The annual meeting of the Regional Network of Press Councils of the Eastern Partnership Member States (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine) and Russia will be held in Chisinau on March 2-3. Petru Macovei, executive director of the Association of Independent Press, has told IPN that the agenda of the event includes discussions on a number of subjects, including the covering by the mass media of the situation of migrants and refugees so as to formulate recommendations for the journalistic community about the covering of this theme.
The participants will also take stock of the practices of implementing the journalistic norms concerning election covering, given that elections were recently held in Moldova, Russia and Georgia, and of the developments in the self-regulatory segments in each of the participating states. The representatives of the Press Councils will also discuss the functioning of the commission against propaganda that was set up a year ago.
Petru Macovei said the goal of this commission is to examine the transfrontier complaints of some countries against other countries given that the Press Council of one country asks for the opinion of experts about the journalistic ethics in covering an event in another country than the country of origin.
At the invitation of the Press Council of Moldova, experts from other states will take part in a meeting of the discussion group “Stop false” to talk about the qualitative evolution of journalism in the EaP member states and Russia.
The Regional Network was set up at an international conference held in Chisinau in 2011. It brings together representatives of journalistic self-regulatory bodies of the member states for an exchange of experience and for working out common mechanisms for improving the quality of journalism in the given countries. The network works within a program financed by the Council of Europe. It meets annually in the member states, by rotation.
