The meeting – attended by around twenty participants, including editors, media owners and directors of newsrooms – was an opportunity to discuss the future development of the Council of Media Ethics, especially the need to support self-regulation in the media and finding solutions for challenges that this self-regulatory body is facing.
Shell Nuhus shared the experience of the Council of Media Ethics in Norway, who emphasized that the Council holds the primacy of the “spokesperson” for the freedom of expression in this country. The Norwegian Council on Ethics is an umbrella – organization of all media organizations in the country, and the main focus of the organization is taking action in cases when freedom of speech is endangered.
Professor Enes Osmanchevikj, PhD, talking about the importance of self-regulation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, noted that the main purpose of the local self-regulatory body, which has existed for 16 years, is to protect the media from political interference and to protect the public from non-professionalism. The most commonly observed problems is the abuse of the Internet, mostly for so-called ideological wars. Much of their work has to do with dealing with hate speech. “Hate speech in Bosnia and Herzegovina shifts from hatred on national and religious basis to hatred towards political opponents and the LGBT community,” said Professor Osmanchevikj.
Mirche Adamchevski, the President of the Press Complaints Commission, emphasized the need for amending the Code of the Journalists in line with the current trends and developments, and called for media support in publishing the findings of the Commission.
Aleksandar Damovski, editor-in-chief of the portal Mkd.mk spoke about the ways of functioning of self-regulation in newsrooms. He emphasized that portals are often misused by politicians and “in the process of division of the media, they are often left to themselves.”
This activity is organized in the framework of the EU-UNESCO funded Project “Building Trust in Media in South East Europe and Turkey”.