How to cover migration topics in media: ethical and professional issues

How to cover migration topics in media: ethical and professional issues

From 3rd to 4th of June Media Initiatives Center hosted a meeting-discussion on the subject “How to highlight migration: ethical and professional issues, frequent journalistic mistakes”. Journalists involved in covering migration issues as well as relevant organizations’ representatives were invited to the debates.

The two-days meeting began with the introduction of the Media Initiatives Center journalist and expert Gegham Vardanyan.
In his opening speech Mr. Vardanyan emphasized that today the word migration often is used as a stereotype term, which basically means “to go for a work to Russia” so-called “khopan”, but in fact migration has a broader meaning with its related issues which needs to be widely presented. For example, in Armenian media there’s almost no highlights about migration’s positive sides.
Talking about migration, G.Vardanyan also mentioned risks of trafficking during migration processes. He presented series of 4 documentary films. Each film of series was a story about migration and migrations risks. The forth film was about trafficking.
According to G.Vardanyan during coverage of migration stories questions of journalistic ethic arises not as strictly in comparison to the trafficking stories. There are less restrictions in journalistic ethics while highlighting migration stories and it depends more on journalist’s source and his understanding of “do not harm” principle.
Journalists presented at the meeting acknowledged that often they have not to publish some certain details concerning to a migration story, because they’re directly related to the causes of law violation. So if this stories are covered with all details, it could lead to propaganda and open dissemination of illegal migration ways. All participants unanimously agreed on this issue: there’s no need to write about this kind of details, it’s wrong.
Cristina Galstyan – Head of Planning and Implementation department of International Organization for Migration had her speech during the second part of the meeting. C.Galstyan presented the current situation of Armenian migration flows and introduced a number of professional books on this subject including her book “Migration management and human rights”, second edition of “Migration glossary”, “Human trafficking and exploitation” instructional manual for lecturers and students.
The last one will probably be interesting for the professionals and for the journalists who write about trafficking:
http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/University_Manual_HumanTrafficking_ARM.pdf

On the second day of the meeting participants had a trip to one of the villages of Armenia to locate migrants – trying to find heroes of new articles and to talk to them.