One of the Environmental Conventions organizes a workshop for journalists. The day I attend, about ten staffs lecture to a similar number of young journalists and a few NGO staffs. They all use power points. After an expose of twenty to twenty five minutes there is just time for a few questions. Even those do not come easily. Then the expert has to run to a next meeting and a new presentation follows. Apparently the thinking of the experts is based on the deficiency model. When we give more information, journalists will understand and write more. During the coffee break one of the journalists confesses to me he would have left the workshop after the first presentation, were it not his trip and DSA are paid to attend. When one speaker is late, the participants exchange experiences among themselves: journalists are interested in environment; the news paper editors are not.
It would help if experts used less jargon. And more time to build relationships. It made me think that it would be useful if we would introduce to the MEAs the contextual model. Communication works when one invests equally in trust, personal experiences, values and interests. And not in information alone.
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