Tag Archives: refugees

MU Director Trains Palestinian Refugee Journalists

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Palestinian refugees across Lebanon are almost forgotten but journalists in their ranks are active and eagerly participated in a December 2022 workshop to sharpen their skills with Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil providing day-long training to empower them.

Magda Abu-Fadil provides pointers on mobile journalism

Fifteen trainees from various Palestinian refugee camps learned how to produce professional journalism as a means to better their lives by landing full-time or freelance jobs on one of three days organized by Women in News (WIN), an arm of the Paris-based World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).  

While the journalists are refugees, they are not necessarily well versed in covering their own story or that of displaced people and human trafficking that often involve desperate people in Lebanon (including Palestinians from the camps) riding death boats seeking asylum in Europe.

How do we frame the story?

Abu-Fadil stressed the importance of context, the proper use of numbers and statistics, how to capitalize on visuals, the verification of information, the use of accurate terminology, how to protect themselves physically, mentally and online, and, how to sharpen their critical thinking skills.

Abu-Fadil asks journalists to assess news content and production elements of migrant story video

She conducted four intensive interactive and practical sessions on coverage of these complex topics, including international resolutions and laws related to migration, refugees and human trafficking, and incorporating media ethics in all reports.

Abu-Fadil provided tips on the mobile journalism basics of shooting photos and videos, producing good sound pieces using phones, as well as optimum applications for various devices, equipment and accessories.

Palestinian refugee journalists and WIN Middle East/North Africa director Dalal Saoud (standing) watch report on media coverage of migrants and refugees

She also discussed mental and physical health challenges of coverage, safety aspects for journalists, particularly to women reporters facing threats and intimidation when conducting investigative reports on the topic, as well as the lingering perils of Covid-19 and its variants, a 2022 outbreak of cholera in Lebanon (the first since 1993), and climate change.

MU Director Leads Migration & Media Workshops in Tunis

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Media professionals from state-run Middle East/North Africa broadcast organizations were immersed into intensive workshops on migration, refugees and human trafficking in the Euro-Mediterranean region in a bid to enhance their coverage of these complex topics.

Magda Abu-Fadil on best practices of covering migrants, refugees and human trafficking victims

Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil led the training that incorporated key migration concepts, the accurate use of terminology, legal considerations, best practices in coverage of migration, media ethics, safety considerations, mobile journalism principles and practice, and the impact of Covid-19 on the migration media environment.

Abeer Saady raises safety issues during coverage in sensitive areas

Journalist/trainer Abeer Saady and journalist/multimedia expert David Hands were co-trainers who, with Abu-Fadil, used the EUROMED Migration V (EMM5: 2020-2023) curriculum “Migration and Media: A Journalist’s Handbook” she authored as a primary reference in designing the workshops in Tunis in December 2022.

Profound discussion on media ethics

EMM5, an EU-funded program implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), organized the two consecutive workshops of three days each in cooperation with the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU) and grouped participants from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine and Tunisia.

David Hands explains camera shots for use in mobile journalism

Abu-Fadil, Saady and Hands explained the language, terminology, organizations, international resolutions, and laws related to migration, refugees and human trafficking; the need for being ethical in covering the subject; the importance of safety, notably of women journalists, physical and mental health issues/trauma for media in coverage of migrants, refugees and human trafficking; and, learning mobile journalism skills for shooting and editing multimedia packages

The trainers provided participants with tips on interviewing techniques, notably when dealing with traumatized and displaced persons. The journalists interviewed members of Tunis-based NGOs that deal with migrants and refugees and one group interviewed a Syrian refugee who settled in Tunisia.

Trainees interview Syrian refugee living in Tunisia

Abu-Fadil, Saady and Hands used presentations and videos, showed documentary films, provided case studies, and conducted a series of exercises to test the participants’ grasp of the topic.

Abu-Fadil, Saady and Hands flanked by trainees

The participants produced pieces based on their interviews and at the end incorporated the interview with elements from the workshop’s presentations into a larger story.

UPDATE: Abu-Fadil Pens Study on How Media in Southern Med Covered Migration in 2019-20

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Reporting on migration and refugee crises in the Southern Mediterranean region slipped in 2019 and 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak as well as other pressing economic and political issues, according to a study conducted by Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil.

“How did media in the Southern Mediterranean countries cover migration in 2019-2020?” the European Union-funded survey implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development focused on the decline to develop a better understanding of traditional and other media’s constraints and how certain elements affected their capacity to tell the “migration story.”

These included the conflict in Syria, flare-ups in Israel/Palestine that spill over into neighboring Jordan, Lebanon’s financial meltdown, and, the strife in Libya and Algeria.

The pandemic added a layer of misery for media in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan already suffering from budget and personnel cutbacks, drops in circulation, vanishing advertising revenue, and competition from non-traditional platforms, with print outlets particularly hard hit and countless journalists having to work from home.

Abu-Fadil also drew on research from news articles and reports from various migration-related organizations.

The common thread among those countries was the relative hiatus in migration media coverage and the discovery that journalists were often ill-informed about the situation in their own back yards, much less in other countries.

The study can be downloaded in English here

In French here

In Arabic here.

 

Abu-Fadil Pens Study on How Media in Southern Med Covered Migration in 2019-20

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Reporting on migration and refugee crises in the Southern Mediterranean region slipped in 2019 and 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak as well as other pressing economic and political issues, according to a study conducted by Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil.

“How did media in the Southern Mediterranean countries cover migration in 2019-2020?” the European Union-funded survey implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development focused on the decline to develop a better understanding of traditional and other media’s constraints and how certain elements affected their capacity to tell the “migration story.”

These included the conflict in Syria, flare-ups in Israel/Palestine that spill over into neighboring Jordan, Lebanon’s financial meltdown, and, the strife in Libya and Algeria.

The pandemic added a layer of misery for media in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan already suffering from budget and personnel cutbacks, drops in circulation, vanishing advertising revenue, and competition from non-traditional platforms, with print outlets particularly hard hit and countless journalists having to work from home.

Abu-Fadil also drew on research from news articles and reports from various migration-related organizations.

The common thread among those countries was the relative hiatus in migration media coverage and the discovery that journalists were often ill-informed about the situation in their own back yards, much less in other countries.

The study can be downloaded here.

 

MU Director Pens Migration & Media Journalist’s Handbook

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Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil authored a manual for journalists in the EuroMediterranean region to help them better cover the topics of migration, refugees and human trafficking.

The handbook was published by the International Center for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in November 2021 and was funded by the European Union.

It’s available for download as a PDF in English, French and Arabic.

Monte Carlo Doualiya Interviews Abu-Fadil on Migration & Media Study

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Monte Carlo Doualiya (MCD) Radio’s Arabic service interviewed Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil on a study she conducted about coverage of migration in southern Mediterranean countries’ media that showed widened polarization between positive vs negative reporting.

Monte Carlo Doualiya logo

Abu-Fadil presented results of the study at the 4th EUROMED Migration Communicators Workshop panel in Paris in November 2021.

The event underlined the need for closer cooperation between journalists and migration-related entities to better convey the story of migrants, refugees and victims of human trafficking.

You can hear the audio clip on MCD’s “Digital Newscast” here or download it here [MCD].

Abu-Fadil to GEN Confab: Rethink Migration Coverage

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Migration, refugees and human trafficking won’t disappear as topics any time soon so media had better change their narrative and learn to cover them more professionally and less sensationally.

GEN Summit Athens

That was the thrust of a panel Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil moderated at the June 2019 Global Editors Network (GEN) summit in Athens during which she tackled the thorny issues of what people should be called when they move from one country to another for whatever reason, how the story should be framed, and what types of ethical guidelines to follow.

In an introductory presentation, she showed a brief video produced by the UNHCR about the number of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries since the conflict broke out in Syria to highlight facts and figures with which governments may disagree, and to underline how this problem can mislead and confuse journalists.

How can we change the narrative on migration media coverage?

Confusion also arises about the terminology used by various international and local organizations. Who’s a migrant? Who’s a refugee? Who’s a displaced person? Who’s an expat or economic migrant?

“It has become a hot topic in Europe and America where far-right politics is driving the conversation around migration and it’s also somehow forcing coverage to follow along those lines,” said Omoyele Sowore, founder and editor in chief of Sahara Reporters (SR), adding that some of those discussions are driven by racist sentiments.

Blanca Tapia and Omoyele Sowore

An SR team set up the innovative prototype “Africana” to help newsrooms approach the topic of migration in new and innovative ways and debunk misinformation on how it’s reported in Africa, and beyond.

For Blanca Tapia, the focus was migrants’ rights in European Union (EU) countries and how her niche organization provides media with the needed information to humanize the story and respect for those who’ve been displaced, had to leave their homelands, and seek asylum.

“People talk about economic migrant; I could be an economic migrant, I come from Spain, I took a job, I ended up in Vienna, but I belong to a fantastic category called expats,” she said about the classification and stereotyping of people.

Tapia, a former broadcast journalist, is the program manager at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), one of the EU’s decentralized agencies set up to provide expert advice to the EU’s institutions and member states on the people living therein.

Screen shot of e-Media Toolkit (courtesy fraEuropa)

She introduced FRA’s new e-learning platform produced by journalists for journalists to mark World Refugee Day on June 20.

An online e-Media Toolkit developed in cooperation with the European Broadcasting Union and the Ethical Journalism Network with the support of the European Federation of Journalists provides first-hand assistance to media professionals with learning resources, training courses, and opportunities to share and interact.

Abu-Fadil said she was commissioned to write a guide by the Thompson Foundation’s Open Media Hub (OMH) and the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in English that was translated to Arabic and French.

Then Open Media Hub asked her to turn it into workshops and she trained journalists in Tunis on how to cover the topic.

OMH and ICMPD, with European Union funding, also launched the Migration Media Award, of which she’s a jury member.

OMH also asked Abu-Fadil to create an online course based on the handbook. It’s self-paced, free, and available in four languages: English, Arabic, French, and Russian.

Online “Reporting on Migration” course

You can view the whole GEN discussion on YouTube.

Abu-Fadil Teaches OMH “Reporting on Migration” Course

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Journalists wishing to hone their skills on the issues of migration, refugees and human trafficking may take Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil’s online Open Media Hub course in English and Arabic.

Open Media Hub course sign-up page

The free, self-paced interactive “Reporting on Migration” course is divided into an introduction, three modules, and a wrap-up.

Module 1 focuses on migration terminology, key international organizations and NGOs involved in the issue. There’s a section on international and national legislation on migration. Participants are tested on what they’ve learned.

In module 2, participants learn the key steps to covering the migration story: research, data analysis, interviews, choosing visuals, the economics of migration, and, are shown case studies of good and bad reporting. They’re tested on what they’ve learned at the end of the module.

 

OMH “Reporting on Migration” course structure

Module 3 aims at ethics in reporting on migration with an emphasis on humanizing the story. Participants are taught the importance of verification and contextualization, the ethical use of photos and videos and their impact, obtaining consent before using people’s information and visuals, covering celebrities, and activism. Participants are tested on what they’ve learned at the end of the module.

The wrap-up consists of a final knowledge quiz, a summary and a list of further reading.

Open Media Hub falls under the Thomson Foundation umbrella and is funded by the European Union.

MU Director Trains Arab Media on Migration Coverage

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Don’t take migration issues lightly, do proper research, never assume, avoid hate speech, stick to the facts, use visuals ethically and tell a good story.

That’s some of the advice Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil gave journalists at a three-day workshop in Tunis in September 2018 organized by the Open Media Hub, a European Union-funded initiative administered by the Thomson Foundation.

 

Magda Abu-Fadil explains the ethics of shooting photos and videos of migrants and refugees

The production-led training grouped print, radio, TV, online and multimedia journalists from Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Syria and provided them with tools aimed at improving their reporting on migration.

Cameraman/editor David Hands, senior media training and exchange expert at the Media Hub Project Petko Georgiev and Abu-Fadil were the instructors.

Migration and media – a complex topic to cover

They aimed to reinforce the journalists’ knowledge and abilities to help them achieve balance in their stories and provide unbiased public perception of migration.

Participants were asked earlier to submit a pitch for the story they intended to finalize during the workshop sessions.

Petko Georgiev, senior media training and exchange expert at Media Hub Project and cameraman/editor David Hands

The stories will be broadcast/published in their respective news outlets and made available on the Open Media Hub’s platform and website, for exchange between participants locally and internationally.

The workshop was built on a text Abu-Fadil wrote, “Migration and Media: A Journalist’s Handbook” – a cooperative project of the Open Media Hub, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), and Euromed Migration with funding from the EU – that will be available online in English, Arabic and French.

Migration and Media: A Journalist’s Handbook

The handbook was also turned into an OMH online course in the three languages.

 

The importance of visuals in media coverage

The objective was to ensure journalists have a basic firm understanding of the complex issues of migration, refugees, and human trafficking and their impact on the politics, economics, demographics, environment, security, education and cultures of affected countries and beyond.

The trainers spent half the workshop mentoring their charges by helping them fine-tune proposals to produce viable reports and provided useful technical tips on video and audio production.

 

Mentoring journalists on how best to cover the topic

Another hitch is the lack of adequate resources and support from news organizations, so the Open Media Hub has stepped in to help defray the cost of travel and local coverage to journalists pitching credible stories that may then qualify for the EU-funded Migration Media Award (MMA). 

 

EU Ambassador to Tunisia Patrice Bergamini at the Migration Media Award

Several of the workshop participants were winners of the 2018 MMA in its second edition and hope to secure financial backing for follow-up stories.

As a member of the jury for Arabic-language media, Abu-Fadil presented the first prize in print to Egyptian journalist Ibrahim Mustafa whose story “Europe is Not Paradise” was published in the daily Al Akhbar.

 

Abu-Fadil handing Arabic Migration Media Award first prize in print

The MMA for print, radio, TV and multimedia stories in Arabic, English and French was launched in 2017 to recognize excellence, relevance and newsworthiness of journalistic pieces dealing with migration in all its aspects in the Euro-Mediterranean region.

 

End of a successful workshop

This year’s awards focused on diaspora, labor migration, vulnerable groups, and legal and irregular migration.

MU Director On Media Ethics Using Refugee, Migrant Photos

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Choosing and publishing images of refugees, migrants and people in distress is both painful and difficult, notably when they’re graphic and reach various audiences across multiple media platforms in record time.

The image as symbol (courtesy “A Sea of Images”)

Weighty decisions may lead to photos becoming icons and symbols representing all other victims as that of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler lying face down on a Turkish beach in 2015 that went viral in just three hours.

Media Unlimited director Magda Abu-Fadil discussed the ethical implications and how such pictures can also be (mis)used by politicians to score points and advance their own agendas.

Magda Abu-Fadil (left) discusses the ethics of using photos of migrants, refugees (courtesy Tom Law)

The topic made for an animated discussion during “Movie Night” hosted by the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN)  at the December 2017 Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism’s (ARIJ) annual conference in which she participated as a panelist.

The movie in question was “A Sea of Images,” a documentary on how media tackle migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa fleeing their troubled lands in a perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

The film, produced by Misja Pekel and Maud van de Reijt, is part of a series for Dutch public television that examined the connection between media and public opinion.

How do editors decide what photos to publish? (courtesy A Sea of Images)

 Refugee fatigue, she argued in the discussion following the film’s showing, can affect journalists’ and editors’ judgment in their choice and dissemination of images, with ethics falling by the wayside.

 

Audience debates ethics of photo publishing (courtesy Tom Law)

Aidan White, veteran journalist and director of the Ethical Journalism Network, said three of the Aylan Kurdi pictures were published around the world, but photos could be used in different ways to tell different narratives.

“What that reveals, is that although the pictures are dramatic and important, in the end it’s the context in which the pictures are used by journalists,” White explained.

Aidan White on the ethical use of images (courtesy “A Sea of Images”)

The ethical use of images depicting migrants, refugees and vulnerable people in the media, and what impact they have on public policy, will continue to trigger debate so long as conflicts, economic and natural disasters cause massive population displacement.