11th August 2017
By Tom Law

Western Balkan Media Days

The European Commission invited media professionals from the countries in the Western Balkans and the EU for a media development-related discussion and exchange of inspiring forward-looking ideas and innovative experiences aimed at lending sustainability to professional journalism. That is meant to be a result-oriented dialogue that could after be reflected in adjusted assistance approaches to media-related issues within the European Enlargement policy.

EJN Director, Aidan White moderated a panel at the conference on the subject “Words that hurt: media and reconciliation”.

According to the organisers:

The Western Balkans is the region where many journalists adopt partisan positions very willingly; as one analyst said “the recent wars in Balkans were first started/fought in TV shows”… Nowadays, the contradictions and polarisation within and between the countries in the region are exacerbated by low quality journalism aspiring to catch the attention of the audience by cheap but striking sensationalism, ethnic nationalism and similar. The goal of the panel would be to demonstrate by gathering renown journalists from the Western Balkans that a good quality news and story production is inevitable for the peace and reconciliation in the region.