Rewriting the story: New project to improve gender portrayal in politics

How can journalists best report on upcoming EU elections and provide the public with ethical, gender aware reporting on politics? The issue of ethical journalism free of gender discrimination was high on the agenda of the launch meeting for a new EU-funded project, Rewriting the Story: Gender media and politics, held at IFJ headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on 12 December.

The EU- funded project brings together an IFJ-led consortium, which includes its affiliates in Croatia (Trade Union of Croatian Journalists) and Cyprus (Union of Cyprus Journalists) as well as co-partners, the University of Padova and COPEAM (Conference of the Mediterranean Audiovisual Operators), to deliver a two year programme aimed at developing journalists', media students' and public broadcasters' skills on politics reporting with a gender lens, and enhance a gender-equal newsroom culture.

The project will start by documenting the state of play with regard to the gender portrayal of political life in Europe from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective and will then use the research to develop training modules to be used in two train-the-trainer sessions for journalists' unions from at least a dozen EU countries, followed by a series of national training workshops in 12 countries.

Another key aspect of the project is the strengthening of newsroom culture and editorial policies for greater gender equality by developing peer-to-peer exchanges among public broadcasters and journalists' unions. 

IFJ Deputy General Secretary Jeremy Dear said: "This project is unique in the way it is bringing journalists, students and public broadcasters together to strengthen ethical journalism in reporting politics and installing a gender equality culture and practice in newsrooms. It is also an opportunity for our unions to build their skills and capacity and provide their members with in-depth training on political coverage with a gender lens".

Once developed and tested, the training modules and results of the research will be made available on the AGEMI web site to support other journalists' trainers' skills across the world.

More about the project here.

For more information, please contact IFJ on +32 2 235 22 16

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