2 minutes
TRAINING OF THE GEORGIAN MEDIA REGULATOR
Our expert conducted a two-day training (3-4 July 2017) for the Georgian National Communications Commission to enhance their media monitoring methodology and overall skills to regulate the media during an election campaign. The training was carried out within the framework of European Union/Council of Europe Joint Programme ‘Promoting freedom, professionalism and pluralism of the media’ that aims at promoting professionalism, responsibility, and respect for ethical rules among journalists as well as increasing the independence and professionalism of the Georgian regulator.
Given the overall project’s objectives, the GNCC staff learned about various media monitoring methodological approaches, paying special attention to qualitative methods of media monitoring, fair allocation of airtime to political contestants as well as gender monitoring.
Given the upcoming local elections, some attention was devoted to monitoring the elections in local media, with practical exercises focusing on news and current affairs programs.
The trainer applied a mixture of informative, creative and personality-building work forms, as well as a number of visual elements, to ensure that all those who participate will be involved (keeping in mind that different people have different thinking styles, with some people learning best through visual media, others remembering more of what they hear and others through physical or emotional feelings).
The intention of the trainer was to share their experience with conducting similar media monitoring projects in different countries and to draw their attention to some specific and more problematic aspects of media monitoring (eg. how to eliminate potential subjectiveness and/or bias of media monitors, how to deal with the advantage of incumbency, how to ensure credibility of media monitoring etc.)
