Media played a critical role during the COVID-19 mitigation and response in Uganda during the unprecedented time of the pandemic. Many had to risk their rights and fundamental freedoms to identify news and investigate the impact it had on many people across the communities. For instance, emergency measures revoked and suspended the right to free speech for the duration of the emergency. Newspaper distribution and printing in what they called an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Critical to also note is that media movement was affected because they had to access travel permits as most often worked late at night. Authorities restricted journalists’ ability to move about freely, such as if they wanted to report during curfews, or enter hospitals to get first-hand account of health care which affected the way people could report atrocities being committed in the guise of enforcing C19 SOPs and majority of vulnerable groups where greatly affected but mostly the LGBTI and Key populations who were facing massive discrimination and stigmatisation.
Against this background the East African Virtual Artists (EAVA), an innovative human rights organization fully committed to using visual Arts to advocate for social change, in partnership Uganda Health and Science Press Association (UHSPA Uganda) organized a two days media engagement at Silver Springs Hotel to dialogue with the journalists on their media freedom and fundamental human rights and strategize on how media freedom could be preserved including the Universal Bill of rights. The media training which targeted journalists from different media houses around Kampala aimed at documenting media practioner experiences on how COVID-19 impacted them during the lockdown, sharing key media concerns and human rights violations during COVID-19, establishing the impact of COVID-19 on the SRHR and human rights of vulnerable communities and strategizing and strengthening media reporting and coverage of human rights issues during COVID-19 more so putting more emphasis on LGBTI community.
During the workshop, the majority of the journalists sought to get tactics on how to report and publish on the human right violations of all people including the LGBTIQ amidst their biased bosses. And they promised to publish more news cuttings and blogs on the HR issues of the LGBTI Community.
Impact Assessment
During the training the participants recommended and encouraged fellow Journalists to work with one unified voice including the utilisation of online channels such as the social media in instances where editorial policies became binding and not serving professional ethics of inclusive reporting.
As a result of the above, many Pro Human rights reporting journalists have published different news articles, bulletins and media stories on different platforms which was not the case before.
Many Journalists have embraced pro-LGBTI campaigns and have published on the different platforms like in the likes below due to the empowerment they got during the progressive workshop from EAVA and other entities.
- https://chimpreports.com/human-rights-advocates-clerics-launch-campaign-against-religious-homophobia/
- https://256daily.com/2022/03/11/east-africa-visual-artists-launch-new-campaign-saynotoreligioushomophobia/
NOTE: There is continuous embracement of Journalists towards publishing of the LGBTI stories in Uganda news bulletins, cuttings, social media and blog sites.
