DUSHANBE, Aril 23, 214, Asia-Plus — The representative office of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) in Tajikistan conducted a two-day training workshop on International Standards of Reporting for 12 young journalists from Dushanbe and Tursunzoda on April 18-19.
IWPR aims to introduce the international standards of reporting to support Tajik journalists in developing articles on professional level in order to reduce the number of suitcases against reporters. When speaking about the practices of court trials against journalists the trainer Firouz Barotov, former RFE\RL reporter, informed participants about the real cases that were suited against Tajik journalists and discussed the methods and tools to ‘soften’ their impact.
In an interactive form the participants learned the basics of writing analytical news articles, discussed new topics for articles that might interesting for foreign audiences. Most interesting session was the one in which the training participants learned the techniques of interviewing; more skilled journalists shared their experience with newcomers in profession.
“I realized that observance of the standards of professionalism and principles of journalism safeguard journalists and make them self-confident. The knowledge we gained from this training also help us to write reports in accordance with the international standards and by this mean to cooperate with international media”, said Davlatyor Baydullo, reporter of Radio Asia-Plus.
In the coming months, IWPR will train young journalists on the same topic in other regional centers of Tajikistan: Khujand (Sughd province) and Qurghon Teppa (Khatlon province).
The training workshop was implemented within the framework of a new three-year project “Empowering Media and Civil Society Activists to Support Democratic Reforms in Tajikistan” supported by the European Union under the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) as well as Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The project aims at promoting democratic reforms in Tajikistan by encouraging closer cooperation between leading human rights activists and independent media; improving the capacity of independent media to conduct investigative journalism projects and analytical reporting; and stimulating constructive dialogue within and between human rights CSOs, media, and local and national government officials concerning a variety of issues affecting the socio-economic life of the country.
