GLOBAL CONSCIENCE INITIATIVE CAMEROON – APPEAL FOR JOURNALISM PROFESSIONALS
To whom it may concern,
The Global Conscience Initiative is a grassroots NGO working to establish a human rights framework in Cameroon, West Africa. One aspect of GCI is the Media Watch Project, which aims at addressing and identifying human rights abuses in the media, government censorship, and the hegemonic styles of press that restrict truthful reporting.
The Media Watch Project has had many successes in its short lifetime, undertaking interviews with regional journalists, submitting press releases, running a radio program, and collating their data into accessible research to be used as secondary resource for larger international humanitarian media groups and NGOs.
I am an Australian working in the Buea office in the Anglophone region of Cameroon. One of the new aims of the project is to establish contact between practicing human rights journalists in Australia and the UK, with those working here in the Anglophone region.
I ask you to forward this email to any journalists who would be interested in this quasi-penpal system. If you are a practicing journalists, or a postgraduate journalism student I ask you to get involved in this initiative.
I can email a proposal guide and put those interested in contact with a local English speaking journalist. If a specific interest is expressed (eg. Development journalism, women’s issues) then I can try to arrange a corresponding local journalist in this area. We then establish an email exchange of articles and stories for editing. This process of constructive criticism will be especially useful for reporting difficult subjects such as torture, rape and corruption.
We hope to support improvements in the style and practice of journalism in this region, helping to bring a more objective international method to the press. I again ask you to forward this email to your contacts, or if you have any more questions please don’t hesitate to email:
Fiona.mcalpine@gcicameroon.org
You can find out more about the Global Conscience Initiative here: http://www.gcicameroon.org/
and about the Media Watch Project here: http://www.mediawatch.gcicameroon.org/
Sincerely,
Fiona McAlpine
Media Watch Project Coordinator