Radio Stories on Water

Radio is highly topical, up-to date and continues to be a key channel to reach large audiences, inform them and influence their opinions on water related subjects. Therefore, radio reports can play a significant role in increasing participation and opinion sharing, improving and diversifying knowledge and skills and in catering to health and cultural needs (WATERAID 2007). Reports and campaigns for radio stations can be produced and broadcasted with limited resources. Radio works a lot with live broadcasts or interviews. In such formats, original statements can produce very ‘honest’ reports.

Many radio reports are short and need to focus on a main topic or one controversial aspect of a story. While this may not always do justice to the complexity of water management it can be a very effective way to stimulate interest of listeners to explore a topic in more depth. Longer radio features and talk shows on the other hand can exhaust complex topics and stimulate the imagination of listeners with sound effects or quotes that capture different opinions on a given topic. Moreover, letting somebody share their story about water related challenges or solutions can create very emotional reports.

At the same time radio stations are often controlled by governments and in many places radio journalism is losing relevance vis a vis online-journalism. Explore the set of tools in this section to establish, if radio and what types of radio reports are best suited to tell your water related story.