Media centre

Practical Exercise: Press Conference on Children's Rights

FORMAT

90 minute Practical Exercise in the form of a Role Play, ideally to follow Lecture 3 on Children’s Rights in Georgia

TOPIC / SUBJECT / THEME

Children’s rights in your country

PURPOSE (Journalistic and children’s rights messages you hope to communicate)

To learn to work as a group
To appreciate the Press Conference process
To learn how to ‘elaborate’ upon Press Release material
To learn how to ask questions in public
To understand more about the situation of children locally
To appreciate the role of the Committee on the Rights of the Child

OUTCOME / RESULT (What you expect the students to have learned)

Awareness of the value, function and procedures of Press Conferences
Awareness about children’s rights locally
Awareness about the relationship between Government and the Committee on the Rights of the Child

ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION (Measuring success, for you and for the students)

Observation of performance and marking of written scripts.
Tutors should be able to assess writing, questioning and analytical skills from the students’ preparation for, performance at, and writing up of the event.
It may be helpful to organise a Seminar to discuss the content, conduct and lesson learned form the Press Conference

RESOURCES (Equipment and materials needed for implementation)

A suitable venue to held a mock press conference
Materials provided by students (press releases etc)
See RESOURCES for useful websites

IMPLEMENTATION (How the session will be delivered)

PREPARATION:

Tutors should divide students into appropriately-sized groups (see below for Roles) work as teams and allow them up to ONE WEEK to make their preparations.
They should be directed to appropriate website and resources
The ‘Government’ and ‘Public’ teams should prepare and distribute their Press releases in advance

Group A (the Government)

Organises a Press Conference to announce the Government’s most recent report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child (or the Government’s response to the Committee’s findings);
Prepares a Press Release highlighting key points (for distribution to other groups);
Selects students to play the roles of Chairperson, government spokesperson, a UNICEF speaker, and member of a local Children’s Rights NGO.

Group B (the media)

Allocates roles to each member – representing international, national newspapers, (including ‘yellow’ and opposition press) local radio and TV and specialist magazines (eg. Law journals, children’s newspaper)
Prepares questions they will want answered at the Press Conference

Group C (the public/NGOs)

Allocates roles (NGO representatives, children’s groups, youth parliament, etc )
Prepare campaign leaflets about issues they want raised at the Press Conference
Prepare questions they want to ask at the press conference

ON THE DAY OF THE MOCK ‘PRESS CONFERENCE’

1. The ‘Government’ team should set up the room for a formal press conference. Copies of Press Releases etc should be available to other students as they arrives

2. Everyone takes their up their agreed role, and the Chair invites speakers to make maximum 5 minute presentation. (allow 20 minute altogether)

3. The Chair then invites questions at random, asking questioners to identify themselves. (S/he is not obliges to accept questions from EVERYONE present). Members of the ‘Public’ team should try to intervene with their questions.

4. After a suitable period, the Chair closes the meeting.

5. Afterwards:

Group A discuss among themselves how effective they feel they have been, their attitudes towards the questioning, and what additional information they wish they had had, and how they would run the press conference next time.

Group B (the ‘journalists’ present) write up their notes in the form of a news story specific to their media outlet. (Broadcasters can produce an outline for a ‘package’, with commentary and selected quotes)

Group C (members of the public) consult each other and prepare a statement about the shortcomings they have identified, and outline a campaign they want to run to improve specific children’s rights between now and the next report in 5 year’s time.

6. Alternatively the ‘post mortem’ could take the form of a SEMINAR at which each groups present its report or observations about the content and conduct of the press Conference and the lessons they have learned.

Español Français

Search:

Email this article