Manual equips journos on gender reporting during General Election
Resources on gender reporting is a new addition to the way media personnel are to equip themselves when they report on the next general election.
This follows the launch of the 2022 Media Handbook by the Fijian Elections Office yesterday at its headquarters in Suva.
Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem, said the media handbook would guide the media to prevent them from falling short of the law.
“Our handbook will explain to you what you can and cannot do,” he said during a press conference.
“It provides you key electoral information to help you uphold the highest level of accuracy, impartiality, professionalism and compliance as well as compliance with the laws of Fiji while you’re reporting on the 2022 General Election.”
He said the inclusion of the new component was to upskill the quality of how journalists report on elections.
“In the past 18 months, the Fijian Elections Office has had to remind members of the media in Fiji on numerous occasions in terms of their ethics, and as well as in terms of the practices they have,” he said.
When quizzed about what prompted the organisation to have the new addition in the handbook, Mr Saneem said the action was in a bid to prevent issues that could cause an alarm.
“In every four years, we come up with a guide for the media for covering elections and we’ll continue to develop the materials that we have issued in previous elections,” he said.
“So the 2022 Media Handbook has resource materials on gender, disability, fairness and accuracy in reporting and a lot of things.
“So all the efforts are to provide more information to members of the media so that if, God forbid, there is an issue that comes out there is less chances for a person to come out and say I did not know about it.”
He said the office was still waiting on the Fiji Media Association to come up with its own policies around what is information, misinformation and disinformation that could help in the dissemination of information.
Additional content in the Handbook:
■ Global Charter of Ethics for Journalist
■ Resources for Reporting on Elections
■ Fiji’s Electoral System.