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Journalists’ leaders
are calling for a sea change in newsroom attitudes to increase diversity and
tolerance in media. Delegates to the International Federation of Journalists
congress in Moscow today called on media unions and employers to join forces to
improve coverage of other cultures, particularly reporting on foreign affairs
and ethnic and religious minorities. The IFJ discussion on Tuesday on the
“Intercultural Dialogue in the Struggle for Peace, Tolerance and Justice”
revealed fierce criticism of how media are lending their support to a tendency
towards race hate and intolerance. “We need to ask ourselves some very difficult
questions about our role in a world marked by increasing inter-cultural
hostility, especially between the West and Islam,” said Shada Islam, a
well-known Brussels-based journalist from Pakistan. “This is especially
important because this hostility between cultures and peoples affects us
directly and is making our professional lives even more hazardous and
difficult.” Mufid Al-Jazairi, former Iraqi Minister of Culture and now the
Chairman of the Iraqi Parliament’s Media, Culture and Tourism Committee said
intolerance of independent media within Iraq is the country’s main problem. “In
the heat of war, silencing noisy journalists doesn’t cost more than an unheard
bullet in the middle of a stormy war,” he said. “When terrorists responsible for
daily blood baths in Iraqi streets manage to escape punishment, it is not
difficult for a “small crime” with one victim or more to go unpunished, even
when the victim is a journalist.” Abdalluh Al-Bakkli, the deputy general
secretary of the Federation of Arab Journalists, said there needs to be a desire
for cooperation for press freedom and equality between all journalists,
regardless of their sex or cultural belief. He asked journalists to support
Muslims in their fight against a “small minority of extremists.” Soren Wormslev,
a Danish journalist and senior vice president of the IFJ, said that journalists
and their unions should come up with practical ideas­like quoting a wide variety
of sources­to increase tolerance and understanding. He said that unions should
organise conferences, as had been done by the Norwegian Union, to do training on
this major subject. In Latin America, intolerance has increased for journalist
unions, said Manuel Méndez, president of the Press Association of Uruguay and
the Federation of Journalists of Latin America and the Caribbean (FEPALC). He
said that journalists’ unions need to form regional blocks such as MERCOSUR are
needed to confront globalisation. “Information is not a business and therefore
unions need to be united across Latin America and the Caribbean to confront the
law of the market place,” he said. “In the region, working conditions and
quality of journalism are declining. It weakens journalists and the society as a
whole.” For more information contact the IFJ at 7 916 582 2599