Deadline: Rolling

Region: Central Asia

Registrations are now open for enrolling to Covering Diversity, a new online course on diversity reporting developed by the School of Peacemaking and Media Technology of Central Asia.

Journalists, media experts, educators and students can register for this course.

The course will teach how to cover ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity, underlining the role of ethical journalism in avoiding misunderstanding and intolerance between communities, and how to reflect the opinions of the whole society, giving voice to those who are usually excluded from mainstream media.

Date: 2 April 2015

Region: Western Balkans

The state of media in the Balkans is far from being healthy. To say it with the words of Dunja Mijatović, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media of Bosnia and Herzegovina, “freedom of the media in the Balkans is worse than after the wars in the ‘90s.”

In the ten year period following the Dayton Peace Accords (1996-2006), the international community invested $290 million in media development. Still, twenty years after the wars, Reporters Without Borders’ 2015 World Press Freedom Index ranks Serbia 67, Montenegro 114 and Macedonia 117 out of 180 countries; IREX’s Media Sustainability Index lists countries like Macedonia and Serbia in the “unsustainable” category.

Published: 10 March 2015

Country: UK

In the week ahead of the International Women’s day, 8^th of March, the Women Of the World Festival (WoW) in London celebrated women and girls and their achievements in art, media, film, education. Since its foundation by the theatre director and producer Jude Kelly in 2011, the success of WOW has counted on a number of event locations around the world, a rapid ticket sale, and big names such as Malala and Annie Lennox. The Media Diversity Institute reporter visited WoW in order to explore how this kind of events can have an impact that goes beyond the 8^th of March and what are the best ways to boost a change towards gender equality.

Published: 16 February 2015

Country: Lithuania

Roma and Muslims living in Lithuania are absent from the country’s media. Alongside a very low representation, the media tend to strengthen stereotypes by offering a one-sided portrayal of Roma as criminals, and Muslims as terrorists. This is often combined with derogatory terms, especially about Romani people who are rarely or never interviewed in the Lithuanian media.

These are the findings of the research conducted by the National Institute of Social Integration (NISI) within the project “Address of Human Rights – Journalism”. The study analysed the news pieces published and broadcast from June 2013 to July 2014 in national and regional media. The research, which focused on three specific ethnic and religious groups reveals that the members of Jewish community generally can be seen and heard in the news.

Dates: 20 – 21 November 2014

Region: Western Balkans

The latest Gay Pride Parade held in Belgrade under heavy security and police presence is just one of the examples of minorities’ status in Western Balkans. Many would argue though, that the situation can be improved in the whole Europe. For instance, some of the problems are xenophobia and hate speech towards the immigrants in the old EU member countries, as well as the culture of segregation and discrimination against Roma in Hungary and Slovakia.

At the conference “EU Integration and Minority Protection in the Western Balkans: mapping the way ahead” held in Sarajevo within the MAXCAP project, the effectiveness of EU instruments and strategies for strengthening minority rights protection was discussed.

Region: Worldwide

Published: 13 June 2014

Thomson Reuters Foundation organises a three-day seminar for journalists who are interested in or cover security issues around the world.

The 2014 Global Security Seminar aims to improve the quality of reporting on security and terrorism exploring the challenges of responsible coverage on these issues and comparing approaches with journalists from a range of different countries. This major seminar will bring together leading security experts, authoritative commentators and journalists for a series of lively presentations and debates.