Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), the watchdog organisation that promotes ethical and fair journalism, this month presents its Media Freedom Festival, a series of events to highlight critical issues related to media freedom and human rights. TimesLIVE is a media partner for the event.
October 26, 2pm: Children and the media
Children have agency and important views on key issues. In this two-part webinar, presented with the SA National Editors' Forum (Sanef) and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, MMA will first explore strategies for including the voices of children in the media before discussing children's vision for, and concerns about, the future of our media. A futurist will also talk about the top five expected trends in this context.
October 28, 2pm: Grappling with the rift of race and xenophobia
Social media has been used as a targeted weapon to spread hate and deepen social divides. In this webinar, MMA will discuss how this is done, and encourage people not to assume that social media is reality. It will also highlight the important work being done in this area by organisations such as the SA Human Rights Commission, the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change, and the Digital Forensic Research Lab.
October 30, 2pm: Guarding against disinformation and deepfakes – tips and tools
Disinformation continues to be a threat to our society, especially on digital platforms. Also, deepfakes (fake videos or audio recordings that appear to include real people) are becoming increasingly sophisticated. This workshop will help you understand disinformation and deepfakes, and what these aim to achieve. It will also explore tools and apps to help combat this problem.
October 30, 6pm: The ethical tightrope (who will make it to the other side?)
This session will focus on media ethics, drawing on a Sanef ethics inquiry report. A series of ethical dilemmas will be presented to expert journalists – and, given the online nature of the event, the MMA will host two panels where members of the public who believe they are ethical can compete against journalists in this regard. The judges for the event will be media strategist Chris Vick and journalist and academic Phathiswa Magopeni.
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