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Covering Diversity: A Resource and Training Manual for African Journalists is a tool to help strengthen professional standards and reporting practices on inter-communal, inter-faith, minority, and other diversity issues in Nigeria in particular, but also elsewhere on the continent. Its central purpose is to help journalists and editors meet the unique challenges posed by reporting diversity-related issues in complex, multicultural societies. The manual is designed to assist media professionals in examining the assumptions they bring to the news and editorial process - for example, to be mindful of how these assumptions may inadvertently incorporate stereotypes into the process of news reporting and unconsciously marginalize "the other." In doing so, it can help the media overcome bias and prejudice and thus support the accurate and balanced reporting that responds to the highest standards of the profession.

The manual is an important component of a more comprehensive, sustained program by partner organizations to build bridges across ethnic and other lines that divide communities. It is a product of a collaboration among The Panos Institute, Washington, DC, an international nonpartisan and nonprofit organization that works with grassroots journalists to provide them resources to cover critical issues responsibly and in-depth; the Independent Journalism Centre, Lagos, an independent, nonprofit, media rights, training, and documentation organization; and the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, New York University, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group expert in working constructively with media on issues of conflict and diversity in the ethnically-troubled states in the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, and beyond.

These institutions, each with different expertise and a rich history of collaboration, joined forces in late 1999 to undertake extensive fact-finding with Nigerian journalists and then to analyze the interconnected and potentially explosive problems of identity, conflict, and diversity in Nigeria and the Nigerian media's impact on those problems. Our institutions all recognize that the media in Nigeria - as in other conflict areas around the world - can play a critical role in sustaining and exacerbating inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflict. In the best of circumstances, the media's propensity to rely on negative images of minorities and groups seen as "other" substantially inhibits mutual understanding and cooperation. In the worst, the media contribute directly to violent conflict.

And yet the media are capable - given a rare mix of vision, skills, and consensus across professional groups - not only of avoiding inflammatory reporting but even of lessening tension, averting violent conflict, and offering common vision.

Covering Diversity: A Resource and Training Manual for African Journalists is designed to be used in several ways. Primarily, it is a "textbook" and primary resource for training programs that our Nigerian colleagues and we will offer to working journalists. It can be used as well to prepare trainers to conduct other courses and curriculum development workshops for journalists and representatives of journalists' organizations. It will be helpful to journalism educators in introducing diversity training into the classroom and for those reporting on human rights, be they journalists or other information providers. Working journalists can also use this manual by themselves, without attending a workshop.

While the manual offers a foundation for training initiatives, it will also serve as a catalyst for discussion and further development of diversity reporting techniques and strategies. To this end, the manual includes case studies illustrative of the different ways that the media in Nigeria, as well as internationally, have addressed diversity and ethnic conflict and their responsibility within those contexts. Important principles and issues relating to diversity, human rights, journalism, and the role of media in society are also discussed. Journalists looking for guidance and new ideas can utilize the "Tool Box," where we have compiled checklists, tips, and techniques written by their peers to share wisdom and experience. Reference sections provide relevant national and international laws, standards, and codes plus a guide to organizational and on-line resources for journalists on ethics and diversity.

The partners' analysis of the issues of the media, identity, conflict, and diversity in Nigeria and the subsequent publication of this manual would not have been possible without the active participation of some one hundred Nigerian media and human rights leaders and, most especially, the dedication and hard work of the senior Nigerian journalists, editors, and media association leaders who formed the Reporting Diversity Working Group in January 2000. Group members are listed in the appendix.

Working group members have contributed articles to the manual, organized media roundtables for working journalists to introduce the manual and discuss its contents, and committed themselves to help promote its use in a variety of programs, including those to strengthen the curricula in Nigeria's 45 schools of journalism. We are most grateful to them, and to The Ford Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace, who provided funding for this project.

For all the partners,
Dapo Olorunyomi
Director of Africa Programs
The Panos Institute, Washington, DC
November 2000