From 16th February 8th March 2006, hundreds of gender and media activists, human rights groups, grassroots communication organisations, academics and students of communication, media professionals, journalists associations, alternative media networks and church groups from North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific will join forces to take part in the first ever Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media.
This unique initiative entitled Who Makes the News?’ is being organized by WACC as part of the second phase of the WACC Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2005.
GMMP 2005 is a grassroots media monitoring research and advocacy project which aims to promote the fair and balanced representation of women and men in news media worldwide. The third ever GMMP began on 16th February 2005 when groups in 76 countries monitored the representation of women and men in their news media.
Since then, national data from participating groups worldwide has been flooding into WACC and the GMMP 2005 data analyst group, Media Monitoring Project (MMP), South Africa, has been running hundreds of data queries to produce the global, regional and national results for the project. The data analysis is currently being finalised and the GMMP 2005 consultant, Margaret Gallagher, is in the process of writing the global GMMP 2005 report which will contain global, regional and national quantitative and qualitative results. The global report will be available in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese making it accessible to a wide range of countries worldwide.
In addition, many of the groups who participated in the media monitoring are planning to produce regional and national GMMP 2005 reports in a number of local languages tailored to the needs of their individual gender and media context.
Who Makes the News? Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media, will begin with the launch of the global GMMP 2005 report in London by WACC in partnership with Amnesty International, Article 19, the International Federation of Journalists and the Open Society Foundation. Targeting international news media, the event will include a press conference and debate amongst media personnel on the gender and media issues that GMMP 2005 highlights.
During the following three weeks, groups worldwide will organise their own events to highlight to their national media what is wrong with current representations of women and men by media and will seek to explore ways in which these concerns can be addressed. Taking the three weeks as a framework within which to organise activities that respond to the specifics of their gender and media context, groups in over 70 countries will hold events to launch the GMMP 2005 global, regional and national reports. From video-conferences across the continent of Africa to the establishment of a media observatory in Latin America, the GMMP network and related groups are planning a wide variety of unique and exciting activities for the Three Weeks of Global Action.
Ending on 8th March International Women’s Day this period of action hopes to link up with UNESCO’s Women Make the News’ initiative when the Director General appeals to all media producing daily news to hand over editorial responsibility to women to cast the news on that day. WACC will be calling on its members and partners and the GMMP network to support this initiative as a first step in promoting the fair and balanced representation of women and men in news media worldwide.
If you would like to take part in Who Makes the News? Three Weeks of Global Action on Gender and the Media, or would like further information, please contact the Co-ordinator of the WACC Women’s Programme on at@wacc.org.uk or visit the GMMP 2005 website: www.globalmediamonitoring.org
