"News on Cultural Diversity Issues in the time of COVID 19”

The regular deadline for the ADAMI Media Prize for Cultural Diversity in Eastern Europe 2020 has passed. However, this year ADAMI will hold an additional competition for the best news piece or short video on cultural diversity during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

COVID-19 has dominated media coverage in 2020 and it has presented new challenges to Eastern Partnership country journalists. The pandemic has contributed to heightened ethnic tensions; minorities and migrants have been stigmatized or even blamed for spreading the virus. Many have also suffered from information gaps due to remote living conditions or language barriers.

The ADAMI Media Prize would like to recognize outstanding journalistic contributions during this global crisis by awarding a prize for a news piece or other short video focused on COVID-19 and cultural diversity, ethnic and religious minorities and migration.

Journalists, filmmakers, production companies and broadcasters may submit material, which should be no longer than 5 minutes!

The competition opens 16 July 2020 and the application deadline is 31 July 2020!
To apply, please visit:  https://www.adamimediaprize.eu/special-prize-2020

Please note: Applicants of the ADAMI Media Prize Competition can also win fellowships in news production with established Western European Broadcasters. Fellowship winners will have the opportunity to spend four weeks working in the news department of a large Western European Media Organization, with all costs covered.

ADAMI FOCUS - Online Talk with Public Broadcasters

from Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia



A special ADAMI Focus online talk brought together public broadcasting executives in the Eastern Partnership region to discuss broadcasting cultural diversity. Panelists included Veaceslav Gheorghishenko of Teleradio Moldova, Murad Huseynov of Ictimay Television (Azerbaijan), Giorgi Gvimradze of the Georgian Public Broadcaster, Armen Sargsyan of the Armenian Public Broadcaster, Radka Betcheva, the European Broadcasting Union’s Member Relations Head for Eastern Europe, and ADAMI Programme Director Stefan Tolz.

The online talk began with a discussion on how the COVID-19 outbreak has affected broadcasters and how they have adapted programming to new realities. Participants noted that minorities in their countries often do not have equal access to information because they live in remote locations or lack the language skills to understand public broadcasts.

The broadcast executives then shared their programmatic approaches and content regarding ethnic, religious and cultural minorities. They also addressed the unusual challenges for journalists under quarantaine and lockdown, especially when covering stories from remote areas.

This year, the ADAMI Media Prize is highlighting cultural diversity-focused news coverage of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

You can watch the video recording of the event here:

ADAMI Focus - Online Talk with Public Broadcasters' Executives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova Where are we Heading? Current Broadcasting Trend...

Where are we Heading? Current Broadcasting Trends on Cultural Diversity 

Moderated by

Radka Betcheva, EBU Head of Member Relations for Eastern Europe

and Stefan Tolz, ADAMI Media Prize Programme Director

One Week before the final application deadline for this year's ADAMI Media Prize competition, this special edition of ADAMI FOCUS will take a look at the main public broadcasters in our region - we want to hear about their latest programming and ideas for the future.

After last week's insightful talk with Svetlana Alexievich, moderated by Yuri Marakov (Editor in Chief of the National Public Broadcaster of Ukraine) on courage in the media, on Tuesday, July 7th, chief executives of five public broadcasters will discuss their programming on cultural diversity topics. Radka Betcheva and ADAMI Media Prize Programme Director Stefan Tolz will moderate.

What role has cultural diversity played in TV series, documentary films, news formats and online offerings in the last year? What submissions can we expect to see for the ADAMI Media Prize 2020? What strategies do broadcasters have to improve awareness on cultural diversity among their audiences? These are questions of interest to everyone observing or working in media in the Eastern Partnership countries.

To receive an invitation to this exclusive online event, please register using the following link:

https://form.jotform.com/RegistrationADAMI/ADAMI-Focus-4

The deadline for registration is Tuesday, 7 July at 13.00 (CEST).

The event will be held in English, with Russian simultaneous translation. Participants will have the chance to ask questions during the event.

Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich on Media Challenges in the Post-Soviet Countries

Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature, was the featured guest for the third edition of ADAMI Focus – Online Talks on 30 July. Yuri Makarov, Editor in Chief of Ukraine’s National Public Broadcaster, moderated the discussion, which was attended by international participants.

Yuri Makarov

Svetlana Alexievich sharply criticized the media landscape in the post-Soviet countries as serving authoritarian or corporate interests and exploiting fear. She applauded the living language of today’s bloggers, stating that journalists in the post-Soviet countries must work harder to produce authentic and engaging stories and „drag their people into the larger world.“

Alexievich and Makarov also touched on media coverage of COVID-19 and the mass protests against police brutality in the US. When asked how stories on cultural diversity can be used to heal divisions, Alexievich stressed that „suffering is the primary method of conveying information. Only through suffering can we understand something about a person and life. For this reason, (the storyteller) must have a soul.“

You can watch the video recording here:

Courage in the Media - How to Improve Coverage on Cultural Diversity Moderated by the Editor in Chief of the National Public Broadcaster of Ukraine, Yuri Mak...

Courage in the Media - How Journalists Can Improve Coverage of Cultural Diversity

Moderated by Editor in Chief of Ukrainian Public TV

Yuri Makarov

Covering minority issues is a sensitive task. The histories of different nationalities and ethnic groups in the Eastern Partnership region are still a thematic battlefield, too often including histories of deportations, genocides, or ethnocides. How can journalists and broadcasters today cover minority issues without lapsing into old folkloric stereotypes or even creating new ones? How can we empower people to tell their own stories instead of telling stories about them?

Svetlana Alexievich is an investigative journalist, oral historian and writer from Belarus. In 2015, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Svetlana’s work is mostly based on collections of interviews with witnesses of various events in Soviet history such as the Second World War, the war with Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster. Her most famous works include Chernobyl Prayer (1997) and The Unwomanly Face of War (1985).

Yuri Makarov is a Ukrainian journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker. He is Editor in Chief of the Ukrainian Public Broadcasting Company NSTU, and the Chairman of the Committee for the National Taras Shevchenko Award. Yuri Makarov was a member of the jury for the ADAMI Media Prize in 2015.

To receive an invitation to this exclusive online event, please register using the following link:

https://form.jotform.com/RegistrationADAMI/ADAMI-Focus-3

The deadline for registration is Tuesday, 30 June at 13.00 (CEST).

The event will be held in Russian with English simultaneous translation. Participants will have the chance to ask questions during the event!

Cultural Diversity - The Forgotten Task?

With Governments, Political Parties or Investors Influencing Media, Minority Issues are often not the Priority. What can be done?

Media outlets in the Eastern Partnership Region are often under the direct influence from politicial forces, parties or oligarchs with political agendas. Journalism often becomes a means to serve their narratives and versions of stories, with ethnic minorities either being forgotten, or being used for certain purposes – to get votes, or even to heat up conflicts between different groups and destabilize the society. What could be forms of solutions to these problems, from a political point of view as well as from the media?

For the second edition of the ADAMI Focus Online Talks, our guest will be the former president of the Parliament of Moldova, Andrian Candu.

Andrian Candu served as patron of the last ADAMI Gala Award Ceremony in 2018. He has many years of experience as member of the moldovan parliament, served as deputy prime minister and minister of economy, and was the president of the parliament between 2015 and 2019.

Carolin Ollivier is the Editor in Chief of the daily news magazin ARTE Journal, where she is working since 2006. She has a broad experience as journalist, presenter of the program ARTE Reportage and as a correspondent in Brussels.

Please register using the following link: https://form.jotform.com/RegistrationADAMI/ADAMI-Focus-2

The deadline for registration is Tuesday, 23 June at 13.00 (CEST).

Participants will have the chance to ask questions during the event.