in the Congo Republic earlier in the week.
END
0 responses to "UN media awareness workshop first in Central Africa"
Please note that comments should not be regarded as the views of Reuters.
Leave a Reply
When you submit a comment to us we request your name, e-mail address and optionally a link to a website. Please note where you submit a website address, we may link to it via your name. By sending us a comment, you accept that we have the right to show the comment and your name to users. Although we require your email address, this will not be published on the site, and is only required to enable us to check facts with you, e.g. if you are making a claim we can not confirm easily. Additionally, if you would like your comment removed at anytime, you'll have to use this e-mail address when you contact us. To remove a comment at any time please e-mail us at blogs-(at)-reuters-(dot)-com (address obscured to avoid spam) specifying who you are and what you would like removed. We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the post directly or with relevant tangential information. We reserve the right to edit comments in order to maintain the quality of the comments, and may not include links to irrelevant material. We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous. Reuters will use your data in accordance with Reuters privacy policy. Reuters Group is primarily responsible for managing your data. As Reuters is a global company your data will be transferred and available internationally, including in countries which do not have privacy laws but Reuters seeks to comply with its privacy policy.