UNESCO/OSCE/Inform Culture Training on The Production of Impartial, Balanced and Unbiased Information Guidelines for the Editors and Reporters” Project Final Report, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

1 September 2005

Program, project backgrounds

-Problems connected with production of impartial and unbiased information are the most urgent for the Central Asia, because of traditional for all Eastern countries authoritarian way in government.

-This project agrees with the Kyrgyz Republic State Program for democratization, state law about mass-media and information.

-This project corresponds to the following activities of UNESCO: spread of knowledge, implementation of new educational technologies, strengthening of freedom of speech.

2.Goals and purposes

-The main purpose of this project is to held on a training (consist of some modules) for mass-media employees. This training should be developed in accordance with international standards.

-It was planned that this project would have the following results:

1)Original training modules according the recommendations of “Mass-media trainers guidelines” should be developed taking into consideration the requirements of local market.

2)Two-day training seminar should be held on the base of developed training modules.

3)CDs with all necessary training materials should be created and distributed among the participants of the seminar.

4)CBA Editorial Guidelines (The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association with Support from UNESCO) should be translated into Russian;

5) Materials should be printed and distributed.

3. Activities

- All following activities for the project implementation were held in accordance with the plan:

1) The following original training and training modules for mass-media employees were developed:

a. The training module “Why does people need in impartial, balanced and unbiased information in the Kyrgyz Republic nowadays and who are this people?”

b. The training “Language of the mass-media”

c. The training “Event, fact and interpretation in the journalist investigation”.

d. The training “Work with the information source: methods, organization, and psychology. From the experience of work of the special agencies”.

e. The training module “Collecting and production of unbiased information under unstable social and political conditions”.

f. The training “Methods of collecting and evaluation of information with different Internet services. Work with deep Internet”.

2) Total quantity of created and distributed CDs with training materials is 140 items.

3) Guidelines were printed and distributed.

4) CBA Editorial Guidelines (The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association with Support from UNESCO) was translated into Russian and distributed;

5) Two –day seminar and training was held for Kyrgyz mass-media employees from Bishkek and other regions, students of OSCE Academy from Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

4. Participants/project target group

1) For the project was created a working group consists of project head and coordinator; also the following experts were engaged in evaluation of regional mass media needs in educational trainings:

a. A.A. Brydny, Ph.D., professor, head of AUCA “Social psychology” dept.

b. M. Sivasheva – chief editor of web-pages MediaKG and Online-Journalist

c. A.A. Knyazev., Ph.D., professor, senior lecturer of KRSU “International journalism” dept.

2) In development of original trainings the following specialists were engaged.

a. The training module “Why does people need in impartial, balanced and unbiased information in the Kyrgyz Republic nowadays and who are this people?” was developed and held by A.A. Brydny, Ph.D., professor.

b. The training “Event, fact and interpretation in the journalist investigation” was developed and held by M. Sivasheva, chief editor of MediaKG (internet project under the “Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan”), teacher of journalism, AUCA.

c. The author of the training “Work with the information source: methods, organization, and psychology. From the experience of work of the special agencies» is S. Korneev, lawyer, the Association of Communication Organizations.

d. The training “Language of the mass-media” was created by E. Proyaeva, philologist and expert on the linguistic disputes.

e. The training “Methods of collecting and evaluation of information with different Internet services. Work with deep Internet” was developed by M.Rogojin, internet providing company’s specialist, lecturer of KRSU (subject ”Technology and techniques of mass-media)

f. A.A. Knyazev., Ph.D., professor, is the author of the training module “Collecting and production of unbiased information under unstable social and political conditions”. He has a great experience of working in the regions of civil conflicts.

-The target group of this project includes first of all managers of mass media, who are responsible for staff education, journalists, who practice self education, trainers, teachers of journalism departments and all people who are interested in new information on this subject.



5.Results

This project has the following results:

- 22 journalists are trained on two-day workshop. It consisted of 6 training modules.

- 6 original training programs were developed. One of them was represented like multimedia presentation.

- 60 CDs were created and distributed among the participants as sets of 3 CDs: 2CDs – MMTK, 1 CD – materials of this Guidelines.

6. Program/project support

- Materials of this project were prepared for publishing in special IT edition “Expert Newspaper”; producing of video material for TV program “Information Society”.

- The web-site with all project materials created and distributed in Internet.

7. Program/project evaluation

- Opinions of experts on regional mass media employees’ on training education problems were collected and systematized.

- In the frameworks of this project it was possible to join impacts of professionals of different fields (IT specialists, journalists, trainers, mass media managers, sociologists). Strong interest to the activities within this project expressed by these professionals shows us necessity of such educational forms.

- OSCE Academy in the Kyrgyz Republic and Ôðèäðèõ Ýáåðò Foundation supported this project as partners.

- Information and photos fro seminars were included into e-mail news group of the The International Journalists' Network (IJNET)

8. Resume and lessons

- Among the advantages of this project is the fact that it is a continuation of systematical work of UNESCO Cluster Bureau Information Department for implementation of training technologies into educational process of regional mass media. The project activities took into consideration the experience of UNESCO and ITRAINONLINE. These activities helped to make educational recourses more available. .

- During development of the original trainings, which considered local specifics, it was very difficult to define priority because there were no large-scale and long-term researches of mass media employees’ educational demand and developed consulting institutions.

- In the project implementation were engaged such partners as NTRC, AUCA Laboratory of Critical Thinking, KRSU International Journalism Department, Legal Service of the Association of Communication Organizations.

- This project has been successful and opened a number of opportunities. The sustainability of the project results is ensured by continuously increasing needs in training of mass-media workers.

- The CD's with Project outputs will be distributed not only among mass-media, but among higher education establishments (colleges, universities) offering journalism studies, as well as made available in Internet on http://www.unesco.kz/mmtk

Recommendations

Participants’ interests audit shows us a strong interest to the activities within “The Production of Impartial, Balanced and Unbiased Information Guidelines for the Editors and Reporters” project expressed by these professionals. It shows us necessity of such seminars and trainings oriented on the wide range of problems concerning mass-media and NGO’s functioning considering the local specifics.

There are two main reasons to support this idea:

- Nowadays in the Kyrgyz Republic nobody is involved into mass-media employees’ education on a systematic base. Internews and Soros Foundation hold their trainings occasionally. The participants of this training expressed the opinion that seminar in the frameworks of this (“The Production of Impartial, Balanced and Unbiased Information Guidelines for the Editors and Reporters”) project was more progressive, and oriented on the wider range of modern trends and requirements.

- The original courses developed within the frameworks of the project are basically making an introduction to the requested topics that need a deeper more detailed research.

- It is needed to fulfill a new project that concludes trainings for mass-media trainers and employees. This project should be based on the materials of this and our pervious projects, such as MMTK.

- It is obvious that there is a real necessity of the project, oriented to the development of consulting services for mass-media.

Permanent link: http://en.unesco.kz/unesco-osce-inform-culture-training-on-the-production-of-impartial-balanced-and-unbiased