Press Code

Since we all know that as journalists we are steadily confronted with certain dangers, we feel that it is time to bring more security into the journalists´ lives.

That´s why we drafted a press code that gives the journalists the security that they need. On the other hand, of course, the press code demands the acception of certain rules of behaviour. Here is the press code that the newspapers hopefully will accept. We do not want to put any pressure on the newspapers in Eutropia. This Press Code should be seen as a guideline.

We are waiting now for the responses of The Brynn and The Eutropian Independent.

Preamble
The freedom of the Press includes many different facets. We consider the independence and freedom of information and the right of expression and criticism as some of the most important facets. Publishers, editors and journalists should always be aware of their responsibility towards the public and their duty to uphold the reliability of the Press. They should always try to work to the best of one´s knowledge. They should always try to not get influences by personal interests or motives.

From the start of research until publishing a story, the Press must respect people’s privacy and right to self-determination on information about them.

We see this preamble as a part of the ethical standards, every human beeing should try to rely on.

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Section 1 - Truthfulness and Human Rights
Respect for the truth and the preservation of human rights should be at the top of the Press´principles. Violating the dignitiy of a person is not concordant with the ethical standards.
Following this guideline, every person active in the Press preserves credibility of the media.

Section 2 – Care regarding research and publishing
Research is an indispensable instrument of journalism. The publication of specific information in word, picture and graphics must be very carefully checked in respect of accuracy. Its sense should not be falsified under any cicumstances. Unconfirmed reports, rumours or assumptions must be quoted as such.

Symbolic photos must be clearly marked as such.

Section 3 - Corrections
Published news which turn out to be incorrect must be rectified in an appropriate manner.

Section 4 - Limits of Research
Dishonest methods should not be used to acquire personal news, information or photographs.

Section 5 – Professional Secrecy
The Press shall respect professional secrecy and not reveal informants’ identities without their explicit permission.Confidentiality is a very important issue.

Section 6 – Separation of Contents
The responsibility of the Press towards the general public requires that publications are not influenced by the private or business interests of third parties or the personal economic interests of the journalists. Journalists must reject any try of this nature. If a publication concerns the publisher’s own interests, this must be clearly identifiable.

Section 7 – The Rights of the Individual
The Press should respect the private life and intimate sphere of persons. If the private behaviour of a person touches the public interests, then it may be reported on in some individual cases. Uninvolved persons rights should not be violated. The Press shall guarantee editorial data protection.

Section 8 – Religion, Philosophy and Custom
The Press should not vituperate against religious, philosophical or moral convictions.

Section 9 – Sensational Reporting, the Protection of Young People
The Press should desist from inappropriately sensational portrayal of violence, brutality and suffering. The Press shall respect the protection of babies, kids and young people.

Section 10 – Discrimination
There must be no discrimination against a person because of his/her sex, a disability or his membership of an ethnic, social, religious or national group.

Section 11 – Preferential Treatment
The acceptance of privileges of any kind that could possibly influence the freedom of decision of a journalist are irreconcilable with the independence and responsibilities of the Press. Anyone accepting bribes for the dissemination of news acts in a dishonourably and unprofessional manner.

Section 12 – Publication of Reprimands
It is considered fair reporting when a public reprimand issued by the Media Watchdogs or any member of the Eutropian Federation is published, especially by the newspapers or magazines concerned.

Interviewing "The Brynn"

Since the tabloid magazine „The Brynn“ is celebrating its 10^th anniversary this year, we interviewed Kathy Prize, one of their reporters, since the beginning of the magazine, about the history of “The Brynn”, their team and about the current situation of the press.

The history takes us 10 years back, in a small town in Brynnland. Amanda Perez, todays chief editor of the magazine, was one of the founders of “The Brynn”. “The original idea was to establish a good relationship with the government and work side by side as a team. In the last couple of years that changed, due to alerting changes in the work of the government”, says Kathy Prize. In these days “The Brynn” sees its duty in checking the government and their work, what they say, what they do. One of the magazine´s main concerns is, that politicians in charge should not see immigrants as a danger and they should think more about the economic situation of the country.

In the past 10 years the magazine extended itself quite a lot. 6 departments are working day by day to inform and entertain people. Prize says, that ““The Brynn” is the perfect magazine for people with just a little bit of time, since our format, an online blog, is available 24/7.”

Concerning the situation of the press in Brynnland, their rights and their freedom, basically everything is alright. “The only problem the magazine has to deal with sometimes is that politicians from different countries try to influence us indirectly via the message center, for example”, says Prize. Regarding the norms and duties of the press, “The Brynn” feels that people expect them to write about everything. “But since we don´t want to be hated by the people, we don´t write about topics our readers would not appreciate. But we are not afraid! Our main goal is to inform the people.”.

To read the online blog of "The Brynn" click here

Brynn Brother is watching you?

The Financial minister of Brynnland, Hugo Bolivar, gave us an exclusive interview about the current co-operation between the sector of media and the government of Brynnland.

Is the freedom of the press in Brynnland in danger? Some recent events suggested this idea: When The Brynn took a photo of Brynnland´s working members of parliament, one Brynnland member protested saying that no photos were allowed. Another example is when, after The Brynn article, we heard one Brynnland official say that from now on they were not going to co-operate with The Brynn and say anything to them in future. The Brynn even published the provocative statement “Brynn Brother is watching you!”.
Therefore we, the Media Watchdogs, felt that it was time to demand an official statement from Brynnland´s government.

During our interview the Financial minister of Brynnland, Hugo Bolivar, only praised the work of the press and spoke of a very good relationship between the government and the press in general: “we are happy to have such excellent newspapers in Eutropia.”
However, he as well acknowledged that there have ocurred some “misunderstandings”, as he called it: “Sometimes we are unhappy about some misrepresentations”. Bolivar stated that in some cases deeper investigations would be more helpful.
According to the Financial minister of Brynnland, the government at least is not planning to place more restrictions on the press: “the freedom of the press is an important good in our country and absolutely necessary for our democratic country”.

Nevertheless, we want to emphasize that a free press has the right to report on the government as it sees fit. We will not tolerate any government that tries to publicly intimidate and muzzle the press.

We feel by taking the advice of intensifying the co-operation, both, the press and the governments, will achieve their aims easier. Therefore, we hope that Brynnland´s government will put into practice what Bolivar anncounced offcially:
“We always will be willing to cooperate with the press as long as it keep its integrity.”

The first week of the Eutropian Conference

Soap operas, technical problems, irony and rivalry between newspapers.

Concerning the first week of the Eutropian Conference on Immigration, we have to say that there occured no serious problems.

The first two tele-conferences itself were so harmonic that The Brynn spoke of “the next best soap opera”. The Eutropian Independent on the other hand praised the delegates´ “hope for a productive and cooperative summit”.

However, both newspapers of Eutropia criticized the slow progress to discussions on important issues. The Brynn even declares that the citizens money has been wasted.

Whereas, The Eutropian Independent focused on reporting about “minor technical difficulties” with the software Moodle, The Brynn this week wrote about the irony that was not tolerated by some delegates.

The only more serious problem can be seen in the upcoming rivalry between the two newspapers of Eutropia: The Eutropian Independent published a provocative news bulletin critizing that the first edition of the Brynn was not released as planned. The Brynn felt offended by The Eutropian Independent writing that “this fact does not support the idea of a well ongoing newspaper”. As a consequence, The Brynn fought back: “if those [the journalists of The Eutropian Independent] are unable to find a newspaper online, are they competent enough to report reliable news to their readers?”

As media watchdogs, we want to make clear that we consider rivalry between newspapers as a natural and essential part of business. Now we all know about the political situation in Brynnland and thus why The Brynn was not able to publish their first edition earlier. There is no need to dramatize the problems anymore. However, we can not support any inadequate, offensive provocations which offend the human rights. In order to prevent those kind of unnecessary problems we will in future take further measures.

Official Announcement

False statementes exposed in "The Brynn´s" article "Brynnland MP vanished"

Both members of the watchdog organization used to be members of the Brynnland government and it was our own decision to take up the occupation as press watchdogs. We have been working on a concept for several years.

“Maybe the current press situation was maybe one reason why our ministers felt the duty to found an organization that watches the media. We didn´t lose them. It is part of our politician´s rights to decide which position they want to hold” stated the Financial minister of Brynnland, Hugo Bolivar.
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Concerning the recent government crisis in Brynnland, we have to express our firm opinion that is would have been a restriction of freedom to restrain the size of representatives who are sent to the upcoming Eutropean Conferences. We are happy that Brynnland has overcome the crisis and reached an agreement with the Eutropian Commissioner. The watchdog´s primary goals are to prevent any restrictions on the freedom of the press and to prevent them from writing untrue statemtents reported without reliable sources.

Unfortunately, this announcement could not be published earlier in order to prevent these rumours.

After the marriage the couple DeGeneres is leaving to the party

Concerncing the statement in the Brynn article from the 18th of November 2008, we want to make clear that Ellen April de Generess (former Chavez) just got married in Valencia in the state of Carabobo/Venezuela last weekend. Therefore there is no reason to talk about “private tete-a-tetes” or “wild romantic develops” between the two Eutropian watchdogs, Ellen de Generess and James Fox.

Policy Document

As the media watches the world we watch the media.

Profile:

• Independent non-profit media watchdog organization that is not controlled by the government.


• International organization whose headquarter is located in Brynnland, but several other branch offices are spread around Eutropia


• Heads of the organization: Ellen DeGeneres and James Fox


• Apart from the three branches legislative, executive and judiciary, a fourth branch seems to exist, which marks more and more the public discourse about politics, economy and society: the media. We as fifth branch supervise and criticize the fourth branch of media.


• We think that in a democracy the freedom of press is one of the highest values.


• We want to enforce a critical self-reflection of the media business in form of media journalism.

Our goals:

• We want to…
  …reveal hidden truths, e.g. corruptions
  …protect the public´s rights to know
  …crosscheck information (sources and factcheck)
  …see the importance of reliable sources critically
  …bring balance to the news media
  …cover a wide range of topics
  …expose tactics used to intimidate journalists or governments
  ...appeal to the people´s sense of consciousness
  … make the steady growing sector of media more comprehensible or at least give people an overview
  …take care of that the press sticks to the journalistic norms
  … protect with special effort human rights of journalists
  …take care of that journalists are not censored by governments
  …prevent journalists from disturbing the public privacy

Our strategies:

• We might…
  ...publicize our investigations (about abuses or violations) that we learned about in weekly reports
  ...maintain a regular dialogue with reporters at news outlets
  ...encourage the public to contact media with their concerns, to become media activists rather than passive consumers of news
  

The document is subject to alterations at any time. Our actions will depend on the recent events.

Bibliography

http://www.mediachannel.org/
http://www.fair.org/
http://www.aim.org/
http://www.mrc.org/
http://www.grin.com/e-book/28299/watching-the-watchdogs-medienjournalismus-in-den-usa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchdog_journalism
http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/kas_8940-544-1-30.pdf
http://www.info-rlp.de/lernteams/eli05/abschnitt_3_mikrocontroller/watchdog/watchdog.jpg