Injecting proper balance into coverage of sensitive issues

Shrouded in morning mist, a new German pre-fabricated village stands ready to receive up to 550 Ukrainians fleeing the fighting in the East of the country. 

In the region around the city of Zaporozhye in the south east of the country there are already an estimated 58,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs).

For the journalists taking part in two more Thomson Foundation courses in Poltava and Zaporozhye, the huge influx of people has already provided a large number of stories. The two-day courses, supported by the UK Embassy in Kiev and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Conflict fund, have given regional reporters and editors a chance to reflect on how to inject proper balance into their coverage of such a sensitive issue.

The course has already been run in the cities of Kharkiv and Lviv which have also received some of the estimated 600,000 Ukrainians who have been uprooted by the conflict and are struggling to build a new life elsewhere in the country.

I liked the fact that there is a trainer with vast experience covering the issues in question.

A new German pre-fabricated village stands ready to receive up to 550 Ukrainians 

Ukrainian journalist and trainer Angelina Soldatenko said: “The biggest advantage of this training is that it touches upon issues which our journalists haven’t really dealt with earlier. We are not talking about theoretical challenges but practical ones.”

The courses cover the legal position of IDPs within Ukraine, the difficulties they face finding accommodation, employment and education and the critical role journalists can play informing a wider audience about those issues.

“I liked the fact that there is a trainer with vast experience covering the issues in question,” said course participant Olga Boglevskaya from the Ukrainian newspaper, 2000.

“It’s always interesting learn from the experience of colleagues from overseas to know how IDP issues are covered in other countries.”