BY KIRAM TADESSE
The American artist Jim Morrison famously said: “Whoever controls the media controls the mind.” Morrison’s saying holds water given the fact that media can indeed manipulate, persuade and influence societies. Being a means of mass communication the media is a powerful influence that affects opinions and attitudes as well as lives of the individual and society perceptions.
Mass media such as television, radio, newspapers and the internet are noticeably influencing the human interaction and their perceived aspirations today. Thus, media proved to be powerful in controlling the world at times in both positive and negative ways.
To test this view spend few hours watching television programs or online contents and you will be stunned at just how societies, countries or continents are portrayed in the media and how you find yourself being influenced by it. This holds true especially in societies like Ethiopia where everything conveyed through the media is deemed to be right.
This situation leads us to a prominent role of the media practitioners or journalists. These are individuals who explore and write or broadcast various contents. In more broader but egalitarian views these are professionals whose service is a measure of how well societies function.
Although journalists’ identity and place in society is still arguable issue, they articulate and enact their duties corresponding to conceptually distinct ideas based on four analytical roles namely; normative (what journalists ought to do), cognitive (what they want to do), practiced (what they really do in practice), and narrated (what they think they do).
Having these important roles in mind we carry on what we want to see journalists realize their contribution to the proper development goals and aspirations in line with values, attitudes and beliefs. They embrace success as a result of their occupational socialization. Thus, journalists are expected to demonstrate their values and beliefs in practice.
SDGs and Media
Seven years into the adoption and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, there is an ongoing stirring debates on the role of the media as a vital instrument to achieve these goals. This is mainly due to the perception that media might have only been used to spread the general information about SDGs across the world in order to simply inform people with its aspirations.
In other words, people are often reminded of these development goals through meetings, workshops, and other international events. Local contexts are missed. With an aim to transform the world, these goals set an urgent call for action by all countries to end poverty and inequality, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy health, justice and prosperity.
Media on other hand are seen as a precondition for progress and implementation of all development targets stipulated in the SDGs. Particularly, SDG 16 of target 16.10 calls to ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.
Therefore, the role of media through access to information is signified as an essential component of the SDGs, where media support “peace, justice and strong institutions.” Moreover, media have to do with other goals as well including SDG 2 of creating a world free of hunger and SDG 5 of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.
These goals are strongly associated with press freedom and exposure to mass media. Accordingly, journalism acts as a driver of change and forms the foundation of a healthy information environment that can help societies deal with challenges of the times and achieve a sustainable society.
Sustainability Reporting for Development Goals
Ideally, sustainability has four pillars of human, social, economic and environmental. It is aimed at the preservation of a particular resource. Meanwhile, during the most recent decades the idea of “sustainable reporting” is something meant to deal with information concerning environmental, social, economic and governance issues of a certain business. In this regard the Harvard Business Review puts “sustainable reporting” as companies’ commitment to measuring and reporting publicly on their sustainability performance.
Sustainable problems need sustainable media reporting, which led me to contemplate the need for a potentially refreshing concept on sustainability that is attached to the role and functions of journalism.
Seeking out the truth being one major duty of journalists in the interests of the public’s right to know, regardless of the consequences they bear the concept of sustainability calls for a professional duty on journalists to critically and objectively examine, evaluate, report and forecast on development goals. It gives room to assess a plan and its actual implementation, and the difference between its impacts on people as designed by development plans. Through this I also want to take the professional ethics of media and journalistic commitments more seriously.
How is “sustainability reporting” different from a common label used by journalists called “follow-up”? Follow-ups in general rely on previous stories for their news value, while sustainability reporting will be more of impact oriented contents in more concise development objectives.
However, like follow-up, sustainability reports treat cases as separate stories. The strength of sustainability reporting is that it tells the audience about an ongoing aspect of a development goal, to save from potential collateral damage that could stay dormant for long time.
In sustainability reporting, for example, the original story may have been that “Ethiopia had conducted Voluntary National Review (VNR) on SDGs for 2017 focusing on the methods and approaches of integrating the SDGs into the national context.”
In the follow-up, a sustainable reporter shall investigate the outcome of the past VNR after implementing the SDGs for six years, and its impact on subsequent VNR in 2022. A sustainability reporter need to inquire the impact of SDGs based on past years of implementation and predict its future trend amid other global challenges that affect the overall implementation of the development goals.
Follow-ups stories can be subset of sustainability reports. Sustainability reporting requires for well equipped journalistic practices with ample research before carrying on a particular development topic. “Sustainability reporters” are proactive towards development goals. They may not necessarily have to be reminded of the development goals through particular events or government invitation but should act independently.
There would be potential problems with such reporting. Freedom of press takes the lead while journalists attempt to enlighten people who could not demand for their rights, because they may not know about what is planned development scheme on their behalf.
Therefore, the sustainability reporter will have the ultimate intervention to inform and monitor people’s rights carefully. Once media reports are sustainable there should be assurance that attention to SDGs issues can deliver better outcomes. Media will also use its power to identify and uphold responsible parties.
In countries like Ethiopia by understanding the root of all evils such as poverty; sustainability reporters shall stand their ground and act as gatekeepers in the mass communication process. They ought to report the development goals objectively and check their own political convictions and individual affiliations at the realm as they receive the entitlement.
One way to advance this practice is professionalism through support from the academia. Recently, for instance, the Addis Ababa University announced a joint program with University of Oslo to establish a center of excellence that supports the achievement of SDGs. Media oriented SDGs insights can be invigorated which will help enhance knowledge to address matters of development goals.
The center of excellence has already amassed good-will and commitment to come instrumental in conducting researches that are insightful for policy makers to value media in tandem with SDGs. In this regard, the center of excellence sees a promising prospect on the role media can play to achieve SDGs through technical support and searching for grants.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The Ethiopian Herald
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 23 DECEMBER 2022
