Reporting on Migration & Refugees: training workshop for EU journalists
On September 5th the Ethical Journalism Network delivered a session on migration reporting and hate speech as part of a week-long event hosted by the Media Diversity Institute in London from 4 – 8 September 2017.
For a full summary of the event visit the MDI website.
The MDI invited journalists from EU countries who are keen to improve their skills related to reporting on migrants, refugees and other vulnerable groups.
As part of the EJN’s session, there was a screening of Sea of Pictures – a documentary film about the image of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi, who was found drowned on a beach in Turkey while trying to reach Europe with his family.
The image went viral and became a symbol of the refugee crisis and the widespread international apathy up until that point. His image was seen on the front pages of newspapers and shared extensively on social media across the globe.
The session also discussed the findings of the EJN’s recent studies on migration reporting, Moving Stories – An International Review of How Media Cover Migration and How does the media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on Migration?
Guidelines for Migration Reporting
The workshop also looked at the EJN’s guidelines for migration reporting. As well as watching the video, the infographic can be downloaded here.
Hate Speech Guidelines
The workshop also covered how journalists can identify hate speech and consider how to report on dangerous speech. Below you can watch Aidan White talk about the test. You can also download the test as an infographic, with more context in this report on hate speech.
For more background on hate speech read the EJN’s Ethics in the News report which features articles on:
Media Against Hate
The workshop, organised as part of the ‘Media Against Hate Speech’ project, aims to explore best practices on covering sensitive issues concerning the growth of xenophobic attitudes across Europe. It will look at both good and bad practices in media coverage as well as data journalism as an important aspect of responsible reporting. One of the objectives of the workshop was for all trainees to produce appealing stories during the event for publishing in their media outlets, under the guidance of experienced trainers specialised in this topic.
The Media Diversity Institute (MDI) is one of the partners gathered by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) for the project Media Against Hate Speech. Other partners involved in the project are: Article 19, Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE), Community Media Institute (COMMIT), Croatian Journalists’ Association (CJA) and Cooperazione per lo Sviluppo dei Paesi Emergenti (COSPE). The project is financially supported by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) Programme of the European Union.