Media and broadcasting institutions in Bolivia (at least 15 with national reach) are concentrated in two conglomerates : private corporations and state-owned media. Though community media has increased in number, it hasn’t yet developed the capacity to create independent content. This means that although there appears to be a wide diversity of media, the content production is reduced to a small group of journalists. This scenario restricts the exercise of freedom of the press and threatens the public’s right to access quality information. This situation is aggravated by the fact that...
UNESCO field offices: Quito
Peru has about nine million indigenous citizens, who speak 43 different languages. However, there are high rates of extreme poverty among the indigenous population and they suffer constant violations of their fundamental rights. In this context, timely access to information is a means for these peoples’ progress and integrated development. Indigenous communication makes sense when practiced within the framework, world-view, language and culture of each native community, so the indigenous peoples themselves must produce, manage and disseminate information on their peoples in the media –...
In Bolivia, radio is one of the mainstays of grassroots communication, promoting the return to democracy and giving a voice to the Aymara, Quechua and Guaraní cultures. These cultures now receive information in their own languages, on topics of their interest, thereby empowering communities and making their reality more visible. However, the Afro-Bolivian culture (located mainly in the Los Yungas zone of Bolivia) has unfortunately not been represented this way. Their reality has little visibility in the private and public media, with very few Afro-Bolivian communicators in the media....
Drug trafficking has become one of the main causes of problems relating to security, violence, corruption and weakening of democracy in the countries of Latin America. Fear of reporting on the topic continues to spread among journalists however, with increasingly fewer reporters venturing to cover drug trafficking and organized crime issues because they fear for their lives.
This project therefore is aimed at providing journalists who cover drug trafficking and organized crime, working along Colombia’s border zones, with training on self-protection mechanisms, complemented by...
Application of the UNESCO Media Development Indicators (MDI) in Ecuador has revealed that media self-regulation mechanisms, such as using codes of ethics or editorial guidelines, are not fully practiced. The study also showed that only one print medium has a Public Ombudsman to receive readers’ complaints, and in the entire country there are no Press Councils or Commissions for complaints that might ensure good journalism practices in day-to-day work. In turn, citizens’ perception of the media is not positive: 51.74% consider the media corrupt. Media self-regulation must therefore be...
Peruvian community media have become the voice of thousands of isolated or marginalized persons, significantly democratizing this media platform. In an effort to ensure that community communication services grow stronger, expand and improve in a quality manner, ILLA Education and Communication Center is seeking to train women journalists in key tools to navigate on the internet, create a website, use networks, platform 2.0, create an online radio, upload audio and video to cyberspace, manage blogs and create podcasts. Female journalists will also be trained on how to conduct their radio...
In the last few years, Venezuela has experienced information media diversification due to the proliferation of community and alternative media, in their various modalities: print, radio, television and Websites. These media have arisen in view of the need for different societal stakeholders to shift from being passive consumers of information to acting as the protagonists, generators and carriers of their own information spaces. Venezuela currently has 244 radio stations, 37 television stations, 211 community newspapers and multiple websites with this orientation. According to the report...
In the Latin American region, an urgent need has been identified to provide training for professors in key areas of journalism, proposing four subjects from the UNESCO Model Curriculum: Foundations of journalism, Multimedia journalism, Media legislation and Journalism ethics. These subjects will be taught both on-campus and virtually through the FELAFACS website, allowing professors to become familiar with ICTs, using digital platforms to upload documents, interacting and promoting contents on social networks, in order to then take advantage of this experience to replicate within their...
Despite large numbers of women occupying positions in the Colombian media today, the gender divide is ever-present with female media professionals regularly subject to discrimination. At fault is a lack of interest concerning gender issues combined with a lack of organized training. For these reasons, the Colombian Federation of Journalists created FECOLPER Women's Network, an internet network created specifically for the exchange of information about gender and freedom of the press. This project aims to strengthen the institutional capacity of FECOLPER by applying UNESCO's Guidelines on...
In Venezuela's political context, the defense of free, independent, plural and transparent media is of paramount importance. Recent studies into electoral coverage have revealed however, that journalism tends to be 'single-source' and lacking plurality, and thus far very little effort has been made to encourage citizen participation in the media. This project will contribute to the media's capacity to promote and strengthen democracy in Venezuela by emphasizing the importance of plural information sources, citizen participation, and transparency in editorial policy leading to increased...
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