Crisis of quality journalism and the need to address the needs of readers was discussed during the "Between propaganda and counter-propaganda: defending the quality journalism" round table and panel discussion held in Berlin on December 17, 2014.
Crisis of quality journalism and the need to address the needs of readers was discussedduring the “Between propaganda and counter-propaganda: defending the quality journalism” round table and panel discussion held in Berlin on December 17, 2014. Both events were organized by the European Exchange and EU-Russian Civil Society Forum. Ukraine Crisis Media Center advised on inviting Ukrainian experts. Participation of Volodymyr Yermolenko (Internews) and Anna Honcharyk (UCMC) was made possible through the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.
63% of German population do not trust the coverage of the events in Ukraine by the German media, according to the recent survey. This appalling figure was revealed by Stefanie Schiffer, Executive Director, European Exchange (Berlin). This figure comes as an inevitable result of the media coverage affected by Russian state propaganda.
The continued Russian invasion in the Eastern Ukraine has opened a real information war front. Highly effective Russian state propaganda is reaching out not only to its own citizens, but is making attempts to promote its own vision of political development abroad through channels like Russia Today that has recently open its office in Germany.
Under such circumstances quality journalism remains high priority for the Western media. This means being highly selective and honest with the readers. “What we did wrong was that we did not always admitted that we had no idea about what was going on”, said Anna-Dorit Boy of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, commenting on the necessity of journalists to be frank with the readers.
Participants of the round table discussed the ways to preserve quality and impartiality of journalism in the time of crisis and the importance of encouraging critical thinking among the audience.
Widespread use of “fakes” as a distinguishing feature of the new information warfare was pointed out by the representatives of the StopFake movement Tetyana Matychak and Yevhen Fedchenko, who in their presentation demonstrated number of recent fakes produced by Russian propaganda.
