(Credit: White Ribbon Campaign, screenshot)

White Ribbon Campaign Pakistan, a six-year-old advocacy group, announced in a press release sent to iMediaEthics Sept. 21 that it “will train journalists on gender sensitive reporting.”

Through the new training, under White Ribbon Campaign Pakistan’s “Nationwide Journalists Engagement Program,” White Ribbon Campaign “will not only train and facilitate the journalists on gender sensitive reporting but they shall also be recognized nationally on their work by ‘White Ribbon Media Award’ at the ‘2nd National Conference on Gender & Media’ in Islamabad,'” according to the press release.

The group’s country director, Omer Aftab told iMediaEthics by email that the engagement program launched June 2011 and it was “started by conducting a comprehensive baseline study amongst 280 journalists to explore the understanding of media personal towards women’s rights issues especially towards violence against women.”

Aftab added that “After careful need analysis the program was initiated to sensitize the men and women in the media industry for gender sensitive reporting.”

The group’s press release noted that it already has “held a training workshop” on the code.  Aftab told iMediaEthics by email that during the “second phase” of White Ribbon Campaign’s “project,” the group is working on building its membership, getting “media houses, journalist associations and press clubs” to back the gender sensitive ethics code, and train more journalists.

Aftab sent iMediaEthics the guidelines for the new awards program as well. According to those guidelines, awards will be given to entries from print, electronic, TV, radio, online, and photojournalism. The guidelines explain that “The Awards highlight, acknowledge and celebrate the commendable efforts by various media at providing gender balanced perspectives, portrayals and analyses.”  According to the guidelines,  “Entries should have been published/displayed/broadcast or televised between 1st October 2012 and 30th January 2013.” Further, “there is no fee for sending the entries.”

We wrote in January about White Ribbon Campaign Pakistan’s conference, “Gender Sensitive Reporting.”  The group later held a “National Conference on Gender and Media” in March to “launch” its new code for gender sensitive reporting. The group’s Aftab told iMediaEthics in March that more than 250 people attended.