William Bird

William Bird is the director of Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) and is both an Ashoka and Linc fellow both in recognition of his work focused on children and the media. MMA is a media watchdog and NGO. At MMA William has overseen or been directly involved in over 100 media monitoring projects on subjects ranging from gender based violence, sexual harassment, HIV, and racism to children and the media and public broadcasting. Some highlights include the conceptualising a range of data journalism tools including, Newstools.co.za, Wazimap.co.za and MMA’s own monitoring tool, Dexter. He is also involved in conceptualising MMA’s tools to build media credibility and combat misinformation in the news.

Mr Bird has been making policy submission since his first years at MMA and most recently worked on MMA’s submission on draft principles on Access to Information and Elections for the African Commission. William has also presented to parliament on several occasions, most recently before the SABC Adhoc Inquiry into the SABC. In his spare time William likes to monitor the media, and as a father of two boys has already introduced his children to the wonderful world of media monitoring.