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Donors, MCT`s sign four-year support programme
2007-10-19 10:12:15
By Austin Beyadi
The Media Council of Tanzania (MCT) and its four development partners have signed a memorandum of understanding under which the partners are to contribute to a basket fund amounting to 6.1bn/- to support the council’s four-year strategic plan.
The fund, to support the council`s new strategic plan’s activities and regional press clubs programme for the years 2007-2010, would be coordinated by the council. The strategic plan runs from 2007 to 2011.
The MoU was signed in the presence of representatives of the four development partners Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway, MCT board members and media stakeholders.
Speaking at the function held in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday, MCT vice-president Joyce Mhaville said under the four-year strategic plan, MCT would have four programme areas.
She said the programme areas would include lobbying and advocacy work in promoting freedom of expression in its wider sense, and freedom of the media in the context of human rights.
The second programme area would be adjudication of complaints and the promotion of media ethics and professionalism and that under this program area, the council shall continue to be an arbiter between the public and the media, she said.
Mhaville further said that this programme area would also promote social accountability in the media through self-regulations and peer oversight projects within media organizations which include in-house ombudspersons, developing and adopting in-house codes of conduct and newsroom style book on reporting.
``The council in the next four years also intends to raise the quality of journalism and investigative reporting through training under the third programme area in the strategic plan,” she said.
She said its last programme area was on research, policy analysis and documentation whose objectives were to assist the Tanzania media by building a knowledge base about its conduct, trends and direction through research.
The programme would also facilitate the media in strengthening its analytical skills so that it could produce and disseminate relevant information and facilitate public debates on development and democracy issues.
She added that funding of regional press clubs project would be in providing ICT equipment, skills and specialized training, networking and advocacy and also strengthening the press clubs.
The lead development partner representative Torbjorn Petterson, who is also the head of the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), said for the past few years MCT had done a very good job in the country`s media history.
He said the development partners would continue assisting the media council in various fields in an effort to improve the country’s media sector.
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