New CCMN national coordinator pledges to capitalise on expansion, enabling environment for media practitioners

The newly appointed Cameroon Community Media Network, CCMN national coordinator, Obah Rose has pledged to take the peace journalism and community development network to higher heights.

Talking to MMI after her recent appointment, the media woman accepted that it will be an uphill task for her, but her plan will enable her play her role effectively.

“Already it is expected that I need to master the context in which we are operating, and this implies that I will not only do for the Region that I have mastered already, but to also get to the other Regions to see what challenges they are facing and see how community media through the CCMN can help change the narratives for a peaceful society especially in their reporting” she said.

To achieve this, she and her team will “have to embark on carrying out situational analysis on various crisis situations and see what role the community media, the government and other actors can play to de-escalate the crisis in question and offer options that encourage nonviolent responses to conflict”.

“Bearing in mind that most community media practitioners are not professionally trained, more efforts will be concentrated on building their capacity with relevant content that can enable them to report to build and not tear parties in conflict apart” she added.

About to clock five years of existence, CCMN has grown from 25 to over 100 members, members the new national coordinator notes have moved from covering traditional news events that focused on the elite to investigative stories that now applies the bottom top approach.

Despite this stride she says, there is still a long way to go “reason why, with the putting in place of the national and regional coordination teams, we are going to move from two regional chapters to over 8 so we can train and get other community media practitioners involved bearing in mind that, when we get to involving many media persons, generally the impact and results will be huge”.

To achieve this, the Obah Rose says she and her team will ensure regional branches are launched and more capacity building is done. “Also, the network is going to factor in other aspects of community such as areas in humanitarian reporting with special focus on the Sustainable Development Goals which will go a long way to guarantee healthy and sustainable communities”.

Founded in 2015, the CCMN is an association of community media houses and community media practitioners with the goal to promote the development of the community media sector in Cameroon as well as establish conflict-sensitive journalism as alternative to conventional reporting.