8 minute read
Media Development
Public broadcaster 2.0
Ukraine’s public broadcaster UA:PBC has re-branded not only with a modern look. Suspilne wants to be truly “public” and wants to cater to a growing digital audience with a credible approach to international and local news.
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by Hélène Champagne, DW Akademie and Ole Tangen Jr, DW editor
The opening of the Kyiv Radio Hub in November 2020 (from left to right): Zurab Alasania, Director General of UA:PBC (until May 2021), Annetta Pölking, a representative of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and Mykola Chernotytskyi, Director General of UA:PBC (from May 2021).
© UA:PBC
In April 2020, Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne launched “In Quarantine,” a live, daily news program full of unbiased and useful information about the COVID-19 pandemic. The show proved popular with audiences with over five million views in just the first five days.
This modern-looking show featuring critical news and information was the culmination of four years of hard work and intense reforms by the broadcaster’s journalists, editors, technicians and management. It was also a result of collaboration between Suspilne and public broadcasters from throughout Europe. DW Akademie and BBC Media Action supported the modernization of Suspilne with funding from the European Union and the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The goal was to turn a large public broadcaster from a Soviet-style state-run entity into a modern, reliable source of news and information. UA:PBC was created in January 2017 and rebranded as Suspilne in 2019. Today, Suspilne includes two national TV channels, UA:Pershiy, the first channel, and UA:Kultura, as well as radio stations and 22 regional outlets.
According to analysis from the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), a Ukrainian media watchdog organization, Suspilne is now well regarded for its independent and unbiased reporting.
A new focus on training
As part of its public service mission to produce credible news and information, Suspilne organized over 100 media trainings last year alone through its two new hubs, one in Kyiv and one in Odesa. Through DW Akademie, trainings were offered in media management, leadership, mobile journalism, storytelling, among others.
Inna Grebeniuk, a member of Suspilne’s Management Board, views the expanded focus on proper training — including organizational development training for management — as one of the main factors that have strengthened the broadcaster as a true public media service in Ukraine.
“This is a crucial aspect of UA:PBC’s role as a public service broadcaster, which proved to be one of the main factors in strengthening the company as a true public media service institution in the country,” said Grebeniuk.
In the picture (from left to right): Viktoriia Sydorenko, Director of Public and Media Relations at UA:PBC, Zurab Alasania, Director General of UA:PBC (until May 2021) and Carsten von Nahmen, DW Akademie Managing Director.
© DW / A. Mantach
Multimedia newsroom
The reforms and changes at Suspilne are continuing with plans to launch its renovated Newsroom 2.0 this summer. The team will be able to rely on an optimized newsgathering structure, a modern production system and high-quality equipment purchased by DW Akademie and BBC Media Action as part of the EU-funded project.
For Angelina Kariakina, the head of the Newsroom 2.0 Project, the newly designed newsroom staffed by a team of well-trained, multimedia journalists is at the heart of Suspilne’s transformation. “We have been able to evolve from old fashioned, separate TV and radio news teams into a genuinely multimedia organization with the greatest potential in the country,” said Kariakina. BBC Media Action supported the transition to a more story-centric, multimedia newsroom by providing strategic consultancy, advice on designing workflow and trainings for the newsroom team. “It has revolutionized the way we cover major news stories and will allow us to reach vibrant, new audiences,” said Kariakina.
Focus groups research facilitated by DW Akademie have shown that more still needs to be done in terms of raising awareness in Ukraine as to what public broadcasting is. Greater engagement with the audience would ensure that public support and government funding for Suspilne continues to grow in the future.
Common ground
© imago images / Stefan Trappe
With so many refugees arriving in Uganda, it’s hard to avoid conflict. Now, a radio network is trying to ease the difficult co-existence between refugees from South Sudan and host communities in Uganda with a vision of reliable information and empowerment.
by Ochan Hannington* and Antje Bauer, DW Akademie
Fiona Knight, 23, was on her way home one evening last January when suddenly, she became very scared. “My neighbors and I had gone to collect firewood,” she says. “Without warning, some young people from neighboring communities came out of the bush, armed with bows and arrows. They threatened us, and we ran away. But they chased after us together with their dogs. We lost our slippers. And we came back with nothing.”
It was not the first time Knight had been threatened since she and her family of three sought safety in the Rhino refugee settlement in Northern Uganda, after fleeing violent conflict in South Sudan. Over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese refugees have arrived in the country, building huts on government-allocated land. The former remote communities soon found themselves next to a refugee settlement that would assume the size of a city within a matter of weeks.
Initially, the refugees were well received. Uganda has one of the most generous refugee policies in the world. Refugees are allowed to work and move freely and are allocated a piece of land for their use. But inevitably, conflicts with the local population emerged. The conflicts are on tangible things such as farmland or firewood, which is essential for cooking. Both refugees and members of nearby communities gather firewood from bushland — a resource that’s normally open to all. But in areas with a high concentration of refugees, vegetation disappeared within the first year. That means refugees like Fiona Knight have to walk further from their settlement to access bushland that is owned by locals.
But conflicts are also about mutual misunderstanding due to different languages and a lack of communication. Through the Cross Border Network (CBN), local radio stations from Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan have joined forces and have since been exchanging information and working together. “The vision is to be a professional network that informs and empowers communities across borders for peaceful coexistence,” the network’s Ugandan coordinator, Jane Angom, says. The CBN was formed in 2017 in Uganda during a meeting of journalists from Uganda and South Sudan which was supported by DW Akademie. The network includes 22 media houses and was put in place to increase communication and check rumors. Due to lack of resources, community radio stations on both sides of the border have often exacerbated the conflicts by broadcasting unverified information. “I still recall how anxiety increased throughout the refugee settlements, when we heard on the radio that Salva Kiir had died,” says Fiona Knight, referring to the fake news about the death of the president of South Sudan. Jane Angom and her colleagues are not only aware about fact-checking, they also know about the power of language.
Angom recalls a fight after a football match between two youth. “We simply reported and said, two youth from different communities were watching this match and they ended up fighting. But other media houses mentioned the tribes of each of the youth, and that kind of reporting escalates the conflict because you are actually highlighting the rift further and adding to it,” she explains. Also regarding storytelling, the CBN aims to encourage peaceful coexistence and stop conflict. “We try to establish how the issue of the refugees can best become an issue of interest to both sides,” says Angom.
She sees the impact of her work: As a result of repeated programming and content, advocating for peaceful coexistence, the community members found local solutions to the challenges, for example in West Nile region of Northern Uganda. “The community members found local solutions to the challenges and the pressures they were facing. For example, in some settlements, the refugees were given parts of the local land for them to be able to till to address the food crisis,” she stresses.
These initial successes underscore the significance of cross media cooperation radio in promoting dialogue and increasing access to information relevant to the daily needs and issues affecting the community. In addition to this, “dialogue committees” have recently been put in place in order to overcome the mutual mistrust. The committees comprise an equal number of people from both communities as well as a few “neutral” people from NGOs who operate within the refugee settlements. All members of the dialogue committees are elected, and the committees act as village courts for minor offenses.
*Ochan Hannington is a freelance journalist from South Sudan living in Northern Uganda.
How close should we get? Media and conflict
Not a textbook, but a reader: With impressive reports, interviews and images, DW Akademie’s new publication takes a closer look at media and conflict.
Using concrete examples from around the world, the authors, most of whom come from the Global South, describe the conflicts that journalists face in their work. They focus on social conflicts such as dealing with fake news, looking at the history of one’s country, conflicts between refugees and host communities or the consequences of homogeneity in newsrooms on reporting. The publication questions the possibilities available to report differently. Other articles deal with hate against journalists on the Internet and how media professionals deal with trauma acquired in the course of their work — an important but often stigmatized topic.
“How close should we get? Media and conflict” is published in English and distributed primarily online. It is aimed at media professionals, journalism education institutions, media development organizations and their funders.
