“Journalists have a role as purveyor of the truth. A society without journalists will wallow in darkness and people will be uninformed. To ensure a society free of biases, knowledge should unearth every form of stereotypes and ensure only the truth is communicated”.
Above and many others were the thoughts shared by Africa Foundation for Young Media Professionals as well as Centre for Disability and Inclusion Africa’s executive director in a webinar jointly organization for selected newsrooms from Northern Nigeria tagged “Disability and Inclusion reporting for Northern Newsrooms”.
The Journey into the joint hosting of the webinar began when a request was sent by one of the training participants sent a mail to the two organizations g=having followed the passion and leading role the two organizations had been playing in ensuring journalists/broadcasters become better informed in this area of journalism.
Prior to now the common observation in many situations had been misunderstanding as well as lack of appropriate knowledge in many of the newsrooms involved. The impact of this is shown in the coverage of the issue. Many of the reports read had a way of reinforcing stereotypes on Language use in the reports showed no level of professionalism on the part of the reporters.
In her opening remark, Busola Oladotun, the program officer of the organization charged the participants to pay close attention to the information they were about to be exposed to as it has capacity to make the difference in their reportage.
Taking the participants through the process of “Why disability and inclusion reporting?” Yinka Olaito explained some of the reasons why many journalists did not pay attention to this important aspect of journalism. To Yinka Olaito “Up till date many journalists continue to assume the number of persons with disabilities are insignificant which does not require any close attention”.
With facts and figures, Yinka explained the negative effect of overlooking inclusion in a society and charged the participants to understand a need to be deliberate so as not to strengthen stereotype or misinformation about disability and inclusion. “Journalists must prioritise knowledge so as to combat every form of stereotypes among other issues” Yinka encouraged.
Participants expressed their gratitude during the feedback session. “This is the first time; I am exposed to this kind of the knowledge” One of the participants said. Another participant who was worried about some newsrooms which refused to be inclusive and will not hire a trained journalist with disabilities wanted to know what legal action should be taken?
In his reply, Yinka Olaito said, why that may sound discriminatory, newsroom leadership must be given enough time as many of them may still be clueless about the issue. A conversation must be stepped up, which one of the duties Africa Foundation for Young Media Professionals as well as Centre for Disability and Inclusion Africa continue to advocate for.
