Regional broadcast and print editors are invited to participate in a two-day forum on conflict-sensitive and solution oriented reporting. The forum will take place on 24– 25 February in Kyiv. This initiative is a part of the Project Regional Voices: Strengthening Conflict Sensitive Coverage in Ukraine’s Media, implemented by the media consortium, funded by the European Union.
The aim of the seminar is to encourage inter-regional cooperation between news outlets, enabling better verification and fact checking mechanism, bypassing unattributed, often online, sources. During the forum editors will discuss challenges of covering existing areas of social tensions in their communities, resulted from the conflict and explore opportunities of using each other as source base for debunking heightened rumours and propaganda.
Relations established between newsrooms will be maintained through an online platform, which is going to serve as the Regional Voices project participant networking site. This will enable content to be shared between project participants and EU28 broadcasters and print news outlets to foster their cooperation.
Thomson Foundation media trainer, Mark Webster, will present fresh ways of tackling IDP issues and elaborate on anticipated content quality by western outlets.
Mark’s 30-year career in journalism, he worked for the Financial Times, the Evening Standard, ITN and Channel Five News. As a print and broadcast journalist he has covered conflicts in many places including: Uganda, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Kosovo, Chechnya and Northern Ireland. During that time he has lost a number of journalist friends and colleagues due to the fighting so can give some personal insight into the difficulties and dangers faced by reporters in war zones and the pressures they face to achieve balanced reporting.
International Institute for Regional Media and Information (IRMI), Angelina Soldatenko, is IRMI’s expert. She will demonstrate the advantages of the platform and cooperation/networking conditions. Angelina is a journalist, media and public communication expert and a trainer. She has extensive background with Ukrainian media, covering social conflict apart from other things.
To apply for the forum please send your CV and a brief motivation letter to IRMI’s email address by 19 February, Friday. The organizers will provide accommodation, meals and tickets reimbursement.
For more information about the workshops contact Regional Voices Project team at (044) 498- 51-75 or by email regional.voices.ua@gmail.com
Regional Voices: Strengthening Conflict Sensitive Coverage in Ukraine’s Regional Media is a year and a half EU funded initiative, implemented by the Media Consortium of five organizations: Thomson Foundation, Institute of Regional Media and Information (IRMI), MEMO 98, Association Spilnyi Prostir (ASP) and The European Journalism Center, in cooperation with the National Union of Journalists.
