The programme Ukraine Regional Voices has worked with regional journalists to help inject proper balance into their coverage of the plight of Ukraine's nearly two million displaced persons (IDPs).
The EU-funded two-year programme was aimed at highlighting the IDP issue and improving the quality of reporting in the Ukrainian regional media.
Many of the journalists were IDPs. The trainers helped them move beyond immediate crisis coverage to develop stories on how the displaced people integrate into host communities and the ongoing challenges they face.
We are ensuring sensitive coverage through the use of authoritative sources on the IDP crisis.
“The regional media are the front line in covering IDPs and the conflict more generally,” says the Thomson Foundation’s director of development, David Quin. “As such these newspapers and TV stations have to get the story right, have to deliver it with sensitivity, impartiality and with an eye to the future. That is what we were doing here, helping build stories that matter in an ethical way on an issue that all too quickly gets forgotten.”
The production training workshops took place away from direct conflict zones of Crimea and Donbass in the cities of Kharkiv, Zaporizhzya, Odessa, Poltava, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Lviv, Dnipro, Chernihiv, Ivano Frankivsk and Zhytomir.
In each region, stories were filmed, written and edited with Thomson Foundation support, providing direct on-the-job training to reporters covering a challenging issue.
The programme has created a platform for media content and a network through which journalists continue to support each other and share material.
Regional Voices: Strengthening Conflict Sensitive Coverage in Ukraine’s Regional Media
Visit the dedicated project website for information on workshops, news and other activities: regionalvoices.eu