BY SAMIE WAIKORI
In a bid to maintain media credibility and standard, the Island Sun Newspaper has carried out a training on accountability for its publication departments.
The training was supported by the Media Association of Solomon Islands (MASI) in partnership with Internews, and ran on Saturday and Sunday, August 16-17, 2025.
The training pilots a new initiative by MASI in the approach towards empowering media outlets by training senior staff within each media outlet who will then go on to do in-house training for their own staff.
Elton Lonaratha Jnr, Island Sun’s award-winning sports reporter, dubs the training as a success, saying accountability is something most reporters tend to overlook amid the hassle of meeting deadlines, following up on news and sources, facing challenges from a critical audience who are growing in awareness and expectation.
He said it is also from these challenges reporters face that the need for such training is needed more than ever.
“In these times of growing awareness and education among public on the roles of media, we need such training on important areas such as accountability and ethics to remind us journalists and keep us on our toes,” Lonaratha Jnr said.
“We thank MASI and Internews for enabling this training, and our trainer Editor Irwin Angiki for reminding us on media ethics and other media and organisation values and policies which will help get us back on track in our reporting and engaging with our audience.
“Such in-house training contextualises concepts we are trained on, allowing us to reflect back on our weaknesses openly among colleagues with whom we’re familiar and comfortable around and discuss ways to improve going forward,” Lonaratha Jnr said.
Island Sun Editor Irwin Angiki, who facilitated and presented the training echoed Lonaratha’s sentiments, saying such training is important to safeguard media outlets in their operations and also the audience.
“As news outlets, we are accountable to our audience and their right to be informed, which also entails the right to be informed with the facts, the right to be assured that we are actually providing them with factual news,” Mr Angiki said.
“While the Island Sun organisation has policies in place to safeguard its staff and operation, the onus is on us individual reporters and news workers to put them into practice.
“We have media ethics too, and us journalists must put them into practice in our line of work and also how we conduct ourselves outside of work.
“Social media is a new arena but once we stick to our media ethics and our organisation’s policies, and also adapt to the evolving landscape, we should be on the safe side of the fence,” Angiki told the participants.
The training touched on Island Sun’s policies, the media guidelines offered by MASI, media ethics and law, social media and engagement with audience.
Angiki credits MASI and Internews for their support and the training of trainers (ToT) workshop held on August 9-10, 2025 which he attended, enabling him to hold the training for his reporters and staff.
Members of Island Sun’s newsroom, graphics and sales/marketing participated. Island Sun’s Gizo and Auki reporters also participated via online.
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