Thomson Foundation wins contract to work with Ukrainian media

As temperatures fall to below freezing in Ukraine, the problem of dealing with Europe’s biggest internal migration since World War II becomes more acute.

There are an estimated 1.6 million internally displaced people (IDPs) as a result of the ongoing conflict.

The government in Kiev continues to face an unprecedented challenge to deliver basic services.

Thomson Foundation has begun work on an 18-month EU-backed project aimed at highlighting the IDP issue and improving the quality of reporting in the Ukrainian regional media.

As part of the €2.1 million programme, Thomson Foundation trainers have been working in Odessa with reporters from Crimea and Donbass.

Many of the journalists are IDPs themselves. The trainers help them move beyond immediate crisis coverage to develop stories on how the displaced people integrate into host communities and the ongoing challenges they face.

Newspapers and TV have to get the story right, have to deliver it with sensitivity, impartiality and with an eye to the future.

Thomson Foundation has begun work on an 18-month EU-backed project aimed at highlighting the IDP issue and improving the quality of reporting in the Ukrainian regional media

 

“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’re doing here, helping build stories that matter in an ethical way on an issue that all too quickly gets forgotten.”

The production training workshops are taking place away from direct conflict zones of Crimea and Donbass in the cities of Kharkiv, Zaporizhzya, Odessa, Poltava, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernih​iv and Zhytomir.

In each region, stories are being filmed, written and edited with Thomson Foundation support, providing direct on-the-job training to reporters covering a challenging issue.

 

 Conflict prevention

Nigel Baker, Thomson Foundation's chief executive said: “This contract builds on the foundation’s earlier Foreign and Commonwealth-funded project which was implemented between September, 2014 and May, 2015.

The common theme between both programmes is conflict prevention – in particular ensuring sensitive coverage through the use of authoritative sources on the IDP crisis.”

Thomson Foundation’s partners in the project, Regional Voices: Strengthening Conflict Sensitive Coverage in Ukraine’s Regional Media are:

 

• The Institute for Regional Media and Information– a leading Ukrainian media development organisation is helping shape the programme, providing local training expertise and support
• TheEuropean Journalism Centre, is helping provide an online regional media exchange in Ukraine
• Memo 98– a Slovak media monitoring organisation has been responsible for developing the media monitoring component of the project
• SpilnyiProstir, a Ukraine organisation which will be responsible, alongside Memo 98, for delivering the projects media monitoring

 

For further information on the project contact David Quin or Olena Sadovnik.

 

Regional Voices

The Regional Voices project is implemented by a media consortium led by the Thomson Foundation and supported by the European Union.

You can find out more about the project here: regionalvoices.eu