Training the media, empowering minorities: a project for improved media coverage of ethnic and minority issues in the South Caucasus

Project objectives:

Ethnic conflicts have grown in number and intensity in the South Caucasus since the fall of communism in 1991, worsening the position of ethnic minorities and strengthening mono-ethnic tendencies, as well as causing considerable population displacement. The project is designed to promote a constructive role for the media in helping societies reduce conflict based on ethnicity, race, religion sex, and age. It aims to:
•	promote more balanced, informed and inclusive media coverage of minorities;
•	facilitate responsible and inclusive public discussion of key ethnically-charged issues;
•	raise public consciousness of minority rights through the media;
•	support confidence-building measures, such as the routine exchange of information between ethnic groups by means of the media;
•	promote active and aggressive coverage of violations of human rights of minorities;
•	promote media-sector NGO efforts to combat xenophobia;
•	promote cross-ethnic media coverage and joint professional work;
•	assist minority communities to represent their interests through the mainstream media and their own media outlets;
•	facilitate long-term monitoring of media coverage of minorities through training programs.

Project beneficiaries:

The ultimate goal of the program is to effect a change in the media culture, in order to promote a positive role for the media in counteracting xenophobia and preventing conflict. The project targets four groups:
1.	journalists
2.	media decision-makers (including news editors, editors-in-chief and media owners)
3.	professors of journalism (and through them, indirectly, their students)
4.	ethnic and minority groups (primarily NGOs) and their representatives
Intended impact on these groups is as follows:
•	journalists and media managers will have more interaction with colleagues of different ethnic backgrounds, increased awareness of and sensitivity to diversity reporting, and greater capacity and desire to cover minority and ethnic issues;
•	journalism educators at universities and institutes will develop and teach new curricula on reporting on minority and ethnic-relations issues;
•	minority groups will gain media relations skills enabling them to establish a more effective public voice in the mainstream political dialogue and to counteract damaging coverage and stereotyping.

Project activities:

Overall, changes in media behaviour - in particular, in the coverage of ethnic minorities - can have a considerable impact in stabilizing inter-ethnic relations in the region. MDI's project pursues a comprehensive strategy comprising six engagement strategies designed to achieve its objectives. It works with ethnic minority groups which need to get their voices heard, and the media figures who should be listening to them: journalists, media decision-makers, and journalism professors who teach future generations of journalists. It tackles the issues of racism, xenophobia and discrimination against ethnic minorities from all angles, using diversity reporting as a weapon to counter it. Only such an approach - which addresses the inter-related issues from all angles, can bring comprehensive and lasting change.
The six engagement strategies are:
1.	Empowerment of ethnic minorities
2.	Awareness building and training of the mainstream media
3.	Diversity education programme
4.	Minorities and media working together
5.	Media monitoring
6.	Network building
Within these activity themes, a series of methodologies are used, including:
•	practical workshops;
•	conferences;
•	community meetings of key media and minorities groups;
•	distribution of kits containing communications material (manuals, case studies, invitations to events, network information);
•	distribution of workshop follow-up kits and promotional material;
•	distribution of communications and diversity manuals in local languages;
•	internships by ethnic minority journalists in the mainstream media;
•	team reporting projects of multi-ethnic teams of reporters to producing joint stories;
•	long-term on-site consultants based in the region for periods of six months;
•	development of a reporting diversity curriculum, including a survey of existing curricula, a working group of professors, mentoring the professors, and promotion efforts aimed at acceptance of the new curricula by education departments;
•	reference books, list-serves and website;
•	news agency diversity programme which sees MDI trainers mentoring news agencies to produce a series of high quality articles on ethnic and diversity themes;
•	production of TV and radio talk shows and documentaries on minority issues;
•	media monitoring.
Strategy Six calls for the building of a South Caucasus chapter of MDI's Reporting Diversity Network (RDN) during the course of the project. The RDN represents the institutional vehicle by which long-term change in media behaviour in the region can be carried out after the project's end, providing long-term sustainability of this work. Building the network is an integral part of MDI's regional strategy - a strategy which MDI has successfully enacted in South-East Europe, where a thriving RDN of 18 members now exists, often driving forward its own projects.