Mexico: Journalism for a Culture of Peace

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An article from NVI Noticias (translated by CPNN)

Mexico City.- The International Encounter of Journalism in the Culture of Peace has prepared a program that includes the participation of women journalists such as Zaina Erhaim of Syria, who received the Peter Mackler Award for Ethical and Courageous Journalism in 2015; Marcela Turati, Nina Lakhani, Patricia Nieto Nieto, Daniela Rea, Yanet Aguilar and Carina Pérez García.

This event will be held as part of the Zócalo International Book Fair on October 10 and 11 at the El Rule Cultural Center. It will review the role of journalism in building a culture of peace.


The journalist from Syria, Zaina Erhaim, will take part in a dialogue with Marcela Turati, moderated by Yanet Aguilar

Tools of art and culture

“Given the situation of violence and insecurity in different regions of the country, the federal government has inserted in its cultural policy the need to take advantage of the tools of art and culture to help repair the damaged social fabric, to recover public spaces abandoned in recent years, and to offer alternative cultural expressions to the society.

Writers such as Jon Lee Anderson, Alma Guillermoprieto, Cristina Pacheco and Leila Guerrero, to mention just a few examples, have been given the task of recovering different artistic and cultural manifestations of our relationship with the environment and journalism in the graphic press, where it is necessary to take into account played by the media, particularly by cultural journalists.

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(Click here for the original article in Spanish.)

Question(s) related to this article:

Journalism in Latin America: Is it turning towards a culture of peace?

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Culture of Peace

In Colombia, a program called Culture of Peace and Coexistence has been developed, based on the conviction that the expression of the Culture of Peace needs to be established in language, ideals and collective practices. The document of the program states that “Individuals, social groups and all nations recognize that the Culture of Peace is the key to transform individual and collective paradigms from the culture of violence. It must be rooted in daily life, favoring the reconstruction of the social fabric through the practice of new values, attitudes and behaviors.”

According to Jesús Alejo Santiago, the Zócalo encounter establishes working groups to foster dialogue among reporters who have experience in electronic and written media in conversation with civil society, in order to evaluate the tools and strategies they have used to spread social, artistic and cultural activities that promote a culture of peace in the various regions of the country that have experienced violence and insecurity.

Participants

This meeting opens with the dialogue between Zaina Erham and Marcela Turati, entitled “How peace can be promoted through journalism.” Next, will be the roundtable, “How to make peace visible: a task for journalism.” In the midst of accounts of conflict, violence, death and bloodshed, journalism also has the responsibility to collaborate on the road to peace and to tell the stories of people who have remained invisible, giving a human context to the facts, according to the cultural journalist.

Other participants include Patricia Nieto Nieto, Hector de Mauleón and Erik Vargas Torres. In the roundtable “Not only bad news is good news” particpants will include Carina Pérez García and Daniela Rea, with the moderator Baltazar Domínguez. Then, in the closing conference, there will be a dialogue between Alberto Salcedo Ramos and Eduardo Vazquez Martín, entitled “Culture and journalism for peace.”