Local journos, government communicators off to Germany

A group of  government communicators and journalists will travel to Germany on a study tour next week.

Lisa Hiemer of Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) said the purpose of the trip was to help both journalists and government communicators to improve their working relations, and they will learn about “accountability and access to information on a local level”.

This is an initiative that forms part of a bigger German and South African government programme. “We are bringing together people who are basically living in healthy tension – we have local journalists and we have government communicators. We are bringing them together to go on a learning journey to Germany to learn how things are done in that part of the world,” said Hiemer.

She said they would visit a lot of different local newspapers and talk to government communicators of local authorities in Germany, “and get an idea of how they relate to media, get an idea of how government work with journalists there,” she said. Hiemer said the tension between journalists and government communicators was normal.  “They come from different backgrounds, they follow different procedures. It is normal that they do not see  eye to eye,” she said.

Co-operative governance and traditional affairs  spokesman Mamkeli Ngam – who attended a short send-off function for the delegates yesterday – said the relationship between journalists and government communicators needed to be sustained. “You sometimes find a situation where  there is some kind of misunderstanding from both sides.

“We need  to work together and try to educate one another on how we function in our individual capacities so that, at the end of the day, we have a win-win situation,” he said.  Ngam said  government was working towards strengthening stakeholder relationships, including relationships with certain media houses.

“We are encouraging media to understand and work with government. We are also interested in knowing what is happening in  newsrooms because there is a clash that takes place.” He added that he hoped the government communicators and journalists going to Germany would return with useful information that would “help improve things”.