Home | Contact Us | |||||
| |||||
 Journalists Engaging for Democracy"Journalists Engaging for Democracy" was developed as part of IPCC's mission to nurture and strengthen the Palestinian civil society and its networks of professionals. This particular project reached out to the media stakeholders by gathering a group of 16 professional journalists and 16 students about to graduate in journalism in a series of conference and seminars throughout the year 2007. In a conflict-sensitive context where most Palestinians rely on informal ties to create networks, this IPCC endeavor, which is supported by the European Commission, aimed at rooting out three main difficulties that affect the Palestinian media nowadays: The lack of trained journalists limited in their provision of accurate information The lack of constructive debate on Palestinian democracy The lack of support networks for journalistsThrough debates and discussion between the of students and the professionals, the IPCC hopes to ensure the empowerment of Palestinian journalists and the enhancement of their capacity to foster constructive public discourse. This project will have a parallel aim to make journalists aware of their own impact in conflict-sensitive communities and shift the locus of journalism to one of peace-building and democratization. Since media represent a major communication platform in Palestine, the effects of this project should disseminate within various communities and contribute to an increased public participation on political levels. Ultimately, it is a vision for Palestine's future that the IPCC hopes to create. The project consists in conferences as well as seminars whose topics cover: Principles and practices of peace journalism Codes of conduct for journalists Democratization processes in various post conflict areas Role of media in democratization processesEach of these seminars and conferences will be followed by group discussions on specific themes and will be open to debate. In order to create greater insights and help Palestinian journalists and students gain more understanding of peace journalism as well as their role in communities, IPCC invited an array of international participants to compare the Palestinian situation to other conflict-related cities or states. As a result, the parallels made with the South African and the Bosnian cases allowed for debates about the relation between the Palestinian civil society and its government as well as about the concept of democracy that many Palestinians see suspiciously as a foreign import. The image of the "Other", namely Israel, was also deconstructed, quantified and qualified in order to nuance its perception from the Palestinian point of view. Results from the first three conferences have been encouraging and IPCC has been invited to consider an extension of the project to 2008. Already, an active network of professional journalists created due to this experience and students were happy to engage in serious discussion with those who already belong in the professional circles of journalism. At the very end of the project, a booklet will come about published and be widely distributed for public knowledge and will compile insights, codes of conduct lessons learnt during this project by the journalists. URL: http://journalists.ipcc-jerusalem.org |
|||||
| IPCC 2009 - All rights reserved | |||||
