Media course brings Maghreb journalists closer

Maghreb reporters learn how to produce quality news in the rapidly changing media environment.

By Jemal Oumar for Magharebia in Fes

[Jemal Oumar] A workshop held by Deutsche Welle Academy teaches journalists to report news in an objective and professional manner.

The Arab Spring revolutions transformed the Maghreb media landscape, but the proliferation of blogs and online media brought its own challenges.

A group of Maghreb reporters and bloggers last week in Fes explored how to distinguish facts from hearsay and establish journalistic credibility.

“The goal of the course is to train Maghreb bloggers and journalists to know the difference between the press and the blog in the Maghreb, look for integration between them and boost participants’ knowledge of multimedia,” journalist and trainer Sarah Mersch said at the September 17th-21st workshop, organised by Deutsche Welle Academy.

“As a journalist and blogger living in Tunisia, I’ve noticed that since the outbreak of Arab spring two years ago, many websites and blogs that report news in a biased, non-objective and sometimes even exaggerated way have been created, making people lose their confidence in them,” Mersch, who works for Deutsche Welle, told Magharebia. “Therefore, we wanted to help bloggers be more beneficial for people.”

The objective is to help “develop freedom of expression because it plays a role in boosting democracy and raising awareness”, according to Mersch.

The course allowed bloggers from across the Maghreb to share experiences, according to Tunisian blogger Khaled Kholy.

“We worked in Tunisia both before and after the revolution on such issues that depend on multimedia,” he told Magharebia. “For example, we would post videos on the internal reality of Tunisian cities. However, this course will add the professional training aspect to what we were doing, and in this way will help us in the future to prepare a product that is credible and serious.”

“We expect that this will have a positive impact on us because our work has been spontaneous, but when it’s organised, it will be more effective,” said Kholy, who is the editor of the “Hidden Truths” blog. “The revolution has produced several influential revolutionary pages, which continued even after the revolution. However, many quasi-bloggers also appeared.”

Citizens needs to distinguish between “serious work” and “provocations and rumours”, according to the Tunisian blogger.

In his turn, Mauritanian journalist Abdou Ould Abdelkader said that the event contributed to establishing communication between young bloggers in the Maghreb.

“This type of workshop helps in the long run to improve practical methods of the media, and this is of course a part of the democratic process which Maghreb countries aspire to,” Ould Abdelkader added.

Mohamed Said Essoussi of Morocco’s Alif Post website concurred that the workshop helped journalists “enhance competence and improve work techniques”.

“It is also beneficial in terms of learning a host of skills and techniques that enable us to deal with the different types of news reports and issues that we’ll be working on,” he told Magharebia. “There is an important aspect to these courses in which young people from different Maghreb countries take part. Those young people interact and share their experience in a better way.”

“Moreover, the focus on professional ethics will undoubtedly help prepare a number of journalists who will report news in a more accurate way that is closer to reality thanks to the techniques and skills they acquired through the course,” Essoussi added.

The proliferation of media compromised the quality of news, according to the Moroccan journalist, and led to confusion among Maghreb citizens about the credibility of reporting. As such, the course will help form “a serious and professional elite of journalists who will learn skills that will enable them to report the news in a professional way”, Essoussi concluded.