Investigative Journalism for Sustainable Development

MEDIA: Sustainable Development in a Doomed City
by Mario Osava
for IPS

CARTAGENA, Colombia, Nov 24 (IPS) - The sea encroaching on the streets of this Caribbean resort city in northern Colombia dramatically underlines the challenges that 60 journalists, winners of awards from the Latin American Avina foundation, discussed over the weekend.

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Sustainable development is based on a three-pronged foundation formed by "caring, faith in the future and hope," said Jaime Abello, head of the Foundation for a New Ibero-American Journalism (FNPI), based in Cartagena.

The FNPI supports the Avina initiative, along with another 10 national or international journalism organisations in the Americas and Europe.

Abello warned journalists about the risks of sensational reporting of tragic events, and also of glossing over problems to give a rosy view. He advocated information about events that do not dwell only on complaints and tragedies, but neither only on good news without including the risks, challenges and context around them.

Ethics and sustainable human development are a question "of viewpoint," said Geraldinho Vieira, vice president of the Brazilian News Agency for Children's Rights (ANDI).

Vieira emphasised the importance of "a journalism in which everyone is heard" and reporters are constantly asking themselves whether they are contributing "to broadening the concept of democracy."

Fernando Alonso, associate director of the FNPI, presented the results of a study on corporate social responsibility in media outlets belonging to 37 groups in 13 Latin American countries.

He said that the goal of these companies is to achieve social, economic and environmental impacts, although few of them include social responsibility in their business strategies, labour practices and management.

Meanwhile, Patrick Busquet of the French organisation Reporters d'Espoirs (Reporters of Hope) introduced the proposal of "solution-based journalism."

"Journalism should serve the common good and should contribute solutions," he said. The point is not just to obtain "financial results" for the media company; it is also necessary "to measure the impact of the news," he said.

Journalism connects human beings, and should serve "all those involved, individually and collectively, as well as organisations that are acting for the common good," Busquet said.

The journalists at Cartagena, representing 57 projects that were award recipients, divided up into five groups to evaluate their proposals, exchange ideas and establish cooperation networks.

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(Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44833)