Parliamentary Journalism: Great Britain experience

“Without an informed citizenry, democracy is impoverished and at risk”. 1997, Bob Franklin.

On midterm break, Nailya and me participated in the master-class on Parliamentary Journalism. There were 25 journalism students and young journalists from Almaty who passed the selection part.
The initiator and organizers of the event were the British Embassy and British Counsel in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and MediaNet organization.
The trainers were three professionals with more than 17 years experience in journalism field. Tim Hartley currently is the Director of Corporate Affairs and Mass Communications for S4C, National television of Wales (Great Britain).
Dr. Kelly is coordinator of Corporate Affairs of Wales in the British Counsel (Great-Britain). And Vyacheslav Abramov is the executive director of the MediaNet in Kazakhstan.
From master-class we learned clear definition what the parliamentary journalism is, understood the mission, problems, and responsibility of the parliamentary journalists.
There were stimulating discussions about the responsibility for the political reporting and mentioned the main theoretical basis of free and accurate political reporting according to the UK experience. From UK experience it was interesting to know that in local councils (like our Akimats) the half of the 60 members are women. Whereast here we can count our women-politicians by fingers. Also in the UK the Scotland has own parliament, Wales has Assembly, NI--Assembly and London-- Assembly.
The next day we talked about the parliamentary journalism in KZ and how Kazakhstani parliament refers to their duties. The most interesting fact, as I think, that our parliament during the year did not create or initiate any law (!). Now the participants know who is our “Grey Cardinal”. In seminar were mention that usually the parliament has the days when they give interview to journalists: Wednesday--Mazhilis and Thursday—Senat. There was some helpful tips how to behave yourself during the elections. The key thing is do not forget to hear people, the voice of people.
Mostly I remembered the example with Jayne Sullivan which shows that people are power.Finally the parliamentarians gave her the permission to make injection. Yeh, people can change the mind of the politician. By the way, remember when you will cover such kind of emotional, painful, human stories do not include your emotions(!).
All in all, the presentations were very stimulating and the tasks were very interesting. During the training there were free coffee and lunch:-). All participants got certificates.