Press Release # 5

THREE WEEKS OF GLOBAL ACTION CAMPAIGN TO HIGHLIGHT IMBALANCE IN NEWS CONTENT AND NEWSROOMS IN INTERNATIONAL NEWS

(London) 16 February 2006 – Marking the one year anniversary of the 2005 WACC Global Media Monitoring Day, today is the launch of the first-ever "Who Makes The News?: Three Weeks of Global Action,” 16 February - 8 March 2006, which plans to raise awareness of the imbalance in representation of women and men in news content and the newsrooms of the world.

This global campaign was announced yesterday at the Foreign Press Association in London at a press conference that released "Who Makes The News?," the WACC Global Media Monitoring Project 2005 report, which contain global, regional and national quantitative and qualitative results of over 13,000 news articles reviewed in 76 countries by hundreds of volunteers around the world.

The Three Weeks of Global Action will feature national launches of “Who Makes The News?” 2005, as well as activities relating to awareness-raising on the representation of women and men in the news in over 50 countries that participated in the research in 2005 involving journalists, academics, students and people at the grassroots concerned about gender and media. A wide range of events will take place: press conferences in Fiji and Hungary; a radio talk show focusing on “Who Makes The News?” in Mozambique; a 4 day workshop on deconstructing and monitoring the media in South Africa; weekly discussions by a journalists’ association in Georgia and academic conferences in Sweden; a forum in the United States and a television program on the subject in El Salvador. The campaign will conclude 8 March with a series of events including a videoconference linking 6 countries in Southern Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States and in a discussion on gender and media sponsored by The World Bank.

Partners in the promotion of Three Weeks of Global Action include UNESCO's Women Make the News Initiative and UNIFEM. Please check the “Who makes the news?” website, www.whomakesthenews.org, to view the constantly updated calendar of international events of the Three Weeks of Global Action.

For opportunities to join in the global dialogue on the question of fair and balanced representation of women and men in the media and discuss media coverage during The Three Weeks of Global Action (16 February – 8 March), WACC invites media and the general public to participate in the “Who makes the news?” media monitoring blog and Three Weeks of Global Action blog at www.whomakesthenews.org.

For more information, please contact Sheila George at WACC at sg@wacc.org.uk or on +44(0)207-587-3000

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