Gender sensitive training shaped my reporting on women as a male journalist

By Babirekere Clothilda

Meet Kabali Paul, a Media Practitioner/News Anchor from Mama FM 101.7, presenter of a ‘Health programme’, and a part time media monitoring personnel, now gender champion. 

Kabali reflects that before attending the training for gender media monitors, he did not take reporting responsively a responsibility for all practicing journalists. 

Gender media monitoring in simple terms is research, which is conducted for purposes of generating information and adding on what others have done before. 

“My previous reporting entailed collecting field stories only. Today I have gained skills to fairly and equitably report on men and women. During the monitoring exercise, I realised that media generally reports favourably on men and poorly on women and deliberately stereotyped by media, yet reporting responsively, requires facts, and confirming the statements with figures, hence the need for media monitoring” says Kabali.  

He adds that he has evolved from a journalist aiming at beating the editor’s deadline, to a Gender Sensitive Media Monitoring Champion, who is aware that effective reporting requires conducting research for authenticity. 

Kabali states that as a Gender Media Monitor Champion, he participated in the exercise for updating and aligning the monitoring tools; including the monitoring guide, and coding sheet with the variables to be monitored while implementing UMWA’s Media for Gender Equality and Social Justice Project between 2018-2022. 

“I also participated in the pretesting of the monitoring guide. Media Monitors need facts and figures, which I ably get by collecting and analysing data in a systematic manner. Being part of the monitoring team requires me to put apportion some time to the exercise where I sit quietly and concentrate on the coding exercise for accurate and reliable results.  The exercise requires me to look backwards and in front to get background information and the current status” he further shares.

As a Gender Media Monitoring Ambassador in UMWA, Kabali starts by establishing facts to monitor, including the representation or misrepresentation of men and women. He analyses the smallest details, not part of the coding sheet requirements, and ignored by reporters, yet communicating very loudly about inequalities in media. He also analyses how the pictures/images are depicted/portrayed or placed in the story and whether the picture is showing a different person, whether the picture passport size, medium, or large? Is the picture taken from a distance or a close-up picture? 

“I had never taken interest in this analysis. Today, I use gender lenses to understand, interpret and relate the prominence/implications to the story. Experience has taught me to look for the non-obvious issues” he says. 

Kabali is also a founder of Better man Project, a youth centred community organization focusing on youth empowerment programs with emphasis on Livelihoods & Skills Development and Behaviour Change Communication among others.