Media professionals challenged to embrace effective use of statistics.

He equally challenged media professionals to particularly build trust in NIS, stating that the state corporation is fully open to have a fruitful relationship and partnership with the communication experts.

Tedou made the appeal in Yaounde over the weekend. He was speaking at the end of a three-day workshop his institution organised. 

NIS organised the training with technical and financial support from globally revered statistics body, the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century known simply as Paris21,

The workshop brought together some 25 pressmen and communication professionals. Participants included media representatives from The Guardian Post newspaper, UN Women and a representative of the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and the Family.

The objective was to drill participants on the effective use of gender and climate change statistics in promoting gender equality in climate-related issues. 

Participants were equally drilled on how to improve their overall data literacy, its intersectionality and usage.

The media and communication experts were also schooled on advanced statistical concepts, ways to explore offline data sources, local statistics components like working with local data and how to use the skills in among others, producing original journalistic pieces and enriching already published ones. 

Embrace more efficient statistics usage

Speaking in a brief closing address, the Director General of NIS, Joseph Tedou, urged the media and communication professionals to use the skills acquired in the course of the three-day training in personally improve how they acquire, analyze and present statistics-oriented journalistic pieces. 

He told the participants to among other things, differentiate themselves in the field by notably pushing to properly understand how statistics function and the methodology used in establishing them.

“Beyond having just the information, media and communication professionals have the right to know where the statistics that they have is coming from and the year that it was released to be able to properly use it in building their arguments,” Tedou stated. 

Aside urging participants to take interest in knowing the methodology of each statistics report, Tedou also challenged them to crosscheck if such statistics are “in conformity with those of revered international bodies like the World Bank or the National Development Strategy of the country”. 

NIS open for fruitful relationship with media…

The National Institute of Statistics boss further stated that institution is fully available to accompany the professionals through the new challenge that he has placed on their shoulders.

Tedou said NIS will build on the trust and close relationship developed with the professionals in the course of the three-day training to open its doors to the pressmen and communication officials to facilitate their works.

“This is not to say we will work for individuals because we have an entire people to serve but we will do our best to strongly build the trust between the National Institute of Statistics and the media and communication professionals,” Tedou stated.

Participants hail scheme 

In separate reactions at the end of the workshop, participants expressed gratitude to the National Institute of Statistics for coming up with the scheme to train the media and communication officials.

Richard Nde Lajong and Kini Nsom of The Herald Tribune and The Post newspapers, respectively, described the initiative as a project that will have an immediate impact in changing the face of journalism in the country. 

Paris21 officials hail NIS 

Officials of the Paris21 body, Daniela Lépiz and Miriem Ouyahia, who coordinated the works, hailed the National Institute of Statistics for taking the bold step to organise such a program to drill media and communication officials.

Both officials stated that the global institution is confident that the skills acquired by the media and communication professionals during the works are sufficient enough to build the desired relationship and statistics usage culture needed by the experts.

“We hope we have succeeded in making the professionals capable of humanizing statistics by making them relatable to the audience as much as they can,” Ouyahia said.

Daniela Lépiz on her part said: “We are confident that the change will be very visible because we addressed all the issues cited by the Director General”. 

Paris21, per its leaders, focuses on “improving the production, quality, availability and use of statistics for informed decision making for sustainable development”. 

The Director of the National Institute of Statistics described the body as the biggest institution that is engaged in pushing statistics issues in the African region.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3238 of Monday September 23, 2024