IN PHOTOS | Ehlanzeni District’s mayor wants government to work with media

The annual Ehlanzeni District Municipality’s (EDM) media networking session at the EDM’s Disaster Management on November 22 was a great success.

It started with a morning session and an evening session was held later on. During the day event, various speakers appeared, including writer and freelance journalist Goodenough Mashego, who spoke about messaging to townships and rural youth in the age of pervasive social media. He looked back at how communication used to be done in the past and how things have changed, focusing on media sending out information to the public. “If you go on social media and research guns, have you noticed that your feed will have information about guns?”

Mashego said it is important to know how to target the public when communicating, to send the message out to the right people.

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During the evening session, the EDM’s executive mayor, Cllr Terra Shabangu, said the people out there want to know what the government is doing. “This is why we as government want the media to be our partners, because journalists are doing a great job of informing the public about all that we are doing. We also need to give the journalists the freedom they deserve, because we are not here to influence them in any way whatsoever,” said Shabangu.

He singled out US President Donald Trump, saying his strategy to succeed in all he does is to utilise the media.

Lebogang Khwinana of the EDM said the event would not be possible without their sponsors.

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