Podgorica, (MINA) – The youth rarely use traditional media as the means of informing or promotion, while local media outlets more often report on their activities, NGO Forum MNE stated.
This NGO told Mina that numerous surveys, carried out on the topic of presence of the youth in media, are showing that the youth and the topics they are interested in are not represented enough.
“Although there are positive examples, youth activism and their achievements can rarely be found in our media, while breaking news with sensationalistic headlines typically show the youth in negative light, emphasizing some occurrences such as peer violence and various types of youth delinquency”, Forum MNE stated.
Regarding local media, they remarked that their practice shows that the local media outlets’ position towards civic initiatives is more positive in comparison to media with national coverage and that they are more open for cooperation.
“Media have very strong influence on the youth, who often state that media are one of the most important factors in forming their behavior and the way of thinking”, Forum MNE added.
The Forum MNE added that we testify of a large number of negative articles that have young people as the main actors.
In order to change that it is important, according to this organization, to change the perception in the society as well as of the policies’ creators and those of the decision makers.
They noted that issue of lack of media turned to the youth is recognized to be of utmost importance, while they praised the activities such as broadcasting of the first TV Journal for children and the youth in Montenegro, created based on the internationally acknowledge format Wadada news for kids, within the media literacy campaign “Let’s choose what we watch”.
This article was published with the financial support of the US Embassy available within the project “Rereading – Rewriting. Improving media literacy in Montenegro”. The Mina agency assumes full responsibility for its contents, which do not necessarily reflect the position of the USA. The article can be used with mandatory citing of its source.
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