During my engagement with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, on their Open Journalism project, I learned a lot about press freedom issues in OSCE’s 57 member nations. Among the many interesting folks I got to know is Boro Kontic, director of the Media Centre in Sarajevo. Boro told me his site features stories of press-freedom issues — primarily from his own part of the world. Boro and I talked about the fact that, for all the ways in which we are fortunate, we in the U.S. have our own press-freedom problems. He asked me if I’d do a post for the site. Here it is: “Instead of transparency and openness – an ever-deepening secrecy.”
The fall continued to be a lively season for the topic of women in leadership in media. A conversation I moderated at the Society of American News Editors in Chicago proved lively and productive, focusing on the future and drawing one of the convention’s biggest crowds.
The panel came just as the fine Nieman Reports cover story on the topic was published online.
All such conversations are greatly enriched by the comprehensive report by the Women’s Media Center, for which I had the pleasure, as a new board member, of writing the postscript, including this thought:
“The decision-makers at these news organizations are at fault. They share in that familiar human tendency to self-replicate, hiring and advancing people who remind them of themselves. But we whose voices aren’t being heard are also at fault. We too often think our views are not valuable. It’s true that the absence of our voices in the media seems to send the signal that our views aren’t valued. But we know that they are valuable. We need to try harder to make them heard.”
Stronger journalism means a stronger democracy
