These are some of the questions asked by ‘Talking Gender in the Mekong Media’, a report that IPS Asia-Pacific (www.ipsnewsasia.net) carried out as part of the IPS network’s ‘Communicating for Change’ project, in order to help identify areas for future news work and capacity-building, as well some practical and professional approaches to doing these. The Communicating for Change project is funded through the Dutch Ministry’s MDG-3 Fund.

The 54-page report scans the media in the six Mekong countries - Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

The report finds that the perceptions of what makes for gender-friendly media vary, and that the mainstreaming of gender awareness and sensitivity is far from assumed as an accepted editorial or news standard in the Mekong region. Discussions of gender and media are also different across the region, whose countries have political and economic systems that range from socialist to military-dominated to free-market or a mix of these, and thus have different kinds and degrees of space for media.

It will be off the press in February 2010.

For inquiries, please contact: ipsasia@ipsnews.net or ipsapdirector@gmail.com

The “IPS TerraViva World Social Forum 2010” online site will provide independent, professional reporting in many languages from as many of the events as possible, along with comment and analysis on the challenges that drive social movements. Will the WSF stay relevant and innovative? Read IPS TerraViva to find out.

Prominent civil society activists like Walden Bello, Kumi Naidoo, Kerry Kennedy and Candido Grzybowski are already contributing op-eds you can read at the IPS TerraViva site.

Coverage of the events will gather momentum at the Greater Porto Alegre 10 Years Social Forum, 25 - 29 January, in Porto Alegre, that meets to debate on the theme: “10 years later: challenges and proposals for another possible world”. Continuing coverage will come from the Bahia Thematic Social Forum, 29 - 31 January, in Salvador, Bahia, which has as its main theme: “Dialogue, cultural diversity and civilizational crisis”.

Teaming up with multi-media partners AMARC, WSF TV and the Ciranda news pool will increase audio, video and independent reporting linked to the site.

IPS TerraViva has been involved and has reported on the WSF process from the 2001 outset in Porto Alegre. The complete online IPS TerraViva newspaper archive available at IPS TerraViva WSF 2010 provides a unique contribution to understanding the history and achievements of this hugely influential global social process.

Inter Press Service (IPS) is a communications institution with a global news agency at its core. IPS raises the voices of the South and civil society and brings a fresh perspective on globalisation and development.

For more information visit our website or write to media@ips.org

The international IPS team did a tremendous work in less than ideal circumstances, led by one of our new Editors-in-Chief, Diana Cariboni. Managed by IPS Latin America with the largest contingent of reporters coming from IPS Africa, and Darryl D’Monte president of our partner IFEJ strengthening the Asian dimension, the team was South-South co-operation in action, with colleagues from Canada and Romania adding their expertise too.

Kumi Naidoo, Kerry Kennedy, Mohan Munasinghe, Ashok Khosla, Saleemul Huq, Laura Tuck, Bill McKibben and Nnimmo Bassey are just a few of the experts who contributed opinion pieces or granted interviews to TerraViva.

New and old partnerships helped IPS to get stronger visibility for our Copenhagen coverage. The Guardian picked up our stories on biofuels and indigenous peoples. The Media Consortium featured TerraViva regularly in their blog, syndicated across the progressive media of North America, with their latest edition picking up our story about civil society preparations for Mexico 2010. Thomson Reuters AlertNet Climate Change portal picked up every story we wired. AllAfrica focused especially on IPS coverage of adaptation and on the African negotiating position. The Stakeholders Forum newsletter used our copy in Spanish, and one of our special features on the gender dimensions of climate change.

Through our own newsletter lists we sent tens of thousands of special newsletters to keep our constituencies updated on our ongoing coverage. Copenhagen-focused editions of Tierramerica ensured that our Latin American audiences were in the picture. Translated stories in the 24 languages of IPS found their way to printed and online media in many countries, strengthening our profile and image.

All the coverage, including stories, picture galleries, videos and podcasts are at the TerraViva COP 15.

The work in Copenhagen was supported by COM+, FANRPAN, the Dutch MDG3 Fund and Tierramerica.

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 started in Chiang Mai, Thailand on 9 December. Follow the event through the daily IPS TerraViva Mekong Media Forum.

The four-day media conference brings together a mix of participants, from print, television journalists and photojournalists to civil society, academics and development workers, 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.

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. The Dutch MDG3 Fund contributes to the two gender sessions to be held at the MMF on Dec. 11, 2009 as part of the “Communicating for Change: Voice, Visibility and Impact for Gender Equality” project of the IPS international news network. The Forum will see the launch of the IPS Gender and Development Glossary, and a gender needs assessment of the media in the Mekong region.

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.

Among other issues, the Guardian is interested in IPS coverage of climate change and the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen. The first story that appeared on the Guardian site was written by Claudia Ciobanu from the Danish capital “Brazil defends biofuels at Copenhagen summit - As the world’s largest producer and exporter of ethanol, it’s no surprise the Brazilian government advocates biofuels as the only real alternative to fossil fuels”.

From IPS, part of the Guardian Environment Network.