Batir Wardam Blog: Intercultural Dialogue: From Rhetoric to Actions

While participating in the Euro-Med workshop on "Media and intercultural dialogue" in Berlin last week, I felt as if I am in the midst of a social gathering that happens on annual basis. Most of the participants already know each other and they will talk for hours about their previous meetings in Geneva, Malta, Dead Sea, Morocco, Vienna and so on. This is an indication that such meetings usually bring together a small group of people who have good networking skills and participate in most conferences.

The German organization was fantastic as ever, and all the logistics were ready for supporting the workshop but the quality of creative and doable ideas were limited. This workshop was maybe the 6th or 7th in a series that started in 2005 at the Dead Sea, and yet there are no results on the ground through implemented initiatives that brings the rhetoric into actions.

Most of the participants do believe in intercultural dialogue, and that is evident by how they embrace the "cultural aspects" of German life, but the real challenge is to bring this belief in intercultural dialogue to the audience of the various media outlets in which the participating journalists work.

In the conference I had an intervention that included 5 practical suggestions for turning the rhetoric into actions, and I am not sure whether they will be taken seriusly in the final recommendations but here they are:

1- Developing a "code of conduct" for media context and coverage of intercultural issues. This code of conduct may be developed by a group of professional journalists and adopted by the Euro-Med. It will then be open for voluntary adoption by various media outlets where there will be incentives for media outlets really committed to the value of the code of conduct and an annual report of assessing committment and violations will be published.

2- Developing a system for "training of trainers" for media professionals from each country on the values of intercultural dialogue and how they can be reported in media. Then the trained journalists wil train the local colleagues with an annual competition for reporting that adheres to the values of intercultural dialogue and respect.

3- Developing an active network of key journalists to be mobilized into action in cases of emergency. Just like what happened in the Pope speech or Cartoons fiasco this group of influential reporters and journalists will work together in their countries to diffuse the tension and act as mediators of intercultural respect and trying to stop the polarization of ideas.

4- Highlighting good examples (rather than bad ones) of intercultural respect between Europe and the Arab World in various programmes and media outlets to give shining examples of good intentions trying to replace the dominance of hatred statements.

5- Support of emerging new media tools (blogs, community radios) as an alternative media mainly managed by youth and civil societies to increase the impact of the values of intercultural dialogue on the contents of emerging media.

Looking forward for more practical outputs in the next meeting before the funding runs dry.