Page - 239 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Round Table Discussion | Worst Case and Best Practice 239 Horst Pöttker I don't think so, Rainer. Kenneth and I are in the same boat in this case, because we are journalism educators and we think about what is the task of journalism – it is to create public. To make things visible. And even if it is a negative visibility, it is better than no visibility. Heinz Bonfadelli I want to add a point from communication researchers. 60 to 70 percent of the daily articles are generated by public relation sources. The question of the sources is important as well. Normally you have, say, organizations with money, which can afford to produce texts. And I think the minority organizations should as well have the chance or should be motivated to produce more news. Not only for daily media but as well for a channel of special-interest media. Here you have lots of texts that are subsidized and paid by industry, by interest groups and here, I think, one could influence a little bit more or pay a little bit more to have more sources, more input into the media system, coming from minority organizations. Souley Hassane I want to tell you something about a bad practice. First, for me, this is a binary vision of the mainstream media and journalists. This binary vision you can see everywhere in the French mainstream, for example about the suburbs: Bad? Good? Devil? God? This is, I think, the worst part. It's the worst practice. If we want to change the image of minorities, I think it is necessary to educate the journalists to produce information without this binary vision. Because a binary vision creates binary practise, and binary practise creates binary papers. Another important aspect is the relations between journalists, businessmen, politicians. I think that these are corrupted relations. I don't say corrupted by money, but by ideology. Because if journalists started to be in the suburbs, they could also adopt the view of the suburbs. Kenneth Starck I can add something about the danger of indifference with a little anecdote: Elie Wiesel often asks his audience what is the opposite of love. When I first heard him say that I thought it was hate, which seems to be logical. But that's not the answer. It’s indifference, not giving a care at all, that's the worst practice. But coming back to the question: I used to belong to the organization of news ombudsmen