Radio Content Analysis Shows Improved Radio News Coverage of HIV in Kenya

This report, by Mia Malan and Elizabeth Gold, Internews' Senior Advisors for Health Journalism, describes the key components and underlying principles of Local Voices, a project established by Internews in 2003 with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Local Voices was a training programme designed to foster more accurate, effective coverage of HIV/AIDS in Kenya by offering a range of support services to radio professionals to improve their reporting on HIV/AIDS.

The Local Voices project was based on a needs assessment which examined the challenges and obstacles the Kenyan broadcast media were facing in reporting on HIV/AIDS in their country, as well as to identify opportunities for improvement.

Key components of the Local Voices project included:

• Media resource centre on HIV/AIDS (with internet access, documentation library, phones, computers with editing software, convenient to media houses in downtown Nairobi)
• Radio production studio with a qualified sound technician
• Sensitisation of media decision-makers (radio station owners and managers)
• Intensive, practical training of radio journalists, talk show hosts, DJs, with follow-up support and mentoring
• Travel grants to investigate in-depth stories outside of Nairobi
• Modest equipment grants (minidisk recorders for field reporting)
• Training for AIDS NGO’s on effective communications/media relations

The basic tenets or principles that underpin the Local Voices methodology are the following:

• Training must be journalist-to-journalist — media professionals training other media professionals.
• The first step is always enlisting the commitment and support of media managers before any training activities begin.
• Don’t mix your media – train print with print, radio with radio — their needs are different.
• Trainees should always have personal interaction with people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) during the training. This will affect how they portray PLWHA in their reporting, and give the issue a face.
• Include local site visits to an HIV counselling and testing centre, an orphanage, a support group, etc. in all training programs.
• 70% of training time is spent on journalistic/radio skills building (with those skills then applied to AIDS issues with practical exercises) – 30% on HIV/AIDS information.
• Keep it practical. Limit time spent listening to expert presentations.
• Every journalist-trainee returns to work with a quality story that has been produced with the help of a senior journalism trainer.
• Follow up with individual trainees and their media outlets is critical to ensure they apply what they have learned, navigate any obstacles they meet, and keep them interested and informed on HIV issues.

An evaluation of the project also showed that a long-term media capacity building strategy seemed to be far more effective than the once-off sponsoring of HIV/AIDS programmes. Sponsorships are usually not sustainable over a long period of time. Also the quality of sponsored radio programmes, such as those sponsored by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS(UNAIDS) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), proved to be much lower than those of un-sponsored programmes. Stations seemed to take less responsibility for the quality of such programmes because they are less likely to take ownership of sponsored programmes. These programmes are viewed as “belonging” to the sponsor rather than the station. There also seems to be a perception that as long as the name of the sponsor gets mentioned a sufficient number of times during the sponsored time slot and HIV/AIDS is addressed in some way or another, the job has been done.

Another lesson learnt from the project was the realisation that training journalists on how to effectively communicate HIV/AIDS information is of little use, if non-governmental organisations (NGO), government representatives and policy makers do not understand how to communicate with the media effectively. In Kenya, it became obvious that these organisations have little knowledge on how to adequately involve the media in communicating their goals and messages. They tend to only call upon the media when there is a ribbon-cutting event or the Minister makes a statement, losing sight of what the key issues are that they need to communicate, or the fact that their everyday work in communities is in itself a story worth telling. The Internews needs assessment also revealed a general mistrust of the media on the part of the NGOs and a similar mistrust of the NGOs on the part of the media.