The Missing Link: CSO-Media Relations
Publisher: Technical Assistance for Civil Society Organizations (TACSO)
Date: 2012
Volume: 58 pages, pdf
Description
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) region are dealing with numerous challenges in their working environments. Due to the nature of their day-to-day work, and fast paced information society, one of the most significant challenges for CSOs are media relations. The Technical Assistance for Civil Society Organisations (TACSO) project is aware of the importance of encouraging members of the CSO community to develop their own links to the media; the project is continuously trying to widen its approach in assisting CSOs to get their message across to their publics. On the other hand, TACSO is also aware of the constraints the media have towards the CSOs and in turn TACSO has supported the media’s contact with CSOs. Throughout the establishment of the TACSO project, it has been noted that there are missing links in regards to the relations between CSOs on the one side and media on the other. In order to provide more structured assistance, the project has decided to investigate this missing link. A focus group methodology was chosen as it allows for important and complicated questions to be answered with formulated and varied responses. Both members of CSOs and the media were included as participants in the groups. This report is a presentation of the focus group findings. The findings clearly indicate a missing link, which is shown to be a lack of understanding and miscommunication between the CSOs and media and vice versa.