Internews and Pacific Community partner to strengthen and support regional media
May 7, 2022 12:16 am | Posted in Business News | Share now TwitterFacebook
The Pacific Community (SPC) and Internews have signed a letter of intent to co-develop solutions for Pacific media development and education to support clear, engaging, accurate and meaningful reporting on the region’s challenges and efforts around sustainable development, gender equity and environmental protection.
Through this agreement both organizations will seek to improve the capacity of local journalists, quality of local media reporting, and visibility of Pacific voices and experiences through the power of media.
For SPC the agreement will help to amplify regional and international understanding of the Pacific development context and Pacific cultures, ensuring that media reporting, to the fullest extent possible, addresses the most critical development challenges and successes within the region, while reinforcing the critical role of good science and data for the future of the region.
Peter W. Foster, SPC’s Director of Corporate Communications highlighted the benefit of the partnership, saying, “The development issues faced in the Pacific can seem overwhelmingly complex. Journalists play a critical role in making these issues more easily understood, and in highlighting the considerable progress and leadership being now shown across region. This partnership will help bring about better understanding of the cutting-edge work being done to support our communities.”
Internews will use this agreement as part of its ongoing commitment to strengthen the professional capacity of local journalists, media outlets and networks to better report on the challenges faced by the people of the Pacific Islands and the efforts made to address them. Internews will work with local journalists to amplify the voices of women and vulnerable groups who are most at risk of climate change and environmental degradation.
“Internews is an international development media organisation, and our mission is to empower local media in the Pacific, to give people the news and information they need, the ability to connect, and the means to make their voices heard,” said Rowan Reid, Internews Programme Manager – Asia.
He added that “We believe partnerships are crucial to our work and without key partnerships we would be unable to deliver to the communities and people which we ultimately serve. To this end we have a guidance which is used to train our staff and onboard partners on how we commit to working together and improve our partnerships over time, and we want our partners to hold us accountable to them.”
Early efforts from this partnership will likely explore the idea of creating a network of Pacific journalists and scientific community representatives along with joint training workshops, media field visits, development of reporters’ resources and training materials.
