Monitors across the world speak!
On 16th February 2005, many of the participants who subscribed to the project's mailing-list shared enthusiastic comments, little and large problems, last minute panic attacks, seeking solidarity and sharing their experiences with other participants from all over the world. We copied here some of the most exciting comments.
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Warm greetings from Peru. I want to let you know how we have been doing in this important day as we carry out the global monitoring project. Right now we are recording and gathering the materials in the capital city and other parts of the country. Once we have collected all the information and our team has received training, we will analyse all the news as instructed. It has been really very interesting for us to take part in this experience, especially because we as an institution have been working in this area of media monitoring.
Lizett Graham, A.C.S. CALANDRIA, Peru
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I am happy to be a member of this growing family of gender and media activists. I am the national coordinator for Zambia. I had two teams of monitors, one in the capital city of Zambia, Lusaka and the other in Ndola, Copperbelt province. The enthusiasm among my 16 monitors has been amazing.
Charles Chisala, Times of Zambia
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Dear Friends,
GMMP 05 work is running well in Nepal. In fact, we have 3 groups to monitor all three types of media. ASMITA staff and ASMITA volunteers' group are jointly monitoring the print and television media. Radio Sagarmatha group is monitoring the
Radio news. Due to the political changes, censorship in media and banning other political and social activism in the country, the news has also been dominated by those topics. All the monitors are enjoying this world campaign of monitoring. They are also learning how media can be subtly bias to the gender issues.
I hope, the monitoring work is going well in your country too. My organization Asmita Women's Publishing House, Media and Resource Organization (ASMITA) is very proud of being the national focal point for this great work. I, personally, am also quite happy to work as the National Coordinator.
Manju Thapa, ASMITA, Nepal
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Hello colleagues all over the world,
We just made a press release on our findings in the GMMP in The Netherlands. We found 25% of the persons in the news were female on this day. Over all we have coded 212 persons on radio, television and in newspapers. Radio was the most unbalanced, with only 13 % women, television news did the best with a percentage of 30% women.
Significantly the best was our children's news, which was almost equal in representation. Remarkably was the fact that in one TV news and in one newspaper there was special attention for the attendance of a group of women to the funeral of Lebanon’s ex-prime minister Hariri.
The coding was done by a group of 25 women working in the media. A group of international students coded CNN world news and the Asian News on CNN. On CNN news there were more women then men! In the7 items that were coded, there were 14 women and 12 men.
All the participants who took part in the coding were enthusiast about the experience. "You put on another pair of glasses and you see completely different news", one of the participants stated.
All of you who are still coding, we wish you a lot of fun!
Bernadette van Dijkc, Radio Netherlands Training Centre, The Netherlands
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Dear friends,
Yesterday, for the first time, we were monitoring our media. We believe we will never watch, listen, or read the news with same eyes.
United Women Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
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Dear Friends,
In Cuba almost 20 persons are working on the monitoring. We make 3 teams: radio, TV and newspaper and in each team we make a couple to work together. Then all the teams supervise the works. This is a very useful experience.
Isabel Moya. University of Havana, Cuba
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Testimonio de Mirta Henault durante el Monitoreo de Medios realizado en Argentina.
