Ms Celene Craig:

It is important to see media as the vehicle for facilitating all of this rather than arguing that there is an absolute requirement on them to fulfil a particular function. The job of the media is to ensure that they can co-ordinate the delivery of this kind of information. Through all of our activities, our hope and our objective is to ensure that they build their own knowledge and confidence to deliver some of those messages, both in their news and in their current affairs output in particular. It is important that they know what the key messages are and that they facilitate discussion and debate on them. Through our Sound and Vision focused round, for example, one of the objectives is that media would increase their engagement with the expertise available in their own localities, understand the issues and their implications for their franchise or broadcasting area, as well as the issues of debate for their audiences. The aim is to facilitate them to build a degree of expertise and an ability to challenge any counter views that are being offered, as part of news and current affairs programming.