Pushing back against hate propaganda | In defence of the public editor | Turkish investigative journalists visit London + our media ethics round up
25 May 2018
IN DEFENCE OF THE PUBLIC EDITOR
In the wake of ESPN and others dumping their internal ombudsmen, the EJN's new director, Chris Elliott, argues that ombudsmen can play a vital role in building trust with audiences and therefore securing the future of journalism.
Journalists need to understand how hate propaganda actually works, according to EJN adviser Cherian George: At an interpersonal level, we know racist speech when we see it. But it’s a mistake to think that industrial-strength hate campaigns that are subverting democracies around the world — attacking immigrants and minorities, for examples — simply amount to racist speech with a megaphone and a bigger audience.
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.
As part of the Ethical Journalism Network's Ethics in the News series of events at the Frontline Club the EJN will be hosting a screening of The Workers Cup, a film that takes us inside the labour camps of Qatar, on Tuesday 26 June 2018.
The screening, which is timed to coincide with the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, will be followed by a debate - moderated by our Chairperson, Dorothy Byrne - on how media report on human rights issues connected to major sporting events.
The Ethical Journalism Network hosted a visit of Turkish investigative journalists to Oslo and London this week. During their stay the EJN will arrange meetings with senior investigative journalists, academics, regulators and civil society.
The visit was led by Özge Mumcu Aybars who is a founder, board member and coordinator of Uğur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Foundation, named after her father, the leading investigative journalist, Uğur Mumcu, who was assassinated in 1993.
The group has been working to promote independent investigative journalism and also rights-based journalism in Turkey for the last 24 years. In 2011 Özge Mumcu Aybars wrote an article for Nieman Labs explaining how the organisation’s journalistic mission emerged out of the tragedy.
‘… after my father was murdered, our family founded the Ugur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Foundation … to encourage young people who are concerned about social problems and have ideals of hard work and humanity to enter the field of journalism.’
- The Daphne Project: 'Even if you stop a messenger, you will not stop the message' (Journalism) - A New Wave of Censorship: Distributed Attacks on Expression and Press Freedom (CIMA)
- Facebook and Google dominate online ads. Can alliances between news publishers compete? (Poynter)
- Backlash after Facebook says it plans to lump news stories in with political ads (CJR)
- How new technologies are changing ethics in journalism (Media Update)
- Where ‘fake news’ flourishes: a comparison across four Western democracies (Information, Communication and Society)
- Fake news and critical literacy in the digital age: sharing responsibility and addressing challenges (LSE)
- Free Online Course on Identifying Misinformation (First Draft)
GLOBAL ETHICS NEWS
AMERICAS
US: Texas principal censors paper, bans all editorials and ousts award-winning adviser (SPLC) US: Indian Country Today returns. Can it protect its editorial independence? (CJR) US: The Hard Truth at Newspapers Across America: Hedge Funds Are in Charge (Bloomberg) US: The failing diversity efforts of newsrooms (CJR)
AFRICA
ETHIOPIA: Mapping the Ethiopian Media- Briefing Paper/report (Wazema Radio) GHANA: Journalism And Professionalism- Where Does Ghana Stand? (Modern Ghana) GHANA: Roundtable discussion focuses on copyright challenges, solutions in Africa (EJN)
ASIA
MALAYSIA: New government urged to implement media reforms (Global Voices) PAKISTAN: The Internet Governance and Digital Rights Monitor: Mapping Digital Rights Situation in Pakistan (Digital Rights Monitor)
EUROPE
BOSNIA: On hate, refugees, and Bosnian elections (Al Jazeera) GERMANY: Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning From Its Own History of Hate (NYT)
MIDDLE EAST
IRAQ: A U.S. Journalist Took Thousands of ISIS Files Out of Iraq, Reigniting a Bitter Dispute Over the Theft of Iraqi History (The Intercept)
ETHICAL JOURNALISM NETWORK RESOURCES
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?
Last month the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) published guidelines on Media and Trafficking in Human Beingsauthored by the Ethical Journalism Network's Aidan White.
After a screening of 'Another News Story' the Chair of the Ethical Journalism Network, Dorothy Byrne, who is the Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4, moderated a discussion with director / producer Orban Wallace, producer Verity Wislocki, and forced migration researcher Ahmad al-Rashid. You can also listen to the event as a podcast.
Watch the EJN's Tom Law talk about how a fake news story triggered a major geo-political crisis in May last year and the effects are still being felt across the Gulf nations on Al Jazeera's Inside Story.
Watch EJN Adviser Bill Orme address an informalhearing at the United Nationsas part of the preparatory process for an international conference for migration to adopt a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration.
