[Nettime-bold] nato summit 2002 independent report

[Luka Princic <nova@skylined.org>]

dear *,

some students of journalism at brno (cz) were very critical
about media coverage and information that reached general public
about and during World Bank and International Monetary Fund
summit in Prague in year 2000. at the occasion of the
forthcoming nato summit in the same city (21-22 nov/02), they
felt criticism is not enough.

a case of direct action and imho totally necessary
socio-political engagement of young and all.

a little dynamic system for the page was just finished, so quick
report and multimedia can be uploaded and inserted as quickly as
possible.

the press release follows below. disseminate freely and widely.

luka


_
:: open mind, open source, open future ::

pgp key id: 0x28F1A432 (http://pgp.letusplay.net)
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http://skylined.org/nsir/

Press Release:

Parallel coverage of NATO summit November 21 - 22 in Prague

      We present a plan of parallel "shadow" news coverage of
NATO summit called NSIR (NATO Summit Independent Report). It
emerged with the purpose of creating balanced and unbiased news
from the summit itself, as well as related events like marches etc..
      The crew is formed mainly by the students of journalism on
the Faculty of Social Studies of the Masaryk University (FSS
MU), Brno. Majority of us have some experience from the marches
held during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
summit in Prague, 2000. We carefully observed news coverage that
time and we found out several discrepancies with today
mass-media theory and some journalistic principles (e.g. mixing
different raid groups, emotionality, undesirable fusion of
different journalistic genres)..
      The results of the negotiations were pushed aside by
current marches, which were given excessive attention. Despite
this courtesy, real intentions and goals of the rioters were not
presented, the news covered only the frequency and common
knowledge about the marches. Presuming the media are co-creators
of mass reality and so they have some responsibility, it is
quite dangerous to simplify extensively and marginalize
important facts.
      Bare criticism is insufficient, and so NSIR project was
created. Our goal is to point out the necessity of careful and
elaborate perception of the media, because not everything that
is printed must be necessarily true. We admit that it is
impossible to achieve totally neutral and balanced reports, as
we too have an opinion. But we will attempt to reach these
values as close as we are able to.

Project Realization
      The summit is held on Thursday, 21st November and Friday,
22nd November, but the NSIR reporters will be monitoring the
situation for the whole week (17th November to 24th November).
Two students gained the Congress Centre entry permission (Ivana
Oklešťková, studying international relations, and Jaroslav
Petřík, studying political science, both studying journalism
simultaneously). More than twenty other people form the team,
which will cover the summit itself as well as the riots
(including the characteristics of various raid groups), police
or army actions and other related events.
      The outcome of NSIR project is a web page
(http://skylined.org/nsir/), which will be continuosly updated
with text, photographs, audio-video records and everyday
summaries. Various journalistic genres will be represented (e.g.
interviews with celebrities of all the participating parties),
the project will be closed by a general overview.
      NSIR project is backed up by the Department of journalism
and mass-media studies, FSS MU, which provided a part of
necessary technology. "Department supports this iniciative and
believes that the result of monitoring will correspond to the
criteria of neutral journalism," said the head of Department,
doc. Jiří Pavelka, CSc. We also negotiate the cooperation with
students of Charles University, Czech and the Czech Technical
University in Prague.


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