CMFE Nyhetsbrev Februari 2015

Q & A on Media Diversity Inclusiveness

“The Mediane Box is a self-monitoring and action support tool to help you enhance your capacity to include diversity in your daily work. It is built to help you at three levels: to question, reflect and enrich your professional practice. It is made of three different questionnaires: one for journalists, one for media trainers and one for media management.”

This questionaire tool is available online in english and french. Each user receive a analysis of their individual answers and relates them to  a Reference Guide to Practices and Keywords to Diversity Practice. The Box was build 2013 and 2014 during MEDIANE – European Media in Europe for Diversity Inclusiveness, a CoE and EU media programme, with CMFE as one of the main partner.

You will find the Box here: http://www.mediane-box.eu

Please fill out the questionaire, that will last 15 to 20 minutes, send us your feedbackand share it within your community media! You comments and suggestions are very welcome!

FAQ

Why the Mediane Box?

As a mirror to the world there is still room for us all to do more to reflect the world we live in and the variety of voices who shape it. We hope the Mediane Box goes some way in addressing this imbalance through helping media professionals enhance diversity in all media content. More on http://www.coe.int/mediane

Who is it for?

The Mediane Box is a tool for everyone involved in media practice regardless of professional status: Journalists (freelance or permanent staffs), News Editors/Chief Editors, other editorial staffs, News Managers/Directors, HR Managers, Publishers, Lecturers/teachers/trainers, Students, Researchers, Members of Regulatory Bodies, Union Staffs and Members…

How can the Mediane Box help me in my work?

While it is easy to see when others do not get it quite right, it is not so easy to pin it down in ourselves… The Mediane Box invites us all to reflect on our professional practice in an interactive, sometimes challenging but hopefully, fun manner. It supports media and professionals to include diversity in their work. The Mediane box is no ‘magic bullet’ and it does not give ready-made solutions nor does it dictate those using it how to do their work; however it does provide guidance on enhancing diversity in practice. If answered honestly and accurately, this questionnaire will hopefully help you enhance diversity inclusiveness in your professional practice. To monitor your progress you can return to the Mediane Box as often you want, comparing your results each time.

> http://www.mediane-box.eu
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Je Suis Charlie

In light of the appalling attack on free speech and democracy at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, we encouraged our network and friends to display solidarity by sharing or publishing this picture. Our condolences to the friends and families of the victims. Please read our statement:

CMFE is fully support the focus on “I’m Charlie”, as freedom of expression, the right to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers, is essential for a democratic society. We denounce the terroristic attack on this basis democratic principle and wish the INGO / the Democracy, Social Cohesion and Global Challenges Committee is taking a strong stand in this matter.

We urge you not to neglect situations in where in member states journalists, artists and citizens face prosecution because they express their opinions, as strong and opposite to ‘regular’ opinions these may be. The molest of journalists, artist and/or citizens by actions as imprisonment, torture and/or economical sanctions (as e.g. imposing fines, closing down of or denying access to media) also encourages terrible acts as in Paris or everywhere in the world.

Community media around Europe will continue to play a positive role for social cohesion and intercultural dialogue, so contributing to raising intercultural understanding and fighting mutual prejudic.

CMFE | Januar 2015
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Presentation / Debate: Religious stations as community broadcasters

CMFE board member Gabriella Velics (University of West-Hungary) and Urszula Doliwa (University of Warmia and Mazury) made a presentation about religious stations as community broadcasters on 8th November 2014 in Potsdam/Germany .

Church  radios easily get community broadcaster  licences in some countries of the EU. After a short presentation about  the situation of Poland and Hungary, they raised the question: Wether is church radio a  risk factor in community radio movement, and should we consider them as  community broadcasters or something different?

In the Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on the role of community media in promoting social cohesion and intercultural dialogue passed on 11 February 2009 by the Council of Europe, stations run by religious institutions were explicitly excluded from the community media definition, as being too dependent on the Church. The features of community media are characterized in this document as follows:

“…independence from government, commercial and religious institutions and political parties; a not-for-profit nature; voluntary participation of members of civil society in the devising and management of programmes; activities aiming at social gain and community benefit; ownership by and accountability to the communities of place and/or of interest which they serve; commitment to inclusive and intercultural practices.”   (Council of Europe 2009)

But the reality seems to be far from this recommendation. In practice, in many countries the religious radio stations officially belong to this sector. This is the case for example in the UK, South Africa  or Australia. In some countries this kind of broadcasting seems to dominate other forms of community broadcasting.

This is becoming true in Hungary. A new period began for community broadcasting in Hungary as the new media law came into force on 1 January 2011. The definition, the criteria and the basic principles of community media were formulated inappropriately in the regulations, and also permits access for church. “Linear community media services are intended to serve or satisfy the special needs for information of and to provide access to cultural programmes for certain social, national, or ethnic minority, cultural or religious communities or groups.etc.” While most of the former community media broadcasters couldn’t find resources for opreating, the community media landscape was dramatically overwhelmed by religious broadcasters both on regional and local levels. Mária Rádió, the Catholic Church and the Reformed Church established community radios all over the country with their specific feature: with one radio licence using several frequencies on different areas.

The legally-recognised third tier of broadcasting in Poland called ‘social broadcasting’ is actively and exclusively used by religious radio.  In 2001 a category of broadcast media – ‘social broadcaster’ was created. In practice, only religious broadcasters benefited from this legal framework. The exclusion of ‘social broadcasters’ from the advertising market combined with no other governmental support for such entities resulted in a lack of interest in applying for such a status among, for example, NGOs. There are only eight radio ‘social broadcasters’. All of them are connected to church – seven broadcast locally and one is a powerful nationwide radio station called Radio Maryja.

During the conference in Potsdam several questions were raised: Should we consider religious radios as community broadcasters or something different? What are the arguments for and against including church radio to community sector?  What kind of licences do religious radio have country by country. In Potsdam there was a round table of experts and practitioners of community media gathered from several counties (Austria, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK). The answers for these questions may occur interesting for countries which would like to introduce or reorganise regulations regarding community broadcasting.
The presentation and the discussion was led by Gabriella Velics (University of West-Hungary) and Urszula Doliwa (University of Warmia and Mazury, Poland) who would like to prepare a more detailed study about this issue in the nearest future.

Presentation (Poland): Potsdam_Urszula_Doliwa
Presentation (Hungary): Potsdam_Gabriella_Velics
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*Our Voice Our Power: Booklet out*

Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) represents
the community electronic media *[Community Radio | Community TV |
Community Film]* sector to Government, Industry, Regulatory Bodies,
Media, Academia and Development Partners from 2000. BNNRC is in Special
Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United
Nations since 2010 & accredited with UN World Summit on the Information
Society.

We are pleased to present you our booklet titled *Our Voice Our Power: Empowering Women through Community Media in Bangladesh* (pdf) a publication that presents highlights in the professional and personal achievements of 12 young women that recently completed a community media fellowship at community radio stations. The program was designed and implemented by BNNRC in cooperation with 11 community radio stations and supported by Free Press Unlimited.

Now 14 Community Radio Stations are on-air in the country, aiming to
ensure empowerment and right to information for the rural community. They
are broadcasting altogether 120 hours program per day on information,
education, local entertainment and development motivation activities.
Around 1000 Youth Women & Youth are now working with those Stations
throughout the country as rural broadcasters within 4.6 million rural
people in 67 upazillas under 13 districts.

BNNRC has initiated a process to explore the future of development
cooperation and the role of electronic community media over the next 15
years, and we already have a new challenge! We have already started
Community Media News Agency (CMNA), Community Media Academy (CMA) &
Community Media Newsletter for building capacity of electronic community
media sector.

We invite you to join in our STRUGGLE! We hope you are – or will become
one of our future supporters for promoting electronic community media in
rural Bangladesh.
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Frieda Werden: Speech at The Beijing Platform for Action and Community Radio

Frieda Werden, co-founder of WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service and radio producer since 40 years, held a talk on “The Beijing Platform for Action and Community Radio” at the ECE Beijing + 20 Forum in Geneva, Nov. 4, 2014.

Frieda says: “I’ve been working with community and public media since 1973, and syndicating a half-hour weekly radio program by and about the global women’s movement for 28 years. It’s my experience that community radio is where the
openness to women’s issues and voices tends to be greatest, and I would be extremely happy to see many more women move in on that openness. We find in this world that it can be a quick business to destroy livelihoods and cultures, creating traumas that ring down through generations. The much harder job is to heal, and that requires building relations in community.”
Read the full speech

Read more: http://www.wings.org

 
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Citizen Media Awards in Münster/Germany

„Work-Life-Balance“ and „Citizen Media for democracy and tolerance“ – these topics were treated by this year’s winners of the German Citizen Media Awards:

• Audio: Franziska Klemm and her project group (Eisenach)
• Video: Christian Schega and Kristiana Förtsch (Ludwigsburg)
• International Video: Carina Lassek (Münster)
• International Audio: Heiko Alfers (Wilhelmshaven)

Find more info (in german) here: http://www.bvbam.de/?p=1161
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Download research article about Cypriot community station MYCYradio

Member of CMFE expert group, Nico Carpentier, recently published an article entitled “The cypriot web radio MYCYradio as a participatory mélange. Overcoming dichotomies in the era of web 2.0″

“This article is aimed to study the meeting point of online and audiovisual media by analysing a Cypriot community radio station that exclusively uses web streaming, but that still is embedded in the architecture and materiality of the more “traditional” audiovisual media.”, the abstract says.

Find the pdf here:2014_CypriotWebRadioMycyradioParticipatoryMelange_Carpentier
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ECREA Radio Section, Lisbon 2014

First things first: The Radio Section at the ECREA conference in Lisbon opened on Friday, 14th of November, with a panel on community radio – presenters were Peter Lewis (London), Eleanor Shember-Critchley (Manchester), Judith Purkarthofer (Vienna), Rosemary Day (Limerick), Salvo Scifo (Istanbul) and Tiziana Cavallo (Verona). The session was chaired by Stanislaw Jedrejewski (Warsaw).
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Final MEDIANE European Encounter in Brussels

The final MEDIANE European Encounter in Brussels last from 12 to 14 November 2014. CMFE was one of the main partner organisations of this unique joint Council of Europe and EU media programme in the last two years. Please read our Storify collection of tweets and pictures below about this conference, that was held at the public broadcaster RTBF building in Brussels.

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Successful GA: New board, new plans

Thanks to support from BFR and thanks to the attendance and proxies from you, we were able to hold a successful GA on the 7th of November in Potsdam (documentation will follow here: http://www.community-media.net). The focus this year, next to the approval of reports, budgets and plans, was on the changed constitution of the CMFE board.

Three members were standing for a second term after three years and four new people volunteered to be elected into the board – all seven reached the necessary number of votes and we can gladly announce the new board for 2015. As was voted on by mail, four board members are exceptionally staying for another year to guarantee a smooth hand-over of responsibilities. We would like to thank again our former board members – Francesco Diasio, Henry Loeser, Friederike Maier and Rui Monteiro – for their work and we are happy that they will be part of the expert group now!

Our new board: Ciaran Murray (president), Pieter de Wit (treasurer), Nadia Bellardi (vice-president), Larry Fergeson (vice-president), Gabriella Velics (vice-president/membership), Judith Purkarthofer (vice-president/communication), Urszula Doliwa (secretary), Jaqui Devereux (who will shadow Pieter de Wit to be ready to take over the treasure’s position next year), Christer Hederström, Gergely Gosztonyi, Marko-Ala-Fossi, Patrice Berger, Lyacout Haïcheur and Birgitte Jallov.

One of our concerns for the next year is of course the necessity to look for funding to facilitate CMFE activities in lobbying and structure, both project-based and structural funds. Among our main objectives for the next year are lobbying efforts with the Council of Europe, EPRA, ECSPM and European work on Regional and Local Authorities. Also the Digital Agenda, the newly composed European Commission and work on diversity (like we were able to do with MEDIANE, which has its final meeting on the 14th of November in Brussels link) continue to be important. Furthermore, we would like to extend toolkits and resources on our website, to be of service to members and collect successful works and publications from community media.

We are (as always) very thankful if you can provide us with ideas and input to better be able to lobby for our common cause!

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