Building trust in the media in the Western Balkans is the main topic of a panel discussion the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN) will host at the Fazana Media Festival in Croatia this year. The EJN founder Aidan White, Director of Center for Investigative Journalism Serbia (CINS), Branko Cecen, and Deputy Editor of Exit News from Albania, Alice Taylor, are going to debate ethical standards, self-regulation and good governance in the Balkan media. CINS and Exit News are amongst the media outlets in the Western Balkans that already performed the ethical audits through the Building Trust in Media in South East Europe (SEE) and Turkey project supported by UNESCO and the EU, and through piloting of Journalism Trust Initiative principles led by Reporters without Borders (RSF).
The panel hosted by EJN at the Fazana Media Festival 2021 is taking place on 10 September at 16.30 CET. See the full programme of the Fazana Media Festival 2021 here: https://fazanamediafest.eu/programme-2021/
Since 2016, the EJN in partnership with UNESCO and supported by the European Union, has been helping the media partners in South-East Europe and Turkey to conduct the ethical audits – a useful tool for ensuring sustainability and competitiveness in the digital age, as well as to avoid many issues that can stem from reckless reporting.
Disinformation, media literacy, self-regulation and different ways of building trust in the media will be some of the topics at the Fazana Media Festival this year.“I’m sure it will be, as usual, provocative, thoughtful and rewarding – but most of all it will be an opportunity to reaffirm a simple truth that is better understood in the Balkans than any other part of Europe – that when politics is hostile and when news media are under fire journalists must stick together”, said Aidan White in an interview for the Croatian weekly magazine Nacional.
This year, the EJN has partnered with the main organiser of the Festival – Center for Investigative Journalism (CIN), Media Diversity Institute (MDI) and South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) putting the commitment to journalistic professional standards and civil society’s trust in media at the focus of more than 70 media workers that are gathering in Fazana this year.
Watch the EJN panel discuss how to build trust in media in the Balkans, recorded 10 September 2021 at the Fazana Media Festival in Croatia.