Journalist Naomi Tappia Launches Training For Females Interested In Sports Journalism, Decries Demotivation Of Female Sports Journalists
MONROVIA – Truth FM Head of Sports department Naomi Tappia has launched a training exercise for women and girls who are interested in sports journalism and athletics.
According to journalist Tappia, her aim of launching the training exercise was precipitated by the scarcity of females in sports journalism that caused the field to be male-dominated and in implementation of her promise made during her International Visitation Leadership Program (IVLP) in 2019 in Washington D.C. and other parts of United States.
Journalist Tappia who heads the Media Council of Federation of International Basketball Association (FIBA) Africa Zone Three, narrated that females expressing interest in the field will benefit them intellectually as sports being mind games help shift the thinking of athletes.
She revealed that she became appreciative and more enthusiastic about her reportorial duties as a female sports journalist when she met her 48 professional counterparts who came from different continents with amazing understandings of the career that is dominated worldwide, while she termed Liberia’s situation of female underrepresentation in sports journalism as catastrophic.
She, however, admonished females to take advantage of the training irrespective of the religious, cultural and educational backgrounds as the above mentioned impede the participation of women in the field of journalism.
She admonished religious leaders, married men, traditionalists to support women participation in sports instead of preventing them due to culture.
Meanwhile, journalist Tappia has decried stakeholders’ act of prioritizing male journalists over the very few female sports reporters during sporting events across the country.
She said while it true that some sporting institutions like the Liberia Football Association and others try their best in that area, more needs to be done to put the females in Liberia on par with other female sports journalists around the world, asserting that they have potentials that are capable of taking them to world level.
She lamented the idea of male journalists frequently traveling with the national team while the females who are capable of discharging similar duties are left out.
She called on every stakeholder to receive her message in good faith as it is intended to remind them of doing the needful that will help shift the narrative of the sporting arena of Liberia.