A public debate took place today on the following subject: “To what extent do the media meet young people’s needs for informing?” , where there was a talk about the current situation in the media and their dedication toward the creation of programs and news for young people including the amount of trust that the young people have in the media.
Today’s debate was opened by the Ambassador of the United Kingdom to North Macedonia Rachel Galloway who stressed that we are living in times when we are constantly bombarded with news, articles, videos and photographs containing all kinds of information which makes the process of differentiating what is real and important more difficult.
“Young people are equally vulnerable to disinformation like all other groups of people. Therefore it comes as no surprise when we see that public opinion polls showcase that the young people in North Macedonia have no trust in the media. The young as a group in this country have been marginalized. But, as I travel through the country, they are the most engaged people about issues that are important in our communities. They raised their voice against climate change and the protection of the living environment. There has to be a discussion about why the young people don’t have professional information channels that will be presenting the news that they will trust,” stressed Galloway.
At the debate organized by the Metamorphosis Foundation, Aneta Andonova, the Editor in Chief at the Macedonian National Broadcasting Service’s first channel, also addressed the attendees. She stressed that what is promoted by the television medium is influencing the direct process of modeling the young personality, which will be recognizing what the true criterion is.
“What is necessary for the young is to provide something that will be entertaining, informative and educational, but also interactive that will allow the young to directly take part in the process. We are thinking of inserting new content such as gaming contests and quizzes where the youngsters would love to take part. Furthermore, debate shows are planned. We already had a show named “My Story” that opened a lot of questions about problems that young people are faced with. We have an idea of an information show about young people that would broadcast news for young people and this will allow them to prepare the news so that we can find out what interests them,” said MTV1’s editor.
Bojan Shashevski, a journalist at radio MOF, stressed that young people today have their own favorite personalities whose acts they would follow, and about whom, unfortunately, the media do not provide enough information, so they rely on alternative media spaces.
“The young people request multimedia solutions such as short videos or something from social networks. Sometimes it is better when the typed traditional news form will be presented in different ways in order to be more interesting, more attractive and for the young to feel that they are making their contribution. The young are also interested in different and not so current topics, maybe calls that formal education isn’t offering.”
The representative of the youth organization – the National Youth Council of Macedonia, Darko Toshik stated his opinion about the media and their non-existing link with the young people.
“We have too many media outlets that offer an avalanche of content with politics and tragic news and bad ways of expressing. I allude to the creation of a negative practice of a generally accepted manner of thinking that in order to work as a journalist in a certain medium, one doesn’t need to be specifically educated for that purpose. This is why we are facing cardinal mistakes on television and insufficiently qualitative programs without an educational character. There is a lack of informational content that would be interesting for the young people,” said Toshik.
The representatives of the Meta news agency and Portalb.mk, the editors Bojan Blaževski and Elida Zulebeari talked about the efforts and dedication that are necessary in order to create news that won’t be boring, and at the same time will be serious and useful. Meta.mk and Portalb.mk publish on their web pages as well as the social networks, weekly video news – Shortcut, that represents content dedicated to young talents, artists and for promotion of projects as well as news that will be interesting for young people.
Today’s debate is part of the program planned to mark the Days of media Literacy where Metamorphosis Foundation also took part in. At the same time, as part of the project “Credible news for competent youth” a single event that will be organized regularly every two months about various topics, announced the event’s moderator and Meta.mk’s Editor in Chief Goran Rizaov.
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