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Preface

The recent conflict in Kosovo has served to emphasize that ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, post-communist societies in Europe continue to struggle, often violently, with fundamental social and political questions relating to national identity, minorities, ethnic conflict, and diversity.

Beyond the former Yugoslavia, similar problems fester across the region. Ethnic, religious, and other minorities battle for legitimacy against extreme prejudice and even legal prohibition. Indeed, across the region, many forms of ³otherness² are widely presented as suspect, or even deviant. Left unchecked, the continuing extremism, divisiveness, and discrimination threaten to place insurmountable obstacles in the path of creating democratic, pluralistic, and tolerant societies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Throughout the region, the news media play a critical role in sustaining and exacerbating the problem. More generally, the media provide precious little information to help the majority populations understand the different minority groups living within their midst. Rather, the media all too often provide only superficial and negative images of minority groups, contributing greatly to the suspicions and fears on all sides.

In this context, training and education for media professionalism is a necessary, but not sufficient, strategy for tackling the diversity problem. Greater media independence from political control is certainly required, as are higher standards for journalists and news organizations. But these priorities, critical as they are, are not enough. Indeed, long-established democratic countries in the West with the most vibrant and respected independent media continue to struggle mightily to address problems of prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination.

The Reporting Diversity Network (RDN) created and managed by the London-based European Centre for War, Peace, and the News Media, is an innovative collaboration of media organizations from Central and Eastern Europe, dedicated to the proposition that journalism can, and should, play a central role in aiding increasingly diverse societies understand their differences within, build bridges between and among communities, explore alternatives to confrontation and violent conflict, and successfully undertake the processes of reconstruction and reconcilition.

The RDN is focused directly and exclusively on improving media coverage of minorities, inter-ethnic relations, and other diversity concerns. Its mission is to promote, create, and sustain substantially to improved journalism on diversity issues in ways that contribute to tolerance, pluralism, and stability in diverse and often war-torn societies.

The network emphasizes work in five areas of journalism and media development: diversity reporting initiatives; mid-career diversity training for journalists; media assistance for minority groups; journalism education and curriculum reform; and media monitoring and research. The manual you are reading is a part of the complex and long-term RDN program which has already been joined by numerous regional media organizations in the region and which is expanding internationally, as well.

This RDN Leader's Manual was conceived by Robert Manoff, director of the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media at New York University, as a regional resource for news organizations, media NGO's, and journalism organizations interested in addressing the problem of diversity in news coverage. It was written by Karen Howze, an experienced journalist and diversity trainer, under his direction.

We hope that you will find this manual useful and encourage you to elaborate on and develop the basic themes that are sketched out on the pages that follow.

Milica Pesic, Director
European Centre for War, Peace, and the News Media