PROJECT ON ETHNIC RELATIONS

Discrimination in the media is a provoking subject.i?1 Present to discuss it were: on one side the Roma minority�??s representatives and on the other one the journalists. In the middle, PER Regional Center and the National Council of Audiovisual.i?1 The result was a debate where the Roma said that sometimes the press discriminates, and the journalists opined that in principle they reflect the reality.

” How can professionalism protect the media against the outside pressures?�?? �??What can the journalists do to improve the ethical standards, especially during periods of social conflicts?�?? �??What is the role of journalists�?? unions and associations and of the editorial corporations?�?? �??What formative, editorial and engagement standards are still missing?�?? These are part of the questions, to which the participants tried to find some answers during the roundtable discussion on �??The Freedom of Expression and the Danger of Intolerance in Mass-Media�??
The discussion was opened by Maria Koreck, program director at PER Regional Center, who underlined the fact that the press has the capacity to form the imagination of the media consumer through how it reflects different aspects of reality. Thus iti?1 always played an imprtant role in forming social realities, especially those between different etnic communities. The PER Regional Center has the intention to offer a neutral frame in which the different opinions regarding reglementing or self-reglementing freedom of expression in order to eliminat and prevent the intolerance present in mass media.
Attila Szasz, member of the National Audiovisual Council, sustaigned the idea that freedom of expression is in danger and it has to be protected from intolerance and rasism. Freedom of expression means also assuming responsability, he said.
The president of the Council for Combating Discrimination, Csaba Asztalos, said that his institution is responsible for the protecting respect for human dignity and the freedom of expression and they try to maintain a balance between respecting these two rights. But promoting intolerance through media can not be tolerated under the cover of freedom of expression.

Mariana Nitelea, the director of CoE Information Office in Bucharest, promoted the “STOP Discrimination Campaign” that will elaborate a best practices manual for journalists and also the hard-core and soft-core CoE laws that are meant to guide journalists in order to avoid abusing freedom of expression.
The presentations regarding the legislative limits of tolerance regarding intolerance were followed by a monitoring report made by Diverse Association that analyzed the image of Roma in the written press from Romania during February 1 and Marc 31, 2009. From the analyzed data resulted that from the total articles in February 74,28% were objective towards Roma and 25,72% were subjective. However 60% from the toal articles present Roma in the contexti?1 of conflictual events and from these articles in 38,09% Roma are the target of other actors’ agressions and in 61,91% they are the agressors. Only 8,57% from all the articles associate Roma with pozitiv actions, 57,14% presenting them as the protagonists of negative activities. In March for all articles 60,94% were objective and 39,06% subjective towards Roma. The analysis followed also the report between articles that use for naming the community the word Roma, 54,28 % from all articles and those using the word Gipsy, 42,86 % from all articles. The conclusion is that articles written in an objective way are not altered by using the word Gipsy.i?1 However, subjectivity can be introduced into articles using the word Gipsy, for ex. in criminal cases, when accused persons are presented as Gipsy.

Ioana Avadani, executive director of the center for Independent Journalism and Adrian Voinea, vice-president of the Romanian Press Club, said that journalists already work on professional ethical code that will reflect the best practices and will be obligatory for those journalists who will assume it and has to have a role of statement against all the journalists who do not respect it. MS. Avadani said that media through its nature can not educate, but it presents models and a balance between the negative and positive models presented has to be maintained in order to eliminate stereotypes from the media where journalists still can not clarify their own prejudices. Assuming responsibility in media is a long and difficult process, but it is worth the effort.
Participants representing Roma organizations underlined the gravity of mentioning the ethnicity of a supposed perpetuator and not respecting the presumption of not being guilty in cases when media presents criminal events.
The conclusion of the discussion was that media has one part of guilt in the existence of intolerance in society and there is a need that media makes self regulating efforts in this regard. There is a need for a continuous forum where different actors from the media and from outside it can contribute together to the freedom of expression’s protection without letting them touch other rights.

Last Modified : April 10th, 2009
Filed under : News & Events, Public Reports
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