Turn on your radio
Christina Scott
The BBC World Service estimates that for every 1000 Africans, there are 198
radios, compared to 52 televisions and 12 newspapers. Recent studies note the
importance of the radio in transmitting information on HIV prevention and in
alleviating rural poverty.
This data compelled the world's largest science society, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to train a group of African
radio journalists in the art of communicating science news to their radio
audience. The programme has been running for three years and the 2003 group left
for Washington on July 4 and will return in August.
Five reporters, three men and two women, speaking languages common in
southern Africa, will spend a month in the USA to learn how to become science
radio journalists in order to increase public awareness and understanding of
science and technology, particularly in indigenous languages.
The intensive four-week training writing and producing short science radio
features, is being done at the USA's capital city of Washington D.C.. It is a
three-year-long pilot project that will be re-assessed this year.
The reporters have all been drawn from the continent's largest electronic
news entity, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which broadcasts in 11
languages within the country's borders, reaches almost half the residents of the
largely rural country of 45 million people, and through its international
station, Channel Africa, broadcasts to the rest of the continent.
"This will be the first time we will attempt to establish a foundation
for science reporting in the languages spoken by most of our listeners,"
says Pippa Green, SABC Head of Radio News. "The journalists can broadcast
in six or seven major languages between them."
One of the new Fellows, seSotho-speaking Mahlatse Gallens was a radio health
reporter, focussing on HIV and AIDS. "As we move away from the politics of
the disease to the science of the disease, we need scientists to communicate
better," she predicts. "Many people in Africa do not know that there
are different strains of the disease."
Celeste Tema, the only member of the team to have training as a scientist, in
biotechnology, worked on an Afrikaans-language current affairs radio show on
Radio Sonder Grense (Radio Without Borders). "This is a dream come
true," she says.
Durban-based Stuart Thompson, who is fluent in Zulu and English, has done
science stories everywhere from the Antarctic to the coastal town of Richard's
Bay, where the oil tanker the Jolly Rubino ran aground last year.
"Everything is science," argues Thompson. "Health is science -
malaria, cholera and so on. The environment. Technology. Foot and mouth
disease."
Another winner, Amos Molubi, based in the Northern Cape in South Africa, was
passionate about his work uncovering the deaths attributed to asbestos mining.
"After HIV/AIDS it's the second killer disease in South Africa. The mines
started in 1893 and people are dying like flies. Even children who are exposed
to secondary contamination," Molubi says.
And the final winner, Mandla Zembe of the province of KwaZulu/Natal, made a plea
for reporters (and scientists) to remember the needs of the rural communities.
"Impart your information in a language they're going to understand,"
says Zembe, whose mother tongue is Zulu.
"In this era, when science is so central to every major issue of modern
life, it is critically important that the public is informed of scientific
progress," says AAAS chief executive officer Alan Leshner, who visited
Africa last year for the Public Communication of Science and Technology
conference in Cape Town, South Africa. "This collaboration is a key example
of AAAS's mission to advance science and serve society."
AAAS's Corinna Wu and her colleague Bob Hirshon, producers of Science Update,
AAAS's radio broadcast program, traveled to South Africa in 2000, where they saw
first hand the need for the training they had been asked to provide.
"The facilities at the radio stations were great, but science is not
really on the agenda," says Wu, who helps to train the fellows. "There
is some health reporting, but few stations have anyone who really understands or
covers science as news. But when we told them what we were planning to do, they
were all very excited."
The most cited solutions to the problems of hunger, ill-health and
sustainable development are those provided by scientists and engineers, and 2002
science radio fellow Alpheus Lamola says he knows how best to communicate the
ideas of science and technology to the people of South Africa.
"Radio is the only cheap source of information for the people, and it
has the advantage of being portable," says Lamola, a broadcast journalist
at the sePedi-language Thobela FM, a public radio station based in the northern
city of Polokwane in South Africa.
Lamola, a fellow in 2002, says that his experiences at AAAS last summer
continue to affect his professional life. "Every story I do, I use the
techniques I picked up in the States. And now I'm trying to help some local
community radio stations develop their own science and technology
programming."
Five fellowships are awarded each year. The program was launched in the
summer of 2001, after the then South African Deputy Minister of Science and
Technology, Mrs Brigette Mabandla, asked AAAS to co-sponsor an effort to improve
science communications in South Africa.
The 2001 Fellows included recent graduates in science and journalism, a
communications researcher, and a curriculum adviser for science and math
teachers. In its first two sessions-the summers of 2001 and 2002, the program
included scientists among the fellows, but is now focusing on training radio
journalists to write about science.
"We found that the first groups of fellows succeeded in continuing in
science journalism only when they had professional positions to return to,"
says Dr Rob Adam, the Director-General of the Department of Science and
Technology. "If there was no infrastructure for them to return to, they
were not able to follow through on the goals of the fellowship."
The 2002 Fellows include a crime reporter, a print journalist from Eastern
Cape Province, a producer/presenter for science stories from Northern Province,
a program manager for the Agricultural Research Council, and a community radio
presenter. Competition for the fellowships has been intense; nearly 60
applications were reviewed in 2001, over 70 in 2002.
The 2002 Fellows, aside from Lamola, were: Jeanette Hewitt writes science
stories for an educational newsletter based at Rhodes University. She plans to
continue writing, as well as mentor journalism students, upon her return.
Clinton Nagoor is head of the crime/investigations desk at SABC News in
Johannesburg. He's been a journalist for seven years and has covered science and
technology for a newspaper and magazine. Nobulali ("Lalie") Ngozi
works in community radio in East London, both on the business side and in front
of the mike. Merida Roets is a researcher working on a degree in agricultural
economics. She edits a journal and a newsletter about animal science. She has
also written a book and reads on tape for the blind.
While at AAAS the Fellows will carry out their own assignments in science
journalism, meet with experts in science reporting, and visit DC-area centers
for journalism and science. The technical program is designed by Bob Hirshon,
Corinna Wu, and Kandice Carter from the AAAS radio program Science Update.
More information
AAAS's Science Update
facility produces daily radio features for broadcast around the world. The AAAS
Africa Program has a 14-year history of capacity-building activities for science
and technology in Africa.
For more information, contact Alan Bornbusch, 202-326-6651, abornbus@aaas.org
Founded in 1848, the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) has worked to advance science for human well-being through its projects,
programs, and publications, in the areas of science policy, science education
and international scientific cooperation. AAAS and its journal, Science, report
nearly 140,000 individual and institutional subscribers, plus 272 affiliated
organizations in more than 130 countries, serving a total of 10 million
individuals. Thus, AAAS is the world's largest general federation of scientists.
Science is an editorially independent, multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed weekly
that ranks among the world's most prestigious scientific journals. AAAS
administers EurekAlert!, the online news
service, featuring the latest discoveries in science and technology.
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