Radio Networking for Democracy in Palestine

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Context and Issue:

Local radio emerged in Palestine in the 1990s, after the finalization of the Oslo Accords led to a wave of international financial support for the development of Palestinian society. Independent media have become increasingly vital since the unfortunate resumption of violence in 2000. Media attempts to counteract political violence of all kinds by encouraging an atmosphere of transparency and good governance and offering a forum for peaceful debate among disagreeing parties.
The Arab media environment has changed beyond recognition in the last decade with the advent of al-Jazeera and dozens of other satellite TV channels, which guarantee negligible allegiance to individual governments.
Still, given the economical and political situation of the Palestinian Territory, the technical level of the radio stations and broadcast has remained low. ln 2006, Internews Europe and AMIN/lnternews mapped the radio coverage in Palestine, finding the radio spectrum was overloaded and transmission equipment weak. The report made a number of recommendations which Palestinian officials and media professionals say they are considering.
Radio Networking in Palestine strives for radio liberalisation, which is critical in emerging democracy but still far from complete in Palestine.

Project's activities:

Local radio represented an important part of a full-spectrum media landscape. One of the goals of the project was to work with the stations in their home cities and towns, fashioning a truly local character that would appeal to audiences in a way flourishing national and international Arab media could not.
The programme included activities such as media law assistance, outreach and technical assistance to radio entrepreneurs, radio equipments grants, journalism training and production capacity building, and alliances with local partners and NGOs.
By bringing cost-effective and technical assistance and resources to entrepreneurs, Radio Networking in Palestine helped stimulating and stabilizing new radio operations and assisted stations in their development.

As well as station-by-station assistance the project engaged the entirety of Palestine’s radio sector with live syndicated feeds to cover the 2005 legislative elections and the 2006 presidential elections.

Participants and Beneficiaries:

Radio Networking in Palestine helped to improve the technical level of the radios, solving basic problems and advising in order to improve the radio broadcast quality. Thus, the local radios are now better positioned to compete with strong international, Jordanian and Israeli radios covering the same territories
By increasing the number of trained and motivated journalists to cover local news, human rights and other topics, Radio Networking in Palestine helped local independent radios to play first fiddle in developing democracy in Palestine.
Through networking, it has enabled collaboration between certain radios as well as better interaction between media people and organized civil society activists, enabling to hear their voices and point of view in the local radios.
The numerous project productions have had a positive impact on increasing and improving the coverage of local issues but they also paved the way for the journalists and radios own productions, despite their limited means.
Finally, and extremely important, this project by empowering the local radio media professionals make them fully conscious of their role, opportunities as well as responsibilities.

Outcomes:

The project has managed to develop networking collaboration between the 23 participating radios to improve in terms of quantity and quality the human rights, democracy and Palestinian civil society issues local coverage on the local radios.
The numerous trainings have enable to sensitize the participating journalists and managers as well as to improve the reporting quality. Besides, the joint productions have enabled the profesionals of the different stations to get and work together to improve their programming and helped to show that programmes on local issues could be of good quality, interesting and journalistically ethical and be appreciated by listeners even when dealing with taboos.
These elements have indirectly impacted the country. By supporting the development of an independent, stronger and higher quality local media sector, the project is supporting the development of a better informed Palestinian people with increasing local news coverage and diversity of view points on the air.

"We had a big job to make the stations see that the unique value they can bring to their listeners is by being truly local. All the big issues play out locally. It may not be glamorous, but ifs real."

John West, former Executive Director of Internews Europe.

PROJECT TEAM

Manar Wadi

Project Coordinator
Majed Arouri

Project manager
Khaled Abu Aker

Project Supervisor, AMIN's Executive Director

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PROJECT NEWS

2007.02.13

> Radio Networking for Democracy in Palestine

Equipment grant in Ramallah

for 19 Palestinian local radio stations…“Radio Networking for Democracy in Palestine ”, AMIN Media Network/Internews distributed equipment to 19 selected beneficiary local radio stations in the West Bank and Gaza, on January 23, 2007 at its Ramallah Resource Center. The beneficiary stations were selected according to pre-defined criteria and dedication to the Project activities.AMIN/Internews designed the “Radio Networking for Democracy in Palestine” project to promote the development of the independent radio sector in Palestine, to increase the

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2007.01.15

> Radio Networking for Democracy in Palestine

Palestine Radio Mapping

Study of all stations in the West Bank using the FM Band… As part of its project ‘Radio Networking for Democracy in Palestine ’ implemented in partnership with AMIN/Internews, Internews Europe mandated Carlo Francescangeli, broadcast technical expert, to conduct the first study of its kind on Palestinian Radio Mapping for all stations in the West Bank using the FM Band.This report was presented to Palestinian local radio station managers, media professionals and representatives from the Palestinian Ministry of Telecommunication during a workshop in Ramallah in December 2006.The study includes the precise coverage area of each radio stations as well as technical

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