News 5 Reporter wins Environmental Award

The good news is that News Five’s Isani Cayetano is receiving his second regional media award later this week after besting a number of television news reporters within the Caribbean. Isani’s first award was from the Caribbean Broadcasting Union and his most recent is from the annual CARDI/CTA Regional Media Awards Competition.  The contest was organized by the Caribbean Agricultural and Research Development Institute (CARDI), under the theme ‘Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation and Sustainability’.  Isani, along with cameraman Chris Mangar, took on the challenge, among journalists from the region and went on to shape their winning entry.  Of the five categories, including Best Print Story, Best Radio Story, Best TV Story, New Media, as well as Citizen Journalist, Isani won for Best TV Story.  The feature on coral bleaching was aired in September and it highlighted the physical, as well as the financial impacts of the occurrence on fisheries and tourism in Belize.

Isani Cayetano

Isani Cayetano, CARDI Regional Media Awards Winner

“The CARDI Media Awards 2012 was centered around the theme “Climate Change.”  As opposed to last year when they were looking for stories based on agriculture and rural development, this year they were looking for stuff that has to do with weather, its impact on people and the Caribbean on a whole.  So what I decided to do was [to] take one particular phenomenon or problem that we’re facing within the Caribbean and highlight it in the form of a story.  We chose the topic of coral bleaching and myself and my cameraman, with the assistance of the Caribbean [Community] Climate Change Center here in Belize, as well Dr. Melanie McField and Dr. Lisa Carne, we put our thoughts and our ideas together and we came up with a story that would best show how tangible the effects of climate change are on Belize and the fisheries industry. After a month, to finally learn that I actually won in that particular category I am elated because it sorta validates, in a great many ways, the work that we do here as reporters and wanting to get our names out there and wanting to put quality product in the newscast. Going forward, I intend to continue making submissions and entries into the various awards regionally and internationally.  I guess it’s a way of, as I mentioned before, putting yourself out there, and, as well, to get the name of the company and the product that we’re promoting locally and regionally out there as well.  So next year there will be another award and we’ll see where we go from there.”

The CARDI/CTA Media Awards Competition, which was part of the official opening ceremony for the Eleventh Caribbean Week of Agriculture, was judged by a panel of qualified journalists from Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The winning story will be rebroadcast later this week.