The
Gambia Press Union (GPU), in collaboration with the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), yesterday opened a four-day training course for journalists
on election reporting, to prepare them ahead of the National Assembly election.
The
training workshop, held at the Baobab Hotel, is geared toward building the
capacity of journalists to enable them cover and report on the political
activities of the political actors vying for the respective National Assembly
seats.
Speaking
at the opening ceremony, Namory Trawally, GPU 1st vice president, said this was
the second batch of journalists being trained by the Gambia Press Union ahead
of National Assembly election.
He
said the training course was organized by the Gambia Press Union in
collaboration with UNDP.
The
training course was aimed at bringing journalists together to share their
experiences on election coverage, and participants would not receive lectures,
but it would be a sharing session.
They
felt The Gambia has changed from one era to another, and it was very important
for journalists to be trained to give people the right information they were
hardly getting in the past few decades which, according to him, is the new
trend that journalists have to follow now.
He
said journalists should be impartial, as the information coming from them to
the public is very important.
The
training course was aimed at giving the right information and guidelines on
election reporting, as well as share ideas and experiences with one another so
the electorate could make informed choices in order to elect the right people
to the assembly.
Baboucarr
Ceesay, a senior freelance journalist and a trainer, said the UNDP is always in
the forefront in supporting and seeing that skills of journalists are honed,
and expanded in various areas of their journalistic duties including elections
coverage.
He
said journalists need to refresh their memories to be able to expand their
horizon, and do their job professionally in line with the ethics of journalism.
