CHIANG MAI, Thailand – Some 225 participants, the bulk of them journalists from Mekong countries, are set to discuss, debate and take stock of their media environment against a backdrop of changing and often quite different news cultures at the Mekong Media Forum, which starts here Dec. 9.
The four-day media conference brings together a mix of participants, from print, television journalists and photojournalists to civil society, academics and developments, who will be discussing a menu of issues such as changes in the Mekong media scene, new trends, citizen journalism and new media, training, media challenges and reporting on water governance, children, as well as gender and sexuality.
Johanna Son, regional director of Inter Press Service (IPS) Asia-Pacific news agency, which is a co-organiser of the MMF along with the Probe Media Foundation Inc (PMFI), hopes that the Forum will capture the uniqueness of this region in ways different from other media conferences in the past.
“There are a host of media conferences in Asia each year, but I haven’t heard of one focusing on the Mekong countries in all the years I’ve been working on Mekong issues,” she said. The Mekong countries are Burma, China (Yunnan and Guangxi provinces), Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
Asked why this particular focus on the Mekong, Son said that apart from the fact that the region is bursting with stories “stemming from the process of economic integration and opening borders since the 1990s”, it is also time to hear from Mekong journalists given that the region is often reported by the international media from western news lenses. This often results in limited coverage linked to issues stemming from the conflict in the region decades ago, or stories with inadequate understanding of the region’s nuances.
“There has been a lack of a venue where journalists from the region can cross language and news borders to seize the narrative in telling the stories from their region,” she said.
PMFI executive director Yasmin Mapua-Tang, who has seen the development of the skills of Mekong journalists through the Imaging Our Mekong fellowship programme that PMFI has run with IPS Asia-Pacific since 2002, said that “the Forum now offers something different”.
“It is not too much about the stories to be told but how the media tell these stories, their role and impact in the region,” she said, explaining that the fellowships focused on cross-border issues that required journalists to discover the region — and enhancing reportage skills.
The Forum, to be held at the Holiday Inn Chiang Mai, has plenary, parallel and satellite sessions, talk shows, exhibits of Mekong photos and cartoons/illustrations exhibits. ‘Cinema Mekong’, which features screenings of 12 Mekong documentaries, will be on from Dec. 10 to 11.
The Forum is being organised with major support by The Rockefeller Foundation and Dutch MDG 3 Fund, which funds the two gender sessions to be held at the MMF on Dec. 11, 2009 as part of the ‘Communicating MDG-3 project of the IPS international news network.
Tang is looking forward to the “next steps” after the Forum, including what she refers to as “the crucial part” — the planning workshop that organisers will hold with Mekong journalists at the end of the public part of the conference.
“The recommendations, suggestions and input from local journalists, and insights from the Forum sessions, would be very helpful in comi
ng up with concrete and sustainable ways to keep a Mekong media movement alive,” she said.
Son thinks that the encouraging numbers of participation alone, send out a clear message. “There is a need, a thirst for information and interaction with journalists of the Mekong countries, which are quite different in terms of political systems, economies and societies, but do have something somehow that binds them into a unit,” she said.
The other supporters of the Forum are UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific, Nobel Women’s Initiative, MPOWER, UNESCO and Japan Foundation. Participant supporters are UNDP Laos, Konrad Adenauer Asian Centre for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University and World Bank Laos.
Media partners are ‘The Irrawaddy’ and Lao National Television.
