MEDIA AND NGO SECTOR - COOPERATION WITHOUT TRUST
Tribune in Institute for Sociological, Political and Juridical Research
Skopje, November 14 th , (MIA) - The media and the NGO sector established cooperation but still there is no trust between them. This was conclusion of the representatives of these sectors on the meeting titled: “NGO and media - the coalition for democratic changes”, organized by the Institute for Sociological, Political and Juridical Research and the non-governmental organization “SUNA”.
The tribune was organized within the framework of the programme titled “Regional capacity building of civil society organizations in Serbia, Kosovo and FYROM”, co-financed by CARDS Civil Society Development Programme. The duration of the programme is 15 months. Target groups of the project are formal and informal NGO networks and associations, local government, media and general public.
“NGOs and media have a common goal but also a conflict of interests. They live in parallel worlds.” - says the Reporter, Mr. Dragan Pavlovik-Latas.
“We wish a non-government sector which is not politically engaged. We wish the same evolution in the NGOs, as in the past years in the media. It is boring for our work to be for 10 years evaluated by the NGOs and has no one available to come here and see our work.” - said Mr. Pavlovik - Latas
Mr. Pavlovik - Latas also stated about the invisibility of the NGO work as one of the main reason for NGO sector not to be recognized in the public.
“In fact, NGOs look like governmental organizations, even some of them are family and the others politically oriented. Therefore they cannot act on behalf of the civil society. This is the reason why there is no trust in media presentations”, says Mr. Dragan Antonovski, Reporter.
Representatives from NGO sector gave their disappointments since media do not pay so much attention on the NGO activities. They emphasized that media are too much in political themes.
“My personal impression is that media is not interested in the civil society. Media is interested only in politics. If you are connected to the political themes, then you will be able to be in the media. The current topic now is whether there will be pre-elections therefore media will not have any space for any other topic. It's time now for politics and news and the time when we will finally understand the importance of the civil society will come soon”, said Mr. Goran Velickovski, Reporter. Mr. Velickovski underlined his many years positive experience which destroyed all the stereotypes of the NGOs as well as the profit as the moving force in their activities.
Representatives from Macedonian Centre for International Corporation (MCIC) underlined that the reports concerning NGO work were very poor providing only the black-white picture.
According to the research realized by this centre, the civil society representatives are present in the media in the number of 300 reports and news during the year. These are mostly short reports and in a small number the analysis as well as the huge comments which get into the basic NGO activities.
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