Tag Archive for: osfa

In the newsroom of NEWS24 TV Channel: Ethics on revealing a child’s identity

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  AMC paid a visit today to the Channel News24’s newsroom, one of the oldest information television stations in the country, as part of a toru through Albanian media newsrooms. This visit was the first in a television newsroom, and moreover, a newsroom that “feeds” with news many portals and newspapers.The conversation included recent events related to ethics in the country, the situation of journalists, the responsibility for unethical journalism of the media owners.The conversation tackled the ethical question of whether the child’s identity should be protected in the news if his/her life depended on this news. In the News 24 newsroom there were cases where the child’s parents sought the public’s help to crowdfund the medication of sick children, but in order to build credibility on these cases and to encite the empathy and citizen engagement, newsroom journalists were forced to reveal the image of the child. Mark Mark, an ethics expert, argued that the child’s life is the most important, and ethical violations (such as not revealing the child’s identity) can be circumvented in order to protect life. Journalist Klodiana Lala noted the declining quality of newsrooms, which employ unprepared and unread journalists. In relation to the “ready-made tapes” produced by the City Hall, the Government and political parties, and broadcasted by television without being verified as news, the journalists stated that this is a problem caused by the owners and that the journalists are threatened with “job lose” . Regardless, the AMC said that the professional conduct asks of a journalist to resist if owners and editors try to distort reporting, force them to produce unethical reporting, or pressure them to take away their independence.NEWS 24 journalists were very interested in joining the fight against media law, a law aimed at controlling the media from the Government through the AMA, using fines and sanctions on ethical issues.Visits to newsrooms, supported by OSFA’s media project, will continue in the coming weeks in other Albanian media outlets.

Visiting the newsroom of Dosja.al: preparing for the moment when serious media will prevail

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Prof. Mark Marku, during the visit in the newsroom of Dosja.al

The Albanian Media Council resumed visits to the newsrooms of the Albanian media, visiting today the newsroom of DOSJA.AL where for 90 minutes there was a wide conversation on the ethics and everyday problems of the new media. Dosja.al is one of the few portals that puts the names of reporters on the homepage, an action that demonstrates a commitment to ethics and responsibility for published articles.

Journalist Sokol Shameti, during the visit in the newsroom of Dosja.al

The lack of media ethics in the recent earthquake panic,was also dscussed in the meeting. The panic was created above all by the need to shock instead of reporting the news.
One of the most pressing problems of online journalism was also discussed, the need for “clicks” abusing “ethics”.
“Writing about a banal status form a singer  takes thousands of clicks more than writing about water scarcity in the city,” one reporter noted. According to ethics’ expert, pedagogue Mark Marku, this is a temporary situation, similar to the “frenzy” in the post-90s media, but later, the development of the society only selected serious newspapers, instead of the unethical ones. The chaotic situation with the new media and the severe lack of ethics in some of them will in a few years lead to a selection of serious non-abusive media.
According to journalist and ethics’ expert Sokol Shameti, “switching from getting the news from newspaper news to getting them from a portal is similiar to the switch from craft to industrial production, and we need to find the means for “industrial production” of news to maintain the same standards and quality that had the “craft production” of news.
The CJM left the meeting with the feeling that another media outlet is committed to ethics and that an alliance of ethical media outlets in Albania is possible.

* This project is kindly supported by Open Society Foundation Albania (OSFA).