The Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS) also used this opportunity to encourage journalists to mainstream
HIV/AID and gender in their daily coverage and be bold enough to undergo voluntary HIV testing before they could
write about others status.
Tanzania has also started rolling out HIV and AIDS and gender policies in media houses. The project aims at making
80% of media houses in the country adopt these policies. The project started with the public broadcasters - Tanzania
Broadcasting Service (TBS) and the Tanzania Standard Newspaper (TSN). While TSN has developed a gender policy
TBS has developed the HIV/AIDS policy. The management meetings have so far been held with the Guardian, African Media Group, Radio Tumaini, Business Times, The Citizen, Uhuru and Mzalendo in order to buy in the process.
Gender Links in collaboration with MISA-TAN conducted one-week training on Business Reporting for twenty
journalists focusing on the report finding of the Gender and Media Audience Survey 2005 in which MISA-TAN
participated.

4.5 Community Newspapers
MISA also continued to support the establishment of community newspapers in the region. There is still a need to
run a campaign for community newspapers in Botswana as people have lamented the absence of what they can
read about their district especially in depth. The national government Daily News manages to cover these places, but
not all receive coverage. A community newspaper circulated at a cost, and carrying such community issues would
be ideal. Some leading newspapers in the country have opened hubs in small towns to try and bring news to the
people and a lot is still to be done. The planned national sensitization workshop did not materialize because of the
many activities that the officer in charge had to deal with in the last SPP year.
MISA South Africa was involved in the finalization of the city of Johannesburg community newspaper evaluation
this year. In early March MISA Swaziland partnered with the IAJ in South Africa to commission a study into the possibility of establishing a community newspaper in indigenous language in Swaziland. The project is funded by Free
Voice, if the study is favorable, the plan is to launch the newspaper shortly.
4.6 Membership Drive
The chapters continued to register more members with Botswana registering at least 56 individual members and
5 institutional members in the past financial year; Tanzania’s membership increased from 150 in 2002 to 273 now
and the number of institutional members has remained at 14. MISA Namibia has reintroduce membership cards
and Botswana has continued to issue membership cards.

4.7 Training
MISA continued to provide journalists with training to help in improving their journalistic skills and the quality of
journalism in the region. The Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) in conjunction with MISA Botswana and
SAIMED run a workshop on Business Journalism for both electronic and print media in Gaborone with an emphasis
on budget reporting; simplifying business jargon and how to turn news from advertisements in newspapers and
press releases. As a result there is a noted improvement in financial reportage already as seen in this year’s budget
coverage in both print and electronic media in Botswana.

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Annual Report 2006

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