14th August 2018
By Tom Law

Supporting high standards of journalism in the digital era

Conference: Speak Out! Rebuilding Trust in Media and Democracy

Organiser: Public Media Alliance

Location: Kingston, Jamaica

Date: 13 August 2018

Website: https://www.publicmediaalliance.org/global-conference-2018-1/

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 2018 conference in Jamaica, focussing on trust, democracy and solutions to the crises facing public media. Harb spoke a panel exploring how to maintain and supporting high standards of journalism in the digital era. The discussion was chaired by Wesley Gibbings, Vice President, Media Institute of the Caribbean with the keynote delivered by Fran Unsworth, Head of News, BBC. The other members of the panel were Mark Bassant, Investigative Journalist CCN TV6 Trinidad and Naja Nielsen, Chief Journalism Officer, ORB media.

Harb told the conference that: “Not repeating and sharing hates speech is not censorship, it’s responsible journalism”.

Summarising her speech on Twitter Harb added: “Fake news can generate hate speech. Hateful expression can be also by omission. Language and contextual relevance matter in combatting hate speech.”

Highlights from Zahera’s Speech