MINISTER URGES MEDIA TO PRODUCE CHILDREN CONTENT

BY SAMUEL KAMUGISHA

The State Mnister in-charge of the elderly and disabilities, Hon. Sulaiman Kyebakoze Madada has urged the media to produce more and quality content for children.
Opening the two-day annual media convention at Fairway Hotel in Kampala, Hon. Madada is concerned that media content is concentrating on the middle class and love matters hence neglecting children issues.

“They are merely entertaining and talking on middle class and purely love matters,”Hon. Madada said 

Hon. Madada was equally worried of the taste of the content in the mainstream media and the films. “We have Binauganda (Uganda films) harrassing children. Look at the costuming. You have actors and actresses half naked” the Minister explained “Sometimes you do not want to listen to a radio with children” he added
Joachim Duester, the deputy Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany urged producers to mind the quality of children’s content. “It would be disastrous to assume that children can live with less quality content”

At the same event, Stella Ayo-Odongo the Executive Director, Uganda Child Rights NGO-Network was concerned that the media is too commercially driven to give coverage to children’s issues. “The media is largely driven by news and overtly driven by profit. We tried to get children’s issues on the agenda but we were told that it is not news...that there was no news angle” she elaborated

Mr. Adolf Mbaine, a senior lecturer at the Journalism and Communication department emphasised the need for an exemplary and robust public media. “We need a robust public media that provides all kinds of information that people can use to compare with other information from other media” he advised
Paul Kihika, the Managing director for UBC  was worried that competition is threatening morality. “The competition is threatening to kill the morality of this country because of commercial interests associated with it (competition)”

The two-day annual event has been organised by Makerere’s Department of Journalism and Communication (DJC) in collaboration with GIZ and DW Akademie.
The convention will on 1st November  showcase more keynote addresses from more speakers including Dr. Maya Goetz, an expert on children and youth programs from Germany, Mr. Godfrey Mutabazi, the Executive Director, Uganda Communications Communication, editors for children content in print media as well as a testimony by Jonathan Ssembajwe, an accomplished child presenter.