Consultation on terrorism and hate speech coverage in South Asia

South Asian media professionals joined the PMA in Chennai, where we discussed how media outlets can better cover terrorism, violence and hate speech.

On Sunday 21 October, we held a one day consultation meeting in Chennai, India, to discuss and strengthen the capacity of South Asian news media to report on terrorism, violence and hate speech.

As social media gains ground when it comes to covering terrorist attacks, emergencies and other crucial events, questions arise as to what journalists and media outlets can do to be held more accountable and to ensure the information they provide is timely and accurate.

This issue affects countries all over the world but it is particularly pertinent across South East Asia, where India and Pakistan were rated among countries with the highest occurrence of terrorism events in the 2016 Global Terrorism Index (GTI).

After holding a successful social media guidelines workshop in the Caribbean, we held this meeting with the support of UNESCO to develop a collaborative set of guidelines for and with media professionals to cover all aspects of terrorism reporting, including language, balance, perspective and accuracy in South Asian media.

Participants from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka , India and the UK – from print, TV and radio  – supported the discussion, providing invaluable insights.

The guidelines will be implemented by the Public Media Alliance and UNESCO IPDC, supported by the News Broadcast Association of India and the ONO.

Read more about the background of and objectives of the workshop.

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