Sarah Macharia

‘I always look forward to it because it gives me a sense of solidarity. .. I feel that I am not alone, and a lot of people are working together… so it’s about solidarity, it’s about understanding things together, it’s about changing things together, so in a lot of ways it gives me courage…’ (Gitiara Nasreen, GMMP Coordinator for Bangladesh)

Nasreen’s sentiments are echoed by media monitors in more than 130 countries worldwide, participants of the Fourth Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) in November, 2009.

William Bird, Media Monitoring Africa*

There are many great aspects to the GMMP. 

First, it involves media monitoring, which as a dedicated media monitoring organisation is something that always excites us. 

Joys Eggins, GMMP Coordinator, Papua New Guinea

A cohort of some 20 journalism students sat in groups discussing why women are very unlikely to be the central focus of a story.  

These students were aware that an elite minority of mostly men dominate the news in Papua New Guinea (PNG) . They were, however, surprised at the extent of the gender disparity, as presented in  the GMMP report of 2005 ‘Who makes the news?

Violet Savu, Fiji Media Watch, GMMP Coordinator

A record 25 monitors took part in the GMMP 2009/2010 – the highest number of participants in Fiji so far. About 95% of monitors were participating in the GMMP for the first time.

Miriam González, Agencia Cimacnoticias, México

Primero me gustaría hablarles un poco del proceso, en cuanto nosotras nos enteramos de que nos dieron la Coordinación Nacional para el Monitoreo lo  primero fue comunicárselos a la Red Nacional de Periodistas (RNP) pues creímos conveniente  dar un panorama lo más nacional posible de lo que los medios en nuestro país reportan sobre el que hacer social de las mujeres.

Sirri Tambi Ntonifor, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Buea, Cameroon.

Monitoring day coincided with an extremely busy day at school for me.  I woke up just in time to record the 6:30am radio newscast and missed 45 minutes of class in order  to record the 3pm news.

Reseau Interafricain des Femmes, Medias, Genre et Development  (FAMEDEV), Sénégal

L’ONG FAMEDEV a eu pour mission de conduire le monitorage au Sénégal et d’en assurer la coordination dans les pays francophones d’Afrique de l’Ouest et d’Afrique centrale. 

Marisa Alexander and Floreta Louis, Caribbean
Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA)

Our team had fun on monitoring day. We tried to stay connected to other monitoring groups around the world through updates. At the same time, we were becoming increasingly aware of the patterns of gender blind reportage in our local news.

Lilian N. Ndangam, WACC

This year marks the first time online news has been included as part of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP).

Several monitors and coordinators shared their experiences on monitoring day with the global GMMP network.