Deutsche Welle chief stresses value-based stand for today’s media

Director General of Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle says the just-concluded Global Media Forum agreed that “quality media is built on the foundation of a strong internal compass – taking a clear stance”.

And the “stance is based on values”, Peter Limbourg said, concluding the three-day annual gathering on Wednesday in Bonn.
 
It set “Media, Freedom, Values” as theme for next year’s global forum meet to be held from June 13 to June 15.
 
Diplomacy in the digital age was in focus this year, the eighth edition of the DW’s annual conference series that drew more than 2,000 participants from over 100 countries.
 
Limbourg said the theme proved “relevant” in the current world where many workshops had stressed “how indispensable quality media is in the context of foreign policy and diplomacy”.
 
“It is the anchor or rather the navigational markers guiding us through a sea of useless, questionable information,” he said.
 
The DW chief said the digital age was “also an era of competing value systems – a struggle which predominantly plays itself out through the media”.
 
“By simply going with the flow of the mainstream, you run the risk of losing relevance,” he said.
 
This year’s forum also witnessed the launch of DW’s 24-hour English TV channel in its effort “to be more international”.
 
The DG said their programming stood for something that was also discussed in depth at the Global Media Forum – the meaning of values and ways of conveying them.
 
“Values such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to express your own opinion are values that Deutsche Welle stands for and upholds,” he said. 
 
He said they had picked up the theme of the next year’s forum as this year’s discussions made it “very clear how essential the triad of media, freedom and values is to peaceful coexistence in our globalized world”.
 
There had been many references to propaganda, pointing particularly to Russia in the current context of a European crisis involving the country.
 
“The challenge is to respond to it not with mere counter-propaganda but bold, surprising, fresh and well-founded journalism,” Limbourg said.  
 
His closing speech was preceded by the keynote address by Oxford Research Group founder Dr Scilla Elworthy, who spoke on the private sector’s responsibility towards creating a sustainable world.
 
Bangladeshi blog ‘Mukto-Mona’, founded by the slain science writer Avijit Roy, received the DW’s annual ‘The Bobs – Best of Online Activism’ award this year in the ‘social change’ category.