The Female Journalist Association of Liberia (FeJAL) recently launched her media monitoring Report to the public. The report which was done to determine the gender gap within the media landscape in Liberia, focused on Montserrado as a case study.
By Mae Azango [email protected]
The Monitoring Report theme which read: “Inclusive Narratives, Diverse perspectives: Promote Gender Equity in Media Coverage,” brought together partners, stake holders, many media houses and journalists to discuss the issue.
FeJAL President, Lisa Diasay said project is sponsored by their partners USAID and Inte -news, and the project is a five-year project commencing from 2023 and starting with Montesrrado County as a case study.
“The essence of the exercise is to determine the gender gap within the Country’s media landscape. from our assessment we were able to capture reports from ten media institutions, both Print and electronic media,” she said
FeJAL program officer Rita Jlogbe, who presented the report on the ten media institutions including: ELBC, OK F.M, Truth FM, LUX F.M. and Prime F.M. while print covered: Daily Observer, Front Page Africa, Women voices, Inquirer and New Dawn Newspapers.
“During our findings we captured 1,689 stories and out of that number, only 19 percent of the stories were captured from News sources, while 17 percent of the stories were reported by female journalists. Today program we recognized three institutions that performed well during the assessment, and they are: OK F.M. as the institution with the highest number of female news casters, ELBC as the institution with the highest numbers of female sources in their news stories and Women Voices, as the institution with the highest number of news sources and number of stories done on women issues,” she said
As part of their recommendations she said they suggest that the print institutions should learn to minimize the issue of Staff writer of anonymous sources in their stories, because it creates a challenge in putting their data together. And even if they you do not want to call the name of the reporter who did the story, they should indicate the gender of the reporter and that will help them in the future.
During a panel discussion at the program, which became interactive when two male media executives gave reasons as to why female journalists shy away from tough assignments and are not doing hard stories. But female media executives and journalists in the room disagreed and argued that the male editors and station managers are the ones who usually sent female journalist to cover women issues, just because there are women and send male journalist to cover hard stories.
In an exclusive interview after the program, FeJAL program officer Jlogbe addressed the issues raised by the male media executives during the panel discussion as stereotyping female journalists in the various newsrooms.
“Today, we saw that most of the male newsrooms editors and station managers stereotyping female journalists and saying female’s reporters do want to cover hard beats and do not write strong stories. If female journalists are not covering hard stories, how are they winning these various international and local awards? So my advice to them, is that as a newsroom leader, you should be able to spot potential in their female journalists and build on it. If you know this lady is able to do certain job, all she needs is that you build up her confidence and she will perform just as her male counterpart,” she said
She also added that FeJAL gave the voice recorders to the three selected media houses so that they can be used to produce voice reports, especially for the radio stations, because they do not want to face the same challenge of not knowing the gender per story during their next phase of media monitoring.
“We had a major challenge in determining the report of the story from the radio stations, so if journalists will dive into voice reporting, we will be able to determine if the journalist was a male or female. So it is our hope that those digital recorders given to the three media institutions will also be used to enhance the work of women journalists and not only given to male journalists,” she said
As to whether the exercise was conducted in other counties, she said for this first phase, they are only capturing ten institutions within Montserrado County as a case study and as time goes by, they will expand to other counties in Liberia.
