It will not be long before journalists covering the war crimes in Syria and Yemen and elsewhere may asked to testify about what they witnessed.
18 October 2018
Journalists, Ethics and International War Crimes Tribunals
By Dorothy Byrne - EJN Chair & Head of Channel 4 News
As part of the Ethical Journalism Network’s Ethics in the Newsseries of events at the Frontline Club, I will be chairing a debate about the legal and ethical issues encountered by journalists when they are asked, sometimes ordered, to testify in international criminal tribunals.
This event seeks to help provide journalists with an ethical framework and legal understanding of the difficulties that arise.
We will look at the divergent opinions of the journalists who have been asked to testify at International Criminal Tribunals.
Some decided that on balance it was the right thing to too, while others argued that giving evidence compromises the independence of journalists and could endanger the lives of reporters who find themselves in similar situations in the future.
We will hear from both a judge and international criminal barrister, as well as how verification techniques can help journalists and war crimes investigators and prosecutors in their quest for the truth.
Ed Vulliamy worked for more than 30 years as a staff international reporter with the Guardian and Observer newspapers of London. He became the first reporter to testify at a war crimes tribunal since those at Nuremberg, testifying in nine trials at the ICTY, including those of Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić.
The Rt Hon. Lord Justice Adrian Fulford, is England and Wales’ most Senior Presiding Judge, he was elected to serve as the UK’s judge before International Criminal Court for a term of 9 years, assigned to the trial division. Previously he served as a High Court Judge (Queen’s Bench Division) and as a judge of the International Criminal Court.
Wayne Jordash, QC is leading international humanitarian and criminal law expert. He is a managing partner of Global Rights Compliance, a human rights and humanitarian advisory law company and foundation specializing in the reform of national systems of accountability to ensure complementarity with international standards.
Wendy Betts, Director of eyeWitness to Atrocities: Wendy Betts has more than twenty years of experience in human rights and transitional justice. She previously served as the Director of the American Bar Association War Crimes Documentation Project.
On Monday the EJN's Tom Law took part in a panel discussion on humanitarian journalism at City, University of London to launch a new report from Martin Scott, Kate Wright and Mel Bunce, The State of Humanitarian Journalism, based on four years of research.
This report shows which news outlets report on humanitarian issues, how they frame their stories, and what audiences think about this news.
The other members of the panel were:
Josephine Schmidt, Executive Editor at IRIN, the world’s oldest humanitarian newswire
James Copnall, Newsday presenter, BBC World Service
Stefanie Glinski, Freelance journalist and photographer, currently based in Afghanistan.
The launch was followed by a screening of ‘Another News Story’ which included a Q & A with the film's director Orban Wallace & producer Verity Wislocki chaired by Zahera Harb EJN Trustee and senior lecturer in International Journalism at City.
The Ethical Journalism Network is looking for a new Director and CEO from 31 March 2019
As you will have seen from Chris Elliott's recent Director's Letter, Chris has been working with the EJN's President and Founder, Aidan White, for the last year to oversee a period of transition at the EJN as the organisation continues to grow and take on more projects and activities than ever before. This process is well underway and means that we are now looking to appoint a new Director and CEO from 31 March 2019.
ILO Labour Migration & Fair Recruitment Award 2018
The ILO invites professional journalists to submit until 31 October 2018 up to two pieces of their work (entries must have been created and published between June 1, 2016 and October 31, 2018 to qualify) in two different categories:
- Labour migration aspects; or - Fair recruitment of migrant workers.
Supporting quality journalism in the digital age In this blog, EJN Director of Campaigns and Communications, Tom Law, reflects on initiatives in the Czech Republic, Ireland, the UK, and across Europe to support the sustainability of quality journalism.
Scroll down for our summary of global media ethics news.
- A year after her murder, where is the justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia? (Guardian)
- Shortlist for Reporters Without Borders’ first-ever London Press Freedom Awards announced (RSF)
GENDER / MEDIA DIVERSITY
- The Male Allies Toolkit (ONA)
- The framers and the framed: News media and disability (TEDxUWollongong)
- What I learned from the worst—and best—bosses I’ve ever had. (Slate)
PLATFORMS & SOCIAL MEDIA
- Facebook makes political advertising ‘transparent’ with information on buyers in UK (Press Gazette)
- Sorry Civil, 'crypto-economics' and 'constitutions' won't save journalism (FT)
ONLINE HARASSMENT
- Report documents escalating online attacks against journalists (IJNET)
MEDIA GOVERNANCE
- Spain's Público rolls out open source tool in a bid to boost transparency (WAN-IFRA)
- Everyone is saying membership is the future of journalism. Here’s how you can put it into practice (The Correspondent)
US: Why Do the Media Keep Parroting Trump’s Falsehoods? (Nation) US: Trump’s USA Today op-ed demonstrates why it’s time to unbundle news and opinion content (Nieman Lab) US: The Growth of Sinclair’s Conservative Media Empire (New Yorker)
ASIA
MYANMAR: A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military (NYT) BANGLADESH: Editors protest 'anti-press' digital law (Rappler)
EUROPE
UK: Google's UK boss says tech giant 'ready to partner' with Government over outcome of Cairncross Review (Press Gazette) UK: Channel 4 PR boss says fake news is 'cancer to democracy's blood supply' and 'most insidious' problem on internet (Press Gazette)
MIDDLE EAST
SAUDI ARABIA: Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression (Washington Post) SAUDI ARABIA: Saudi Media casts Khashoggi disappearance as a conspiracy, claims Qatar owns Washington Post (Intercept)
EJN ANNUAL REPORT 2017/2018
The Ethical Journalism Network Annual Report for 2017 and the first months of 2018 covers a period in which the buzzwords “fake news” and “post-truth” provided a misleading but appropriate focus for the news industry.
In recent months the challenges of a flawed information landscape have been dramatically exposed with Google, Facebook and other internet giants being called to account for their failure to promptly deal with the pollution of the information landscape.
The EJN's Trust in Ethical Journalism reports looks at how the communications revolution is continuing to pose more questions than answers over a public crisis of confidence, both in democracy and in sources of public information.
Can 2018 be the year when ethical journalism, a human instinct beyond encoding and algorithmic definition, finally gets the recognition it deserves?
