A New Level of Audacity for Impunity and Journalist Murders | The State of Humanitarian Journalism - Report & Podcast + Our Media Ethics Roundup.
2 November 2018
A New Level of Audacity for Impunity and Journalist Murders
By Andrew Heslop - WAN-IFRA’s Director of Press Freedom
It may be business as usual for those who seek to silence journalists, intimidate the media, or discredit our public information role, but recent weeks have seen an entirely new level of contempt for a profession desperately seeking assistance in the fight against global impunity.
Whether exposing corruption in Europe, calling out lies in the US, or ensuring justice is served in an apparent case of Saudi state-sanctioned killing, journalists around the world continue to be threatened by ever-more brazen attempts to malign and distort truth – by the very powers designed to safeguard and protect.
To mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, UNESCO has launched an international campaign in order to engage public opinion and raise awareness of the situation for journalists around the world. For more information follow #TruthNeverDies and download their information pack.
On October 15, the Humanitarian News Research Network launched a major new report, The State of Humanitarian Journalism, based on four years of research on how the media report on humanitarian issues.
The EJN's Tom Law took part in a panel discussion at City, University of London to launch the report. The event has been summarised in this blog and as a series of podcasts.
Listen to the report's authors, Dr Mel Bunce (City, University of London), Dr Martin Scott (UEA) & Dr Kate Wright (Edinburgh University) talk about which news outlets report on humanitarian issues, how they frame their stories, and what audiences think about this news.
The reports’ contents were debated by a panel of leading humanitarian journalists that included: James Copnall (BBC World Service), Josephine Schmidt (IRIN), Stefanie Glinski (freelance), and Tom Law (Ethical Journalism Network). Listen here.
After the panel discussion there was a question and answer session with the over 100 journalists and students who attended the event.
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.
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.
- Journalism’s Comeback (Project Syndicate)
- What do newspapers lose when they use non-professional photography? (API)
PRESS FREEDOM
- Matthew Caruana Galizia: "ever since then it’s just been like one long day" (ECMPF)
GENDER / MEDIA DIVERSITY
- Google walkout: global protests after sexual misconduct allegations (Guardian)
- Is the news media complicit in spreading rape culture? (CJR)
- Women’s Leadership Accelerator (ONA)
PLATFORMS & SOCIAL MEDIA
- Online platforms have responsibility for content, Ofcom bosses tell MPs (Press Gazette)
- The radicalization of an alleged domestic terrorist (CNN)
- ‘Hateful Speech Almost Always Leads to Hateful Action’ (Foreign Policy)
- Gab.com goes down after GoDaddy threatens to pull domain (Verge)
MEDIA GOVERNANCE
- Alas, the Blockchain Won’t Save Journalism After All (New York Times)
- This new project wants to do for news trust what FiveThirtyEight does for polls: Aggregate a bunch of signals into something meaningful (Nieman Labs)
GLOBAL ETHICS NEWS
AFRICA
HOAX ALERT: Kenya’s Odinga not named Time’s ‘person of the year in Africa’ (Africa Check)
AMERICAS
US: MSNBC blows off Trump’s immigration fearmongering address (Washington Post) US: LA Times Publishes Completely Different Political Endorsements in English and Spanish (Latino Rebels) US: Breitbart News threatens Sleeping Giants with a lawsuit (CJR) US: Coverage of migrants seen as Trump's pre-midterm trap (CNN) US: Getting scoops is great, but not if they perpetuate a Trump lie (CJR) US: Shepard Smith can’t redeem Fox News (Washington Post) US: The Term ‘Fake News’ Has Lost All Meaning, Which Is Just How Trump Wants it (Washington Post)
ASIA
CHINA: Cornell halts China university ties over curbs on academic freedom (FT)
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
PALESTINE: 7amleh releases Policy Paper “Facebook and Palestinians: Biased or Neutral Content Moderation Policies” (7amleh) SAUDI ARABIA: Social media ‘aids oppressors’, says Saudi rights campaigner (Guardian)
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?