Media Council of Tanzania (MCT) Chairman of the Panel of Judges for the Excellence in Journalism Awards Tanzania (Ejat) Chrysostom Rweyemamu speaks to journalists in Dar es Salaam yesterday when MCT unveiled names of the 2014 finalists for its media awards. With him is MCT Executive Secretary Kajubi Mukajanga. PHOTO|VENANCE NESTORY
By Saumu Mwalimu,The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam. A total of 53 journalists have been nominated as the finalists for the Excellence in Journalism Awards Tanzania (Ejat) 2014. The number reflects a 47 per cent drop from 101 nominees in 2013.
According to Media Council of Tanzania (MCT), the reasons behind the fall are poor sourcing in the submitted stories, out of focus for video stories and wrong statistics.
The chairman of the panel of the judges, Mr Chrysostom Rweyemamu, said most of print media stories had language problems and carried some libel elements.
“There is a need for MCT to find ways to address these challenges, we failed to understand who are we writing for, some stories where of human interest but they lacked voices of members of the communities for whom they were written,” he said.
He cited an example where for a story related to water scarcity, the journalist quoted a political leader, or a police officer leaving the voice of people affected by the shortage of water.
MCT executive secretary Kajubi Mukajanga said, this year a total of 959 entries were received for scrutiny.
He said the Vice President, Dr Gharib Bilal, has been invited to be the guest of honour at the awarding ceremony to be held on April 24 at Mlimani City hall.
He said that among the 53 entries, 34 are from the print media, which is a drop by 12 nominees from 46 during the last year’s awards. The number of nominees from radio is 17 which has also gone down by 22 nominees from the previous 39, and only two nominees qualified to the finals from the TV broadcasts, falling from 16 last year.
“While last year the number of female journalists nominated to the awards increased from 11 to 18, this year it has gone down to 11 nominees which is a fall by 38.8 per cent,” added Mr Mukajanga.
The results follow the completion of a seven-day work of the panel of nine judges. Three journalists from Mwananchi Communications Limited, two from The Citizen, Mr Mkinga Mkinga and Mr Lucas Liganga and one from Mwananchi, Ms Harieth Makweta, have made it to the finalists’ list.
CREDIT: THE CITIZEN
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