The Director for #defyhatenow Cameroon, Ngala Desmond Ngala has called on journalists to use their reports in causing peace to return to the country.

#defyhatenow Country Director Desmond Ngala

He was speaking after rounding off with the second phase of a mentorship program dubbed “Media for Peace Mentorship” that held on February 18 and 19 in Douala.

“The journalists who just completed this program should not go back and think that we gave them the gospel truth. Which means we are challenging journalists out there to go out of their comfort zones and look for better information and there is nothing that is good as training yourself more and more. Journalists should not say okay because I got this from Media for Peace in Cameroon, this is the gospel truth. Challenge these views, go out there get the right news and let peace reign in Cameroon. At least from a journalistic perspective. Bring peace to Cameroon from your different angles and by then, we are going to be certain that yes we contributed effectively to peace”.

He equally expressed his satisfaction in the level of improvements he’s seen so far in the reports journalists write.

“Expectations have been met throughout our training. Yes maybe not at 100%, but at 80% we’ve met these expectations. Because we’ve seen people, young men and women, journalist with very high portfolios change the way they report the news. The choice of words have changed. Journalist now go more for the facts and they say these are what the facts say”.

Desmond Ngala equally expressed the need to train more journalists.

“…we still have people who are old habits die hards who have been very difficult to change from this perspective. We were seeing people who are thaught one thing and do the opposite the next day. This gives us the impression that there is much work still to be done. We still need to engage journalists in different capacities as the days go by. Everyday we need to engage them and until the right thing is done we are not going to relent our effort”.

#defyhatenow has been training journalists and other stakeholders in conflict transformation, peace building, fact checking and other related topics. From February 15 to 19, they had four different trainings with each lasting two days.

By Sandrine M.