Journalists For Christ (JFC) International Outreach has concluded a two-day training for media monitors recently engaged ahead of its media monitoring activity in October.
The training which held at the Media Career Development Network centre, Lagos provided opportunity for four media monitors who were trained to monitor six national newspapers and three online medium under a project titled, ‘Advancing the rights and welfare of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) through media monitoring, investigative journalism and media-driven advocacy.’
The project, supported by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), Canada and the Bread for the World (German Protestant Agency for Diaconia Development) is a build-up on two earlier projects; Monitoring media reportage and portrayal of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Africa and Managing internal displacements in Nigeria, which were implemented by JFC Nigeria in recent years.
Welcoming participants at the session, the President of JFC, Mr. Lekan Otufodunrin, charged the trainees to put in quality time in conducting the monitoring excercise as there are potentials to do greater things for themselves from the knowledge gained.
The session, which was facilitated by JFC member, Mr. Sanmi Falobi, who is also a Programme Manager with the International Press Centre (IPC) exposed the trainees to basic understanding of what a media monitoring project entails, the methodology and the application of the WACC adopted monitoring templates as relating to IDPs/Refugee issues to be tracked in the media reports.
Participants also had a pre-monitoring training session and guided engagement on capturing issues with the monitoring codes as well as practical and trial session that gave participants the opportunity to learn specific newspaper monitoring skills suitable for the project.
“This monitoring exercise is lasting just 31 days of October. You have to ensure you understand the parameters and the logic involved,” Falobi said, adding that, “though this is a small scale media monitoring project, you have to put in your best because the outcome, after the analysis will be shared and published as findings that will be used for indicators of IDPs issues not only in Nigeria and Africa, but at the global stage so you must get it and do it well,” he said.
The media monitoring exercise is one of the activities within a year-long project that is focused on advancing the rights and welfare of IDPs in Nigeria.