Uganda: Cultural Reporting for Television

“Reporting Cultural Events” brought together 11 young Ugandan television journalists, camera operators and video editors to Kampala to attend a DW-AKADEMIE workshop on cultural reporting. “To date there’s been very little coverage of culture and art on Ugandan television,” points out DW-AKADEMIE Project Manager, Michael Tecklenburg. The workshop gave participants an opportunity to cover an annual cultural event from various perspectives. “We taught the tools of the trade, but our Ugandan colleagues determined the report contents,” says Tecklenburg.

Organized with support from the Deutsche Welle and the Kampala Goethe Center, the two-week workshop held in December was centered around “This is Uganda”, a one-day music festival with traditional African and contemporary international music. Reports produced during the workshop included preparations for the festival and portraits of performing musicians and dancers. All reports were available to the six participating television stations for broadcasting.

An additional workshop focus was bringing together journalists and artists to talk about their work. “It’s nice to know who the other person is but it’s much better if we understand the other person’s perspective,” said journalist Amon Ngabo. Tecklenburg observed that the journalists became more sensitized towards the artists’ creative and performing processes – and that the artists could better understand the time constraints journalists face when producing reports, such as why interviews can rarely run their full length.