Ethiopian immigrants graduate journalism course - Globes

Agenda Center CEO Anat Saragusti: They have a social responsibility to serve as role models for their community.

14 February 12 12:44, Roy Barak

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A journalism and communications course for young Israelis from the Ethiopian community recently came to an end at Agenda Israeli Center for Strategic Communications. 14 students, all of whom hold a Bachelor's degree, participated in the course in which they learned the basics of journalism: how to identify a good story, how to structure it, how to write headlines, and how to write news items. The course participants also learned how to prepare TV reports, edit interviews, investigate leads, report from the field, narration, and finally, editing the entire report. Ten students graduated from the course.

The philosophy behind the course was that the Ethiopians who will work in the media in Israel can present the Ethiopian community in a way that does not just show misery, injustice and racism, but helps to integrate the entire Ethiopian immigrant community into Israeli society.

"The aim of the course is to integrate the participants as journalists in work in media, so that they can generate the news themselves," explains Agenda CEO Anat Saragusti, who is also the field expert and director of the television studies courses. "They have a social responsibility to serve as role models for their community, and also to be role models for the rest of the Israeli community for them to see that there are people of Ethiopian origin who are TV news presenters, and not because they aren't being let into clubs or because people are not selling apartments to them, or because a husband murdered his wife. They need to try to break this stereotype."

False coverage

"My initial motivation in choosing to study journalism was actually not from a sense of having a mission," says Yisraela Tadela, who was born in Israel in 1985, a year after her parents immigrated to Israel. "From the beginning, I felt a desire to write and to influence. I wanted those around me to hear me and my ideas about journalism, which I think are different than those currently being voiced."

"I decided to participate in the course as a result of encouragement from Brahenu Taganya from Channel 2. He really pushed me," Tziona Deseta says, who was brought to Israel as a one-month-old baby in 1983. Deseta currently works for the Ethiopian TV station.

"When I go out to gather information for articles, I feel like I am working from a sense of love for the profession. But I have a hard time since I don't speak Amharic well," Deseta says. "My place is in the Israeli, Hebrew language media."

Despite her desire to move over to the Israeli mainstream, high-rating media, Deseta describes significant differences in coverage styles from her colleagues at the broadcasting stations. "When I watch sequences on other channels that cover the same subject matter, I can't help but see how different they are from what I edit and film."

130,000 Israelis are of Ethiopian origin are currently living in Israel. About 5,000 of them have academic degrees, and the number of those who work in journalism can be counted on two hands.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 14, 2012

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