|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Journalists have been advised to mobilize for aggressive reportage on data driven reporting and dissemination with focus on increasing both government and individual confidence on policy making and evaluation.
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and federal ministry of health gave the advised in a jointly organised two day media dialogue on data driven reporting and dissemination of Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey “MICS”with some selected Journalists in Enugu recently.
Olumide Osanyinpeju Assistant Director, Child Right Information Bureau, Federal Ministry of Information and Culture while declaring the workshop open said that data collection and dissemination are essential elements to both policy making and evaluation function he however cautioned that Data must also be dissemination in a user – friendly way to ensure that they are understood and used.
He said that the need to use data accurately in the advocacy reports of development partners like UNICEF and other Agencies is paramount to the government of the federation, to guide against contentious issues, pointing out that both MICS and Demographic Health Survey (DHS) are Survey initiatives designated to assist countries.
UNICEF, communication specialist Geoffrey Njoku explained that the workshop was to develop skills and knowledge to enable Journalists interpret data and be able to build story from data.
“we find out that there is a lot of capacity gap in the areas of Journalists looking at data and being able to read that data and deliver good stories from that data, so our intension is that by the time every one will leave he or she will have the ability to get out story from data”, he said.
He advised that Journalists should not be afraid of using data pointing out that, they had issues with interpretation of data by Journalists which they have to do a lot of damage control.
Also UNICEF M and E specialist Maureen Zubie-Okolo who spoke on both evidence based reporting and Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS) said that the purpose of the meeting was to build Journalists towards using data for reporting and developing their stories.
“On how data is processed and analysed for writing stories, human interest stories, editorial etc”.
“in this case we have being talking about MICS for instance, just published and we are trying to make sure that the Journalists will begin to use the data to write their stories in order to write good stories out of MICS report “.
Other resource persons are Ayo Ojebode from University of Ibadan who spoke on turning data into stories and Nancy Katu-Ogundimu of university of Jos who also discussed the role of Journalists in development.
Regis Anukwuoji /Enugu
