On November 14-15, for the benefit of 17 representatives of the regional mass-media, 2-day training has been conducted within the framework of NGO’s Coalition Transparent Financial Aid for Georgia Project. Transparency of the financial aid provided by the donors, external debts, state procurement, distribution of acquired funds by sectors, procedure and timeframe of acquisition and reimbursement of aid, issues related to aid disbursement, corruption-heavy areas in state procurement – this is only partial list of subjects the training has been comprised of.
Initiative of conduction of the training has been preconditioned by extreme scarcity of information sources available for regional journalists. Apart from that, they do wish to enrich their vocabulary and be able to apply appropriate terminology and choose correct perspective when covering existing problems. Materials of the training have been selected in accordance with the needs of the journalists, relating subjects in depth and yet in easily understandable way.
“It is hard for regional journalists to actually go to and report from current residence of persons displaced following August War. Information disseminated through Coalition Project is the only means enabling me personally to write about these issues. We do not have, there are practically no other sources of information about these issues” – according to Mr. Gela Mtivlishvili, Head of Kakheti Information Center.
Among journalists present there was an analyst, expert on military and political issues, Mr. Tamaz Inaishvili representing Lanchkhuti+ who wasn’t unaware of the subjects discussed, though information acquired should help him to analyse the problem on deeper level. “Knowledge that I’ve acquired will be useful in my analytical work and will help me inform population of my region better” – remarked Mr. Inaishvili.
Subjects of the training served as a source of new ideas for many of the journalists. According to some participants, information received is a ‘very interesting material’ for journalistic investigations.
Better awareness of the subject will help the journalists in their choice of specific topics to be covered in future and to be studied on a deeper level. ‘I will successfully use in practice knowledge that I’ve acquired here. In fact I’ve already selected interesting topics to be published that will undoubtedly attract the reader” – according to Ms. Marika Vatcharadze of Postscript newspaper.