Focus on the positive while not ignoring the negative when reporting on migration, is a key message from Aidan White, the President of the EJN, who has been judging entries to this years EU-funded Migration Media Awards.

Find out more about the awards here: www.migration-media-award.eu

While commending much of the reporting, White notes a troubling tendency for journalists to produce stories that indulge in what he calls “victim journalism” where the focus is on the ordeal of migration, and misery of the process without attempting to search for solutions, hold those responsible to account, or to signpost positive outcomes.

“Well-written, powerful and emotional testimony from victims is not enough for journalism to tell stories effectively and ethically. Revealing the horrors of the crisis is important. But when we do so, we should think about what we can do to make a difference,” White says.

Over the last two years the EJN has also been working with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to address discriminatory attitudes and actions towards migrant workers by improving reporting on rights of migrant workers and solutions journalism through a fellowship scheme for 20 journalists working in the Gulf region, as well as Jordan and Lebanon.

A good example of solutions journalism about migration came last week when one of the fellows, Laura Secorun Palet, had a op-ed published in the New York Times which addressed not only the legal and logistical reforms needed to improve the rights of migrant workers but made it clear that “to eradicate forced domestic labor, we must confront the rampant prejudice behind it.”

This week Dr. Zahera Harb, a board member of the Ethical Journalism Network and Senior Lecturer in International Journalism at City, University of London, spoke at the Public Media Alliance's annual conference in Jamaica. 

Harb spoke on a panel exploring how to maintain and support high standards of journalism in the digital era. The discussion was chaired by Wesley Gibbings, Vice President of the Media Institute of the Caribbean with the keynote delivered by Fran Unsworth, Head of News at the BBC. The other members of the panel were Mark Bassant, Investigative Journalist CCN TV6 Trinidad and Naja Nielsen, Chief Journalism Officer, ORB media.

• Cyprus: Journalism in the Crosshairs of Silly Season: In Cyprus, with the silly season in full swing, it’s journalism itself which is making headlines. EJN President, Aidan White, writes that a faux-controversy has been generated over an effort by journalists to promote a discussion within newsrooms on both sides of the island about the words and phrases they use in their reporting.
• Ethics: Media's Unique Selling Proposition: EJN Board Member, Kjersti Løken Stavrum, the CEO of the Tinius Trust, writes in a recent booklet “Fighting Fakes — The Nordic Way” published by the Nordic Council of Ministers, journalism ethics should be our Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
• Refugee crisis: the immediate and lasting impacts of powerful images: Recent images and footage of migrant children housed in wire cages near the United States’ southern border have fuelled global outrage. Apart from driving policy in the short term, do confronting images create change in public perception and willingness to act in relation to refugee issues?