INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

IMCK organised on April 28 a seminar on reporting before, during and after elections for Kurdish journalists. The seminar, which took the whole morning, was part of the civil journalism training for parliamentary reporters held in Irbil from April 21-28. Apart from the participants to the workshop, other journalists were invited to the main hall at Aras Publishing House in Irbil. Three Dutch journalists (Hans Otte, Milja de Zwart and Roel Geeraedts) talked to their Kurdish colleagues about their experiences with reporting on elections, and gave them some ideas on how to get politicians to use the media to get their plans and ideas to the voters. Media could get politicians and voters into contact by traveling around the country in a special bus, or even a Hummer. Or by organising debates between politicians. The main message of the morning was to get politicians to talk about content, about their plans, in stead of being used for fights between them and for slanging matches. The works...

Three Dutch parliamentary reporters came to Irbil to help their Kurdish colleagues to extend their knowledge on how to report on politics and on the parliament. Hans Otte, Milja de Zwart and Roel Geeraedts all worked in this field for years. Otte is leading the training, as he did a civil journalism training with IMCK last year. With the elections coming the three Dutch reporters also try to teach colleagues in Kurdistan how to inform people to help them cast their votes. In Irbil, at the building of Aras Publishing, on April 21 they started a workshop of 7 days with 3 groups of journalists: working in print, radio and TV. Co-trainers are Xdir Domle, Shwan Muhamed and Ako Mohammed. The project is part of a project IMCK has started to create more understanding between reporters and politicians, and is partly funded by the American reconstruction fund.

'Civilians have the right to know what parties and politicians want and do. That's what you need the media for'. That was part of the message two Dutch former parliaments members had for their colleagues of KNA, the Kurdish National Assemblee in Irbil. On February 2nd Gerrit Valk (social democrats, PvdA) and Jan Dirk Blaauw (liberals, VVD) started the first of three workshops for KNA-members on the relation between politicians and the press. They talked to them about how to make good use of the press, from their experiences in the Dutch parliament and as trainers in many different countries, and how important this is in a democracy. Their workshop is the first phase of a project by IMCK with the KNA on politics and press. Later in February KNA members will be offered mediatraining to help them get their message across to the civilians. This project has been made possible through a donation out of the American reconstruction fund.