Freedom Foundation Launches Project in Yemen to Observe 41 Media Outlets
Freedom Foundation for media freedom, rights and development launched on Monday, September 8, 2014 its new project of (Media Observatory), which will monitor and document violations of the media professionalism, media contents and meanings that urge hatred and incitement in the Yemeni partisan and private media.
The launching of this project attended by the head of Public Affairs Section at US Embassy in Sana’a Mr. Christian James and the leadership of Freedom Foundation, in which this project came from the general feeling of the importance to have a professional standards for the Yemeni partisan and private media, and to support the implementation of NDC document outcomes in the media side, as well as the fulfillment of the international conventions on media freedom and human rights.
It also comes in response to Rabat Plan of Action on the prohibition of incitement in the media, launched by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
(OHCHR) and in support of the public efforts to stop the Yemen media to be pickaxes for demolition and means of excitement, division, hatred and incitement instead of supporting the freedom, democracy and construction.
Freedom Foundation implements the Project of Media Observatory in cooperation with the US-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) over two years, which targets 41 media outlets, including 9 partisan and private TV and 16 newspapers and 16 Yemeni news websites launched mostly during the transitional period and worked in an atmosphere of freedom without government restriction. However, some of them exploit the absence of legislation and codes of conduct governing the media to exercise numerous violations of professionalism and objectivity and to practice the incitement and hate speech.
A lot of evidences prove that Yemen in the transition period witnesses an acute media crisis whilst each party is broadcasting and publishing through its media a content away from any standards or professional and ethical criteria, and media discourse presented by some these media is hostile and containing a hate speech and incitement against the other .
The project of (Media Observatory) will monitor the performance of the targeted media and document its media messages for monitoring, documenting and analyzing the content broadcasted and published daily by these media outlets according to specific and accredited professional, objective and technical criteria and issuing monthly reports on the level of irregularities and violations practiced by the media against the profession and other.
The partisan and private media in Yemen is practicing many violations and irregularities, where its performance was characterized by inciting, fueling the conflict and spreading the hate speech and violence culture, and this in turn led to a media freedom full of chaos, moral loss and the absence of professional responsibility.
Freedom Foundation through the project of (Media Freedom: Monitoring And Advocacy) worked on monitoring and documenting various violations suffered by many journalists and media institutions and outlets in Yemen during the past two years to ensure the media rights should be available in the country.
In contrast, and through the project of (Media Observatory), Freedom Foundation will monitor violations of media on the professionalism and others. As a first initiative of its kind in Yemen, it will push the Yemeni media for maintaining its duties and rights in the same time, in order to improve the media performance according to the professionalism rules represented by providing news service, correct information and showing different views helping in awareness-raising and forming a right and proper public opinion on various events and issues of concern to the citizen and nation, for the fact that the media is a mean for news, raising awareness, expressing and changing for the better in case of committing to professionalism , ethics and human rights standards, laws and legislation.
Freedom Foundation felt the urgent need to strengthen the partnership and dialogue and enhance the trust between all parties through different media outlets, and the media as well as in a dire need of responsible freedom, independence and a high professionalism in everything presented so as not to become a tool of fomenting enmity, hatred, lawlessness, chaos and to threat the public interests in the country under the name of freedom of opinion and expression.
Thus, the project of (Media Observatory) came as a contribution of Freedom Foundation and its partners in achieving the desired goals towards the media development and an attempt to match the rights and duties of the media.
Source: Yemen Post Newspaper
