Partner Session: Role of values in politics-oriented media narratives: lessons for Western Balkans (in Partnership with the Warsaw Security Forum and with the support of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland)
Discussion points:
- What is the role of values in presenting the news? What is the link between the freedom of media and their ability to project narratives that promote the democratic values? To what extent it is the media’s role to take a stance in the ongoing discussion on the liberal democracy v. populism?
- Reporting on conflict – from Ukraine to Belarus: how should the media react to an influx of disinformation and fake news as a tool used by foreign propaganda? What is the impact of the media on the image of the ongoing events that policy-makers receive?
- The politicization of media in modern Europe: what is the future of public media in Europe, how to protect them from the ‘spoils system’ and cronyism of governments? What is the relation between the objectivity of the media and their ownership structure?
- Lessons learnt for the Western Balkans from the Polish transformation
From Brexit to Belarus Crisis, from the pandemics to the EU’s position in the changing world order, European societies are constantly exposed to the series of events that fill in the covers of newspapers and headlines of media outlets. At the same time, words such as ‘fake news’ or ‘disinformation’ have become the trending apparatus of media communication and government-public relations. In their constant pursuit of news and attention of viewers/listeners/readers – media formulate a set of narratives describing the modern world of politics. However, with the potential of the growing role of populism in politics, and their undermining impact on the rules-based international order, there exists a strong call for the protection of the liberal democratic values by any means possible.