Croatia: IFJ completes training on gender portrayal of politicians

The IFJ-led EU-funded project Rewriting the story ended, on 4 June, its second 'train the trainers' session in Zagreb, Croatia, with journalists from all over Europe. The newly trained trainers will now be in charge of conducting their own national training using their new skills and the project's newly developed training modules kit.

Credit: IFJ.

"Mentioning the family status of a woman politician automatically makes a news story fall under the category of gender bias if nothing in the story justifies mentioning that status," said IFJ Trainer Marie Palmer as she concluded the second day of her training session of journalists on portraying politicians through a gender lens in Zagreb, Croatia.

Working with frontline journalists, news media managers, journalists’ unions and associations, gender experts, media self-regulatory bodies, women active in political life, academics and, crucially, the next generation of media professionals, the Rewriting the Story project seeks to initiate reforms in European media with regard to newsroom culture, policies and processes which improve the professional understanding and practices with regard to gender portrayal of women and men in political and public life.

The project concluded its second phase of activities with the development of tailor- made training modules and two ‘train the trainers’ sessions held, respectively, in Cyprus on 28-31 May and Zagreb, Croatia, on 2-4 June. The project brought together members of IFJ affiliates in the EU.

The Union of Cyprus Journalists and the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists, two IFJ affiliates, hosted each respective event, as associated partners of the project.

"These training sessions have been useful in providing future trainers with specific tools to train others," said Nisrine Salameh, the IFJ International Officer who is coordinating the whole project. "This project is an opportunity for IFJ affiliates to build in-house training support that can be used in the future to strengthen the capacities of union members in reporting political news through a gender lens. We hope to train 400 journalists across the European Union before June 2024.

One of the most important tools introduced to trainees was the rule of reversibility, whereby journalists should only ask women politicians questions they would ask their male counterparts.

"This rule is easy to use and an excellent tool to combat gender stereotypes in the news," said IFJ Gender Expert Pamela Morinière. "I am confident that this training can make a difference in political reporting by strengthening journalists' ethics and I hope that many other journalism training centres and schools will make use of our training modules".

The training modules are composed of six key components related to reporting politics through a gender perspective and will be made available in the upcoming weeks, free of charge, to all trainers of journalists across the world.

The EU-funded project is an IFJ-led consortium including its affiliates in Croatia (Trade Union of Croatian Journalists) and Cyprus (Union of Cyprus Journalists) as well as key partners, the University of Padova and COPEAM (Conference of Mediterranean Audiovisual Operators), to deliver a two year programme aimed at helping journalists, media students and public broadcasters develop their political reporting with a gender lens skills and building a gender-equal newsroom culture.