International Journalism Week 2018
In 2018, CFOM and the Department of Journalism Studies hosted International Journalism Week from 5-9 November. CFOM hosted an expert panel titled: Assault on press freedom – it’s getting worse. Why attacks on journalists spell danger for the rule of law and democracy. The panel featured experts including Albana Shala, chair of the IPDC Council of UNESCO (which has spearheaded the agency’s agenda of work to protect journalists’ safety), Paul Caruana Galizia, youngest of assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s three sons, advocate and campaigner, and William Horsley (moderator), co-founder and international director of CFOM and former BBC foreign correspondent
IJW also saw Professor Jackie Harrison’s Inaugural lecture on ‘Diminishment and Resistance: The Civil Power of Journalism’ mark the start of her term as UNESCO Chair on Media Freedom, Journalism Safety & the Issue of Impunity.
The inaugural addressed the fact that journalism and the civil values it represents are under threat and examined the diminishment of the civil and truth-telling standing of news journalism through the use of oppression, violence and intimidation and more generally through the creation of an antagonistic environment where the news media are weaponised for political and commercial ends. It is the nature of the clash between these anti-civil forces and the forms of civil resistance the news media take which ultimately determines the kind of news we receive, participate in and act upon Professor Harrison argued in her talk.
More can be found about the UNESCO Chair here.