Fanning the flame of tolerance: the role of the media.

The third seminar in the "Unlearning Intolerance" series was held at UN Headquarters on 3 May 2005 on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day. The "Fanning the Flame of Tolerance: The Role of the Media" seminar considered the effects of "hate" media and discussed how the media could educate people through reporting and confronting manifestations of intolerance around the world. It was organized by the United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) and launched at the mid-point of the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1998.

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Among those who spoke at the half-day seminar were: Mihnea Ioan Motoc of Romania, Chairman of the United Nations Committee on Information (COI); Erol Avdovic, Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, Deutsche Welle, Bosnian Radio & TV, and the Vjesnik daily; Alfonso Armada, United Nations and New York correspondent, Spanish News Daily, ABC; and Ghida Fakhry, New York Bureau Chief, Asharq Al-Awsat. James Wurst, President of the United Nations Correspondents Association, and Suzanne Bilello, Interim Director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) office in New York, also spoke. The participants cited methods to promote tolerance, which included recognizing and avoiding "soft prejudices" and cultural stereotypes, being wary of using national filters to the exclusion of international and foreign perspectives, and encouraging critical reasoning on concepts of "otherness".

At the opening of the seminar, Ramu Damodaran, Chief of the Civil Society Service, Outreach Division, DPI, read out a message by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who noted that while journalists continued to work on the front lines of history, many continued to be persecuted, attacked, imprisoned and murdered for their work. Mr. Annan added that in 2004 alone, 56 journalists had been killed in the line of duty, another 19 remained missing and feared dead, and some 124 had been imprisoned. World Press Freedom Day, he said, should serve as an occasion to pay tribute to those who had fallen, reflect upon the role of the media in general, and be the occasion to reaffirm the essential human right of press freedom and collectively to pursue its realization.

During the panel discussion, which included an interactive dialogue among panellists and the audience, Ms. Fakhry drew attention to the difficulty of delineating softer, more benign, yet pernicious forms of hate-speech. In giving an impression of fairness, the media also proffered subliminal messages that promoted stigma and made people more prone to intolerance. For example, since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, she said, the word terrorism had been used to describe many things, although the United Nations continued to struggle to define that phenomenon. Furthermore, the word "Islamist" had become almost synonymous with "terrorist". Tolerance grew out of knowledge, and the media had a responsibility to promote better understanding on both sides, Ms. Fakhry said.

Mr. Avdovic said that the Balkan wars of the 1990s had illustrated the capacity of some journalists to light the flame of war. The State-run media of Serbia had excelled in demonizing the other, while the independent media had been charged as traitors and external agents. It was essential that the alarm about similar phenomena in other societies be sounded immediately. All journalists should ask themselves whether they were peacemakers or warriors, whether they were part of the solution or of the problem.

For his part, Mr. Armada said, the impression left by the conflicts in the Balkans and the Great Lakes region was that, despite media portrayals of the terrible things that happened, the reaction from those countries that could have done something to prevent such horrors had always come too late. With so many conflicts occurring at the same time, there was a feeling that nothing could be done; still, journalists retained the belief that trying to write about forgotten stories could make a difference.

Ambassador Motoc noted that overall pluralism should eventually overtake mere tolerance. The aim should be to acknowledge the intellectual or cultural "otherness" of those who had different opinions, he said. In that effort, the journalists and societies of Eastern Europe could play a catalytic role; caught between North and South, between the developed and developing worlds, they could promote reform, which was so important to the United Nations today, he noted. World Press Freedom Day is part of the annual COI session which makes recommendations to the General Assembly on the policy and activities of DPI.

Mr. Wurst and Ms. Bilello acted as discussants and summed up the arguments of the panellists while offering their own perspectives. Paying tribute to two colleagues who died in the line of duty in Iraq and Haiti, Mr. Wurst said that the panellists had highlighted definite means by which the media could promote tolerance, noting that one was not always dealing with a phenomenon as blatantly obvious as the hate-radio of Rwanda. It had been recognized that journalists must confront soft prejudices and stereotypes, as well as avoid using the abbreviated story just because they thought that that was what their bosses wanted. He said that the Rwanda Tribunal had been the first court to convict an individual for hate-speech and that this precedent raised questions of the freedom of speech and limits thereon. Regarding the sense of nationalism, it had been noted that national powers often had an important role in shaping hate-speech and intolerance. Mr. Wurst suggested that the way an emerging power treated the media was a good indication of how it would use its power. While a national filter was not inherently bad, journalists should be wary of using a national perspective to the exclusion of the international and foreign perspectives. He noted that the issue of radio had been raised frequently and also stressed the importance of this medium in poor and less literate societies.

Ms. Bilello said that independent, free and pluralistic media had a crucial role to play in democratic societies. UNESCO had a long history in promoting tolerance and professionalizing the media, and promoting ethics was a major part of its mission around the world. It had brought journalists together in an attempt to prevent the stereotypes found in conflict situations. It had recently sponsored a workshop for South Asian women journalists aimed at giving a gender perspective to conflicts and prevent stereotypes imbedded in language and society. Another important topic was diversity, which had been a focus in United States newsrooms for a long time and which UNESCO was interested in addressing throughout the world.

During the question and answer session, discussions included: the effectiveness of the United Nations to confront hate-media; insufficient public awareness on the work done by the world Organization to confront hate-media; the difficulty to sell its stories to media outlets, especially television; editorial discretion on the needs of the audience; and the economic imperative at work on the United States media that limits increased coverage for underreported areas of the world.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Shashi Tharoor said, in response to a question on the most helpful mechanism in combating hate-speech, that any solution that could address the problem without imposing censorship was the best. On the dominance of the American news agenda and how successful the United Nations had been in countering attacks on its image, Mr. Tharoor replied that there were some people fundamentally hostile to the United Nations and who would remain out of reach of its message. At the same time, he noted, there were also large sections of the population that had not made up their minds to be hostile to the United Nations, and it was to this audience that the Organization was directing its attention in conveying its central message.

Between sessions, Mr. Tharoor announced the annual list of Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About (see page 60), pointing out that there was no attempt on his part to deflect attention from the previous stories. These were part of the continuing efforts of DPI to draw attention to important international developments and issues that fall outside the media spotlight. The ten stories included: progress towards a fragile peace in Somalia; obstetric fistulas among women in the developing world; the humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda, particularly involving children; the disarmament of former combatants in Sierra Leone; the growth in the number of human rights institutions worldwide; information technology fetching better returns for farmers in Cameroon; Grenada's struggle to recover from Hurricane Ivan; violence against women; curbing illicit drugs through crop substitution; and the need for environmental preservation to safeguard potential cures for infectious diseases.