News about Connect-World
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NEWS
Connect-World has published its 2007 Annual Report [PDF]
Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund Recipient, Louise Williams shortlisted for the One World Media Awards for EU El Dorado
The One World Media Awards have been described as the equivalent of the Oscars for those journalists and film-makers who work in the developing world and conflict areas. Louise Williams has been shortlisted for the awards for a Simon Cumbers-funded radio documentary EU El Dorado which went out on Newstalk 106-108 on the 30th of December 2007.
The programme, which can be listened to below, traces the perilous journey undertaken by migrants from the coast of West Africa to the Canary Islands. The boat trip takes at least 10 days and it’s estimated that 1 in 5 die trying to reach Europe’s shores.
Habib Ndoye boat builder in Mbour port. Photo: Louise Williams
See also: Death on the road to ‘El Dorado’, Sunday, December 30, 2007 © The Sunday Business Post
Louise Williams has worked in journalism for 12 years, mostly based abroad. She started her career in the Netherlands before heading to the Middle East where she worked as a correspondent. She then spent several years working for BBC radio in London, with a special interest in international current affairs, development issues and world religion. She is currently based in Dublin where she works as an independent radio producer, with regular reporting trips abroad.
Research highlights “heavy reliance” on press releases
A report published today by a team of academics has examined the coverage by the Irish media [PDF] last year of two significant international development stories. The research was commissioned by Connect-World (23/11/07).
Media coverage of the publication of Irish Aid’s 2006 White Paper was characterised by a “heavy reliance ...on information provided in the press release and at the press launch”, the report found. “The assumptions and claims of the original source material... tended to pass through the media with little critical examination.” Full report [PDF]. Discussion. COMMENT.
EVENTS
UPCOMING / PAST
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Connect-World at the Digital Media Awards, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Northwood
Stephen Stewart, NUI Maynooth Media Centre wins the Connect-World Student Digital Storytelling Award. 2nd: Maria Mulhall and Tom Bourke, DCU. 3rd: Emmet Doherty, North West Regional College, Derry. The purpose of this award is to encourage those studying multi-media to understand how their chosen medium can be used creatively to tell a compelling story of other peoples’ lives. The Digital Media Awards ceremony took place on February 7th 2008.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
"Towards Journalism of Conscience: The Media and the Challenge of Rural Poverty", Swift lecture theatre, Trinity College Dublin Arts Block, 7-9pm.
Connect-World, TCD and NUI Maynooth present a lecture by Palagummi Sainath. Sainath has won over 30 national and international journalism awards.
PALAGUMMI SAINATH has worked as a journalist reporting on development and related issues in India for 26 years. He has won over 30 national and international journalism awards and fellowships, including Amnesty International’s Global Human Rights Journalism prize (2000) and (with CNN’s Jim Clancy) the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Boerma prize for work of ’international importance in addressing the issues of hunger.’ In November 2002, he became the first print media journalist to win the ’Inspiration Award’ at the Global Visions Film Festival in Edmonton, Canada (with film maker Joe Moulins).
Sainath’s book, ’Everybody Loves a Good Drought’ (1996), has gone into 19 printings and has been translated into a number of languages. In the last decade, he has spent on average three quarters of the year with village people, reporting extensively on agrarian crises due to neo-liberal policies, on the lack of sensitivity and efficiency by the government and the bureaucracy, on farmer suicides in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and also reported on the plight of the dalits.
Sainath’s strength lies in his energy as an investigator, the rigour of his research and the lucidity of his prose. A fine photographer and public speaker, he is currently the Rural Affairs Editor of India’s most serious English language daily, The Hindu, of Chennai.
The eminent Indian journalist Nikhil Chakravartty once described Sainath’s work as "the conscience of the Indian nation." His work on poverty, hunger and inequality has also won praise from the likes of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen who once described him as one of the world’s great experts on hunger and famine.
Sainath is actively involved in the training of journalists in the poorest regions of India’s countryside. He has also been teaching journalism at the Sophia Polytechnic in Mumbai for 20 years. Many of Sainath’s students have themselves gone on to win major national awards.
Friday November 23, 2007
Connect-World / NUJ joint workshop on the media coverage of development issues, Dublin.
Part I ’Un-Covering the Stories of the Developing World.’
Part II ’How Good is the Coverage of Global Development?’
Read the Summary / Post a comment
This was part of the NUJ’s international “Standing up for Journalism” campaign. A new report commissioned by Connect-World was launched at the event: 'Media Coverage of the White Paper on Irish Aid and the Joint Consortium’s Second Report on Gender-Based Violence, 2006'. The report was prepared by the DCU School of Communications and the DIT School of Journalism. Read the report [PDF]. COMMENT
Read/Comment on Connect-World Director Katherine Meenan's Speech.
July 26th, 2007
Images of Africa
Cork Vision Centre at St Peter’s, North Main Street, Cork, 11.30am - 1.30pm
Connect-World, together with Suas, presented a seminar to promote discussion and debate on how Africa is presented in the media. Aoife Kavanagh of RTÉ spoke about the challenge of portraying the complexity of this whole continent. Her talk was followed by a panel discussion with representatives of the media, both mainstream and immigrant. This event was supported by Thomas Crosbie Holdings.
Africa and the developing world just doesn't get a fair go when it comes to media coverage
Notes from the talk given by RTÉ TV and radio presenter Aoife Kavanagh:
"...given the scale of suffering, the huge populations we're talking about, the importance from a human rights point of view, Africa and the developing world just doesn't get a fair go when it comes to media coverage.
"So that’s a given. What I want to discuss is why that might be the case and what, if anything, can be done about it."
The expert panel included Pastor Paul Orimolusi, Jill O’Sullivan editor of TCM (Thomas Crosbie Media - the 'new media' arm of the Thomas Crosbie Holdings Newspaper Group) and Esther Bolarin of Ethnic Limerick (a supplement to the Limerick Leader). Connect-World Director, Katherine Meenan, chaired the panel.
Aoife Kavanagh, RTE
Aoife Kavanagh is a senior broadcast journalist with the RTE Newsroom.
Aoife has travelled extensively in the developing world reporting for RTE radio and television covering a number of major international news stories for the station. In recent years has reported from Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and most recently, Sierra Leone.
For the past two years Aoife has presented the Faraway Up Close series which looks at how Irish tax payers money is spent in the developing world.
Esther Bolarin, Ethnic Limerick
Esther is a journalist and a Nigerian by birth. She has worked with various voluntary Organisations in Ireland - for instance in Comlamlh as an executive member for two years, in the Red Ribbon project in Limerick and in the CDP in Ennis. She is currently freelancing with the Limerick Leader.
Esther recently graduated with a BSC honors in International Relations and also holds various diplomas, including a diploma in community development from NUI Galway.
Jill O’Sullivan, Thomas Crosbie Media
Jill O’Sullivan is editor of Thomas Crosbie Media (TCM), the new media division of the Thomas Crosbie Holdings group. TCM owns and operates breakingnews.ie and a number of other websites, as well as updating the websites of all newspaper titles in the TCH group. These include irishexaminer.com, the post.ie (the Sunday Business Post online), eveningecho.ie and 15 regional newspaper websites.
Jill recently completed a Diploma in Development Studies at UCC.
The event is part of the Building Unity Through Diversity Campaign in Cork from 14 July to 12 August, presented by Suas in partnership with Concern. This summer Fitzgerald Park in Cork city will host the 1000 Families exhibition – portraits of families across the globe, from Trim to Timbuktu. It will be accompanied by a free public events programme.
 
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