13 June 2019

Country: Global

By: Eline Jeanné

It’s June, also known as Pride Month. This is a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and the struggles they have endured over the years, and to celebrate the positive impact LGBTQ+ people have made. Numerous events are put on to celebrate Pride Month, with many large cities organising a Pride Parade. It is also around this time that you will see a lot of companies sharing their support for the LGBTQ+ community. You will notice brands giving their social media accounts a Pride makeover, and a lot of companies are coming out with limited edition Pride merchandise.

On a surface level, it is a very positive sign for diversity. However, truly embracing and supporting the LGBTQ+ community goes beyond selling rainbow t-shirts and rainbow Twitter icons. LGBTQ+ acceptance extends to the business ethics of a company and to the rights of all the people working for that company. This year, LGTBQ+ activists have started to shed more of a light on businesses who show LGBTQ+ support on the surface but are actually anything but that. One company who has been in the limelight is YouTube.

Earlier this week, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and University of Oxford released their annual joint report on the current state of digital news. Among other things, it examined the current monetization of the news industry, the efficacy of paywalls, and the rise of podcasts as a means to reach young audiences.

One of the most interesting aspects of the report is its analysis of Populism in the media, and how news outlets are beginning to identify as populist or not-populist as opposed to left wing or right wing.

Researchers measured populist attitudes by asking whether or or not respondents agreed that there is a “bad” elite and a “virtuous” people, and whether or not they believe in the sovereign will of the people. Those who either answered that they strongly agree or mostly agree with those sentiments, were marked as populist.

Dates: 22 - 24 May 2019

Country: Palermo, Italy

Last month, MDI’s New Neighbours project completed is second training in Palermo, Italy.

The most recent workshop focused on developing local civil society organiser’s media skills by training them in how to effectively create social media campaigns and communicate their message to both the mainstream media and via social media platforms. It was organized alongside our project partners, the European Broadcasting Union, Community Media Forum Europe, COMMIT and COSPE. It was hosted by local NGO, Maghweb.

“I think people are living this issue in Sicily, in particular,” said MDI Project Coordinator Giulia Dessi, who facilitated the workshop.

“The migration issue is often in the headlines or on the front pages as a topic, whether its arrivals and reception centers or political controversy about the Mayor of Pallermo with Matteo Salvini.”

4 June 2019

Country: UK

by: Mikhail Yakovlev

Over the past few years, the BBC’s reputation for fair and high-quality journalism was undermined when it came out that it was treating its women employees rather unfairly. First, the gender pay gap scandal broke in 2017. BBC’s top paid men were earning in the millions, while their women counterparts were earning less than half of that. Next, BBC China editor Carrie Gracie famously quit when she discovered that the international editors (who were men) earned 50 percent more than her and her women colleagues.

Since then, the BBC has made long overdue strides in addressing its gender disparity problem, from promising greater transparency about the gender pay gap to implementing initiatives like the 50:50 project, which ensure that talk shows host equal numbers of men and women as experts.

21 May 2019

Country: UK

by: Anna Lekas Miller

Anyone who has ever monitored—or experienced—Islamophobia knows that most attacks are as rooted in racial hatred as they are in anti-religious sentiment.

However, when the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims suggested adopting a broad definition of Islamophobia as “…rooted in racism and a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness,” conservative MPs descended into an uproar, claiming that the definition would stifle criticism of Islam, and silence legitimate debates.

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire even went so far as to say that intertwining race with religion would have “legal and practical consequences.”

20 May 2019

Country/Region: Europe

Ahead of the European Parliamentary elections, immigration has become the biggest hot button issue—even more so than the economy and climate change. Across the continent, far right political parties are gathering momentum by blaming any and all of Europe’s problems on immigrant communities and open borders.

In some cases, this has lead to all-out hate speech. Far right movements with names like Pegida—which quite literally stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident—are becoming increasingly common, as conservative parties like Alternatives for Deutschland (AfD) gain prominence.

Both the far right political parties and movements have lead to widespread disinformation, particularly when it comes to migrants. A recent Eurobarometer survey showed that respondents in nineteen of the twenty-eight Member States believe that the number of immigrants in their country is two to three times as high as the real figures.