Summer School of Media Ethics: Focus on Fair Reporting - Media Programme Southeast Europe
Event Reports
The participants from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia acquired theoretical and practical knowledge about media ethics, media self-regulation and freedom of the press. Main reason for the event: The media scene in South East Europe is much polarised, media often contribute to questionable campaigns – especially in the Western Balkans there are many cases of discriminating comments in the media (“hate speech”).
Ljiljana Zurovac, Executive Director of the Press Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with Christian Spahr, Head of the KAS Media Program South East Europe, opened the event and presented the range of topics. The Head of the legal department of the NGO “Access to Information Programme” based in Sofia, Alexander Kashumov, gave an introduction about the Right to Information as well as data privacy. According to him, knowing one’s rights and being able to make use of them, is an important basis in the journalist’s everyday work. Kashumov gave advices how to request access to information: being well-prepared, investigating public registers and websites of public institutions and contacting several institutions simultaneously.
Psychologist Aleksandar Jagi Bibanović drew the young journalist’s attention to fundamental questions of ethics, morality and prejudices. He also mentioned practical aspects from everyday life: how to combine quickness and precise expression, how to handle pressure and how to verify a source.
More in the event report.
