To face environmental destruction, UK media must help England face its colonial legacy
Last Friday, I attended “Voices from the Amazon: Our Stories, Our Solutions” – an event that brought together Indigenous creatives and activists to share their perspectives on media representation, environmental justice, and decolonisation. The conversations were powerful, challenging, and – for those of us working in UK-based, and more specifically English, media organisations and who […]
Values in the Media conference 2024: Recognising the media’s role in shaping society’s cultural values – a summary
Are we more likely to value a CEO’s quarterly profits or a community’s collective resilience? Do we celebrate individual wealth and prestige or collective wellbeing? How does the mainstream news media help shape which of these things society sees as important? Last month, media professionals gathered at the historic St Ethelburga’s in London to grapple […]
Bridging the values gap: reimagining journalism through human connection
Last month, a friend and colleague shared an article with me that cited a recent study conducted into ‘journalistic values from an audience perspective’ in Chile, the results of which recognised the “importance of the human touch in journalism”. The two academics; Mellado and Gajardo, uncovered a profound disconnect between how journalists perceive their professional […]
Hope for the future of life can be found in our cultural values; we need a media sector that reflects that
Our collective, or ‘cultural’ values are hugely important; they impact what we collectively see as important in the world, and what we think and do about social and environmental issues. In order to make real progress on social and environmental issues, we need to see different values championed in our cultures; values such as care, […]
Might mainstream news reporting contribute to the ‘values perception gap’ and why might it matter?
In the UK we have almost become accustomed to seeing headlines in (mostly) right wing and conservative media about refugees and people seeking asylum that have famously included ‘The Swarm in Our Streets’ and more recently focussed on government plans to ‘stop the boats’. But do these messages, and the values that underpin them, truly […]