Ethical Storytelling: Journalism and Media Literacy | Tackling the Information Crisis | Plus our usual roundup of global media ethics news
22 November 2018
Ethical Storytelling:
Journalism and Media Literacy
By Tom Law
- Why are some journalists sceptical about media literacy?
- How can transparency about the process and ethics of journalism and its accountability mechanisms become a feature of its structure, design and storytelling techniques?
These were some of the questions I attempted to answer in a “masterclass” on media and information literacy I gave as part of a meeting to kick off an initiative to create a Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsroomsorganised by the Global Editors Network and European Federation of Journalists at the Brussels Press Club earlier this month.
As part of the process, two of my colleagues on the committee, Markus Oermann and Martina Chapman developed a useful map of the knowledge, skills and goals associated with media literacy. Download the full PDF here.
If you have been involved in, or may still be involved in, an activity that may have helped people develop skills which would help them recognize and value quality journalism in the digital age, and would like your project to be included in the study, please get in touch and I will send you a link to the online survey.
The activity might have been described as a digital literacy, media information literacy or a digital citizenship project or activity, or it may not. As long as it addresses at least one of the skills identified in the cluster then it is likely that it fits the criteria for the survey.
What kind of information society do you want? How should we reduce the amount of misinformation? How can we protect democracy from digital damage? How can we help people make the most of the extraordinary opportunities of the Internet while avoiding the harm it can cause?
For a year theLSE Truth, Trust and Technology Commission (T3) has been grappling with these key questions. Sparked by the anxieties caused by so-called fake news,the Commission has now come up with a policy agenda for tackling the information crisis.
Working with politicians, technologists, journalists, academics and others from a range of sectors and the general public, we have published this reportthat sets out a wide-ranging strategy to build a more resilient media system fit for the information ecosystem in the UK.
Democratic leaders give historic commitment based on Declaration on Information and Democracy
On Sunday 11 November, EJN President, Aidan White, spoke at the Paris Peace Forum, to support the International Declaration on Information and Democracy along with seven heads of state and the head of UNESCO and the Council of Europe.
White said that he was “extremely proud to speak for the Ethical Journalism Network at the Paris Peace Forum. Today a new initiative supported by the UN, leading governments and brave journalist launched to strengthen journalism and to clean up the public information landscape."
- International coalition to protect press freedoms could have unintended consequences (Poynter)
MIGRATION REPORTING
- EJN Trustee, Zahera Harb, on panel of Judges - 2018 Global Media Competition on Labour Migration (ILO)
PLATFORMS & SOCIAL MEDIA
- Facebook and The Innovator’s Dilemma (CJR)
- Break up Facebook (and while we're at it, Google, Apple and Amazon) (Robert Reich - Guardian)
- The Media Wants Congress To Let It Gang Up On Facebook And Google (Buzz Feed)
- Embattled and in over his head, Mark Zuckerberg should — at least — step down as Facebook chairman (Margret Sullivan - Washington Post)
GLOBAL ETHICS NEWS
AFRICA
COMMENT: Farm murder rate calculations should be transparent – Politicsweb’s isn’t (Africa Check)
African Governments Using Laws To Stifle Internet Freedom – Report (Independent Nigeria) KENYA: Media Council Launches Massive Crackdown on Quacks (Nairobi News)
AMERICAS
BRAZIL: Jair Bolsonaro is president-elect of Brazil. What's next for fact-checkers? (Poynter) COLOMBIA: Reporting initiative spotlights the lives of Indigenous peoples living in Bogotá (IJNET) US: 'Documenting Hate' revisits Charlottesville violence one year later (CNN)
ASIA
CHINA: China steps up online crackdown, seeks detailed user data (Al Jazeera) PHILIPPINES: Journalists Rally Behind Veteran Philippine Journalist Facing Fresh Legal Threats (Time)
EUROPE
TURKEY: Fake news in Turkey: Hunting for truth in land of conspiracy (BBC) UK: PA editor says those who 'heap abuse' on press are 'real enemies of the people' at service for killed or imprisoned journalists (Press Gazette) UK:TV newsreaders see biggest fall in trust among UK professions over past year, survey finds (Press Gazette)
MIDDLE EAST
PALESTINE: One-third of Palestinian young women are subjected to violence and harassment on the Internet! (7amleh) SAUDI ARABIA: Trump slanders Khashoggi and betrays American values (Washington Post)
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?
