Various organizations and institutions have shown their role in combating covid-19 and helping the community to prevent against it since it out broke in Rwanda. Media role is vital as they keep educating and informing people on how to comply with prevention measures.
This role involved advocacy, communication, entertainment and other publications that seek to help the general community and special categories including vulnerable people to access information on how to prevent the pandemic.
The Express News contacted media practitioners and their representatives from different media organizations to know what they have done and what they are doing to help the government combat Coronavirus.
Scovia Mutesi, the owner of Mamaurwagasabo online media outlet is also a member of Women Media Owners’ Network said that women media owners as well as media practitioners in general have great impact and work to help the community prevent the spread of Covid-19.
“We focused on educating women and girls during the period of covid-19, we gave them a space to learn about family planning, hygiene and sanitation, good nutrition and food security among their families as well as their rights in general. We increased efforts in making available the news about gender based violence and our role as parents should be seen to fight this pandemic at all cost.” Mutesi noted.
She mentioned that some of the challenges they are facing include lack of financial capacity to reach to information on the field for fresh media outlets owned by both women and men.
Mrs. Peace Hillary, the chairperson of Women Media Owners told The Express News that women media outlets tried to publish many articles in the media outlets owned by female journalists in order to help the community know and prevent Covid-19 pandemic.
“We published almost 600 stories in our 17 respective media houses on Covid-19 and its effects on women’s empowerment and domestic violence during the quarantine. We are still covering stories on this issue to advocate for financial inclusion to help women to sustain their financial capacity.” She said.
Recently, this network of women has benefited some funds from International Organizations to promote women’s rights and freedom of expression through media and special funds to publish stories on how women are affected in different ways by Coronavirus.
“Previously we got other two funds from two different international organizations to publish stories on how women are affected in different ways by Coronavirus. We are there and committed to provide space to Rwandan Society, to promote equal rights and gender equality through our media houses and to respect citizen’s rights to information.” She added.
For them to fully implement their activities, women who make the network of media owners request the support from the government.
“What we really need from the government is partnership with them in this era and so far we see this coming due to different interactions we recently had with some of government officials during conferences and meetings.” She noted.
Albert Baudouin Twizeyimana, the national coordinator of Pax Press said that Pax press decided to first help journalists to prevent themselves against Covid-19 before helping others to prevent it.
“We helped journalists to access soaps, facemasks and hand sanitizers during Covid-19 because for us, we believe that a journalist is a healthy person, another role we play is to help them spread adequate and accurate information to Rwandans, this helped a lot and we did it through various training of media practitioners. We trained some journalists on fact checking to assess the quality of news, we also trained others on security of journalists while on the field during these periods of Covid-19 pandemic.” Twizeyimana noted.
He advises journalists to increase efforts in covering stories and inform the community about the progress and the updates of combating the disease.
“This is the time journalists need to increase efforts in conducting investigative news stories to inform the community about the progress in combating the disease and how far the vaccine is.”
“We encourage media houses to pay journalists and increase the capacity of journalists in terms of equipment and financial capacity to reach information, we need to join efforts and request the government’s interventions to make informative news stories that help the community to prevent and combat the spread of Covid-19.” He added
The Express News
