Media practitioners asked to show sensitivity - To emotions of victims of sexual assault
The executive Director of the Ghana Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre (GSHRDC), Mrs Dorcas Coker-Appiah, has appealed to media practitioners to be sensitive to the emotions of victims of sexual assault and be mindful of the words they use in describing them.
Advertisement
She said most often, words used by media practitioners, particularly local language radio newscasters, to describe the act of sexual assault and the plight of the victims, tended to make them more vulnerable and further aggravated their plight, stressing that journalists should be more circumspect in their description of such victims in order not to aggravate their situation.
Training workshop
Speaking at a media training workshop, organised by the centre, Mrs Coker-Appiah explained that victims of sexual violence should not be made to feel guilty as if they were the cause of the act.
Mrs Coker-Appiah advised the media to be more conversant with issues that constituted sexual violence and how to support the victims of such violence.
Being the eyes and ears of the public, she said there was the need for the media to devote more time to gender and sexual violence issues and to educate the public on the effects of these acts on the victims.
She said the more the media devoted time to these issues, the more the public would become sensitive to those issues and report such acts to the police.
Workshop
The workshop, which formed part of activities of the Funding Leadership Opportunities for Women (FLOW) Project, was aimed at equipping the media practitioners with skills and knowledge in gender-based and sexual violence and how to effectively report on such issues.
In all, 30 journalists, drawn from the electronic and print media, attended the one-week training. They formed the third batch of journalists who have benefited from such training, which is running till December this year.
