Reporting diversity training and development for news agencies in South-East Europe

Project objectives and activities:

The objective of this modest educational project was to work with the news agencies which, since they have more consumers then a single news medium, therefore have more influence. Several news agencies sent their journalists to this 4-day course: Stina (Croatia), Safax and BH Press (Bosnia), Beta, Fonet and Tajug (Serbia), Kosovalive (Kosovo), Srna (Republika Srpska), and Montena Fax (Montenegro). All of them had been providing local and regional media with news and information, developing at the same time a modest news exchange service with other news agencies from the Balkans and region-wide. The course helped these agencies gain a better understanding of and sensitivity towards, diversity-related issues, especially important since most of the countries of the Balkans continued to have problems dealing with minorities or with refugees, or both. The work had the secondary effect of developing greater cooperation between the agencies. There was one additional result. The Beta News agency established a Reporting Diversity News Exchange service providing (along with the assistance of other partners in the MDI-initiated Reporting Diversity Network) high quality articles on ethnic minorities and their human rights as well as on the other diversity-related issues (gender, children, disabled people, homosexuals, etc).