By Anna Valmero
There is no better way to move forward than building on identity and diversity to foster understanding in today’s society. The media, like any part of a functioning democracy, has a big responsibility to facilitate a healthy dialogue—one that recognizes a spectrum of perspectives is necessary to develop critical thinking and that everyone’s right to freedom of expression comes with a huge responsibility not to resort to disrespecting the rights of another.
The wave of attacks to identity, race and faith through propagandist rhetoric has been fuelling distrust, fear and hate thus, creating a culture of dispute that often leads to conflict and worse, even the building of walls that cause divisions, physical and otherwise.
Some believe the global political shifts such as in the recent US elections show how the media failed to do its part in terms of shying away from the usual identity-driven coverage, instead of dedicating more time and space for stories that focus on the impact and consequences of electing a candidate. A more optimistic outlook on the situation is that it is only a signal that people are hungry for change—and this is where the media can step up and double down its efforts to learn from it and adapt to become better.
One way to do so is to capitalize on creating more engagement with citizens and maintaining the link with civil society, especially the connected youth. Forming social media teams to engage audiences and recognizing user-generated content when a big event happens on-ground, visiting schools for media literacy projects, and always re-examining methods to do things better using new tools and new ideas are some ways forward.
Differences in perspective should not cause divisions but rather add another lens of context to understanding issues. It is only in respecting and nurturing diversity that we can truly define our identity.
This year’s edition of the Global Media Forum is a collaborative work of young media makers who are relentless in their pursuit to learn from both veterans in the field as well as their peers. Read on Read on and we hope these pages capture the inspiration from anecdotes and stories shared by our seasoned veteran journalists and young reporters ones to keep growing, and to keep on keeping on.
