Women media workers are being attacked heinously around the world, online and offline, in attempts to silence their reporting and suppress their visibility in public discourses. While brave women journalists continue to hold the line, it is especially important for media organizations, journalism schools and other institutions to adopt gender-responsive components in their overall safety strategies.
On International Women’s Day, 8 March 2022, UNESCO with the Knight Center for Journalism and the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), offers a free, online, multilingual webinar providing participants with concrete recommendations and resources to promote the safety of women journalists.
Headlined How to Report Safely - Resources for Women Journalists, Newsrooms and Allies, the webinar brings together journalists, safety trainers, and newsroom representatives to raise awareness for the continued threats to the safety of women journalists, highlight the urgency to tackle these issues, as well as provide specific instruments to promote a safer work environment for women journalists and media workers. During the webinar UNESCO, IWMF and the Knight Center will launch the French and Spanish self-directed course, providing women media workers and their allies with tools to mitigate and manage risk. This builds on the impact of an English-language MOOC published in 2021 (still available in a self-directed version).
This webinar is especially targeted at media organizations, journalism schools, newsroom managers, journalists and other interested public and will address the increased risk facing women journalists all around the world, offline and online – these attacks can range from violence, stigmatization, sexist hate speech, trolling, physical assault, rape to even murder. As UNESCO-commissioned research has shown, online violence often translates into offline harassment, with, one-fifth (20%) of survey respondents identifying as women saying they had been attacked or abused offline in connection with online violence they had experienced. In addition to being targeted on the basis of their work as journalists, they are also the targets of gender-based violence.
The discussion will be simultaneously translated into English, Spanish and French.
Speakers include:
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Nadine Hoffman, Deputy-Director, International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF)
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Guilherme Canela, Chief of Section for Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists, UNESCO
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Prof. Rosental Alves, UNESCO Chair in Communication and the Knight Chair in Journalism at the Moody College of Communication’s School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Alison Baskerville, Photographer and journalism safety trainer, course instructor
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Sandra Chaher, Director, Comunicación para la Igualdad , course instructor
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Elodie Vialle, journalism safety consultant, course instructor
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Tatiana Mossot, journalist, founder of the MaMa Project
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Patricia Mayorga Ordoñez, investigative journalist
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Yemile Bucay, Risk and Security Manager, Buzzfeed