Journalists at a press conference at the National Election Committee in Khartoum. Photo: Brigittte Sins/IMS

The media in Khartoum are preparing themselves for today's first multi-party elections in Sudan in 24 years. While covering elections is still new to most media, they are eager to learn the various angles, formats and styles of reporting

By Brigitte Sins, International Media Support (IMS), Khartoum

With the help of international and regional mentors, media houses in Khartoum are willing to apply standards and ideas that are new to them.

- Every day I take a reporter out in the field, says Palestinian journalist Tagreed el-Khodary, one of the mentors in the Sudan Media and Elections Project.

- Journalists are not used to approaching a person and asking for answers. I encourage them to ask questions to anyone during a meeting or event.  All answers can be helpful in making an analysis, she said.

With this instruction, a newspaper managed last week to produce an in-depth feature on illiterate women and the challenges they face in casting their votes.

Introducing commas

 Another skill that Tagreed el-Khodary is sharing with the editors she works with is the style of the newspapers.

- In the first reports I saw, there were no commas or quotations used.  A sentence would start and only finish at the end of the article. Now, the sub-editors are very grateful that commas have been introduced, she said.

Pushing for female journalists

Nibal Thawabteh, a Jordanian journalist and another one for the mentors, confirms that journalists are not familiar with the technique of Q&A as it is practiced in international media.

- Interaction or a real debate is not common. Reporters will not interrupt their interviewees.

Nibal Thawabteh, who works with a Sudanese television station, is clear on what she wants to achieve within these weeks of mentoring. She would like to include female on-air journalists, who can provide analysis and feedback to create some gender balance.

- I am convincing the station that female journalists are good and have something to say.

Like Tagreed el-Khodary,  Nibal Thawabteh is also interested in including the voices from the street.

-  It is not the standard thing to do here, but when I proposed this idea to the reporters, to go out to do vox pops, they were very interested, says Nibal Thawabteh.

Politicised media

The standard practices of the Sudanese media explains a lot about the context of the Sudanese media landscape. Many media are politicised. Rather than being a watchdog for society or a channel to disseminate information, they are providers of political views. There is a one-way channel of information in the country, thereby excluding the voices of the people.

- They are not unbiased as such, rather they they look at one political view and then the other. It is a political culture of the media. The line between reporting and opinion is often not clear or mixed, says Hisham Abdallah, a Palestinian journalist.

Training formats

Hisham Abdallah provides support to newspapers by guiding journalists and editors through different formats of writing, to make it easier for readers to distinguish a news article from a column. Despite the lack of experience in election reporting and using the same style and standards over the years, the media are trying to cover the elections with the means available to them.

- Looking at what they have and what they do, they are doing a great job, says Nibal Thawabteh, who explains that the television station she works with has only one camera, one computer, no internet access and scripts are handwritten.

Period of silence in media

All media working with the mentors, received them with great enthusiasm and are eager to learn other standards of and practices in journalism.

On Sunday Sudan will go to the polls for the elections running 11 – 13 April. Prior to that, there will be one day of silence where campaigning is not allowed by the parties or in the media. For the media this is another challenge since the formats of news reports and analyses are not always distinguishable - and election candidates do not distinguish either.

Mentorship programme

The in-house mentorship programme is a follow-up to a training programme in Sudan where more than 350 journalists and reporters received training in reporting on elections over the last month.  Within the in-house mentorship programme, mentors are part of the editorial teams with whom they share their experience and skills without assaulting the identity of the medium. Twelve mentors are placed at twelve media houses which include newspapers, radio stations and television stations across Sudan. The project falls under the Media and Elections project carried out by the Sudan Media and Elections Consortium.

Background:

The Media and Elections Project, funded by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is implemented by the Sudan Media and Elections Consortium, a group of national and international organisations with expertise in media support. These are: Sudanese Development Initiative (SUDIA), International Media Support (IMS), Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA), Osservatorio di Pavia, Arab Working Group for media monitoring and Fojo Media Institute.

For more information, contact Ms. Brigitte Sins, Project Manager, Tel. + 249 9072 06812 or + 45 8832 7005, email: bs[snabela]i-m-s.dk or britsins[snabela]hotmail.com.