On September 9th, 2020 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the Media Dialogue project announced the winners of grant competitions for media monitoring and producing parliamentary elections related materials for voters. It was a wonderful occasion to reward the hard work and ambitious projects of eleven media organizations in the country, which will now focus on monitoring hate speech and controversial, inflammatory narratives by key electoral actors.
“I’m very excited about the caliber of grantees for both social media monitoring and media production projects“, commented ALDA Eastern Partnership coordinator Alexandru Coica, who is closely following the developments of Media Dialogue. “We are looking forward to seeing the results of the implementation and the positive effect it will have on ensuring free and fair elections in Kyrgyzstan“.
The project is implemented by ALDA together with a consortium of four other organisations: the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD), Media Policy Institute, ARTICLE 19 and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. In the words of EPD’s Vittoria Zanellati, who participated to the ceremony, “We are glad to be able to engage in achievements of the media’s objectives, for ensuring a democratic process during the election in Kyrgyzstan; I congratulate this success and I hope your projects will come to life soon“. ALDA Secretary General Antonella Valmorbida likewise congratuled all winners and applicants, and expressed her gratitude for the interest, on which Kyrgyzstan relies to remain “the most open and democratic country of Central Asia“.
All awarded projects are indeed extremely interesting and are expected to be very fruitful and helpful to citizens in improving the free press, free speech, and related legislations.
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The Media Dialogue project is funded by the European Union and runs until late spring 2021. Its objective is to harness the power of the media in safeguarding conflict-free elections, hence its consortium has been delivering training and capacity-building activities to help media actors supply accurate and trustworthy election-related content to the citizens of Kyrgyzstan so that they can make informed choices.