Local media professionals have been challenged to frame their reporting around the Agenda Setting Theory of the media to tackle the country’s most pressing debacles.
Patrick Oyet Charles, the President of the Union of Journalists of South Sudan (UJOSS), said many journalists and media houses in the country were not magnifying their influence on topics of public interest.
“We should set agenda as Africans, as South Sudanese what is important to us now is peace. It is an urgent need for all of us,” he said.
“We must decolonize the media, we cannot continue with English and Arabic for years. Why don’t we involve local languages for everyone to be involved, especially when it comes to reconciliation? We have to sensitize people in terms of transitional justice,” he added.
The president said scribes have a bigger role to break down the peace agreement into a simpler format understandable to the general population.
“We have a duty to disseminate the peace agreement the biggest thing happening in our country we have to take it as an agenda for our country. Some countries disseminate South Sudan programs than South Sudan journalists we need to understand what our needs are “, he explains
He made the statement during the closing of a two-day peace sensitization workshop for journalists from the 10 states at the Royal Palace Hotel in Juba.
The training goal aims at establishing a cadre of media practitioners and journalists with basic knowledge and understanding of transitional justice, and well sensitized on chapter V of the r-ARCSS in order to improve media coverage of the transitional justice in South Sudan
He as well Urges UNDP to help UJOSS go all over the states to do capacity building for journalists, our journalists do not understand media law and you cannot promote what you cannot understand. If we need peace to be disseminated then we have to go down the grassroots”.
All journalists across the country according to Oyet should be equipped with enough knowledge of the current happenings in the country. “We need to move and involve journalists from across the country,” he said.
Professor Joram Mukama Biswaro, the African Union Ambassador to South Sudan urged journalists to reflect further on the role of media in peacebuilding.
He said the African Union counts on South Sudanese journalists to contribute to the socio-economic development of the “Africa We Want” as enshrined in Agenda 2063.
Biswaro appealed to journalists to be objective and as impartial as possible if South Sudan is to realize lasting and sustainable peace.
He believes organizing many peace sensitization workshops outside Juba will have a great impact.
