Ms Ashley Chadamoyo Makombe:

Yes. On the dichotomy of the way young people are portrayed in the media, as a young person, it is incredibly frustrating when all of the stories around you are about how negative you are and how you are a burden to society. When I look at my circle of friends and the young people around me, there are some really cool things happening in this country. There is some amazing work being done by young people who are doing a lot to push forward this culture and new Irish identity, and that is not given its space to shine, I guess because good news does not sell but bad news does. We are not asking a lot when we ask media companies to push back on that and not allow only negative stories of people to be the things that infiltrate our media. Allow us to tell our own stories ourselves. It was very frustrating when Covid-19 happened and there were a lot of stories about young people having parties and breaking rules, but young people were not the people reporting on those issues so that insight to maybe explain the behaviour and explain what was going on was completely lost. I do not expect people who are not in that group of people to understand. For example I do not expect white people to understand black issues. That is a lot to ask. If someone is not a part of that community, they will not understand. Allowing people from the communities that are being reported on to report that news is very important because there are little details and insights that get lost in translation. Misinformation spreads very easily when those people are not allowed to report on what is happening in their own community.