Report of working group: Information, Communication and Media
Thursday, 12 oct 2000, morning session
This working group was chaired by Mrs. Beate Winkel. She asked to the participants to come up with concrete ideas, proposals and good practices to finalize the draft General Conclusions. She pointed out the fact that it is possible to influence the general conclusions, although they are more or less finalized. In a way she apologized for the frustration that might occur from this.

The first point on the Agenda, following the discussions from the previous day was: How to prevent hate speech in the media, especially in the Internet. The key-questions that have been raised: "Are there limits of speech?", "What should we allow to be said?", "Which could be the criteria?", "How the media support racism?", "How to avoid victimisation?".

And since there was communication and media working group going on, there has been a suggestion to stress on the link between the European Conference and the World Conference Against racism by orientating the general opinion towards making the two events successful. Also, it is important to enhance the connections between Europe's institutions and United Nations.

Another idea was that speaking about racism in Europe without speaking about the social and economic problems makes no sense. Therefore, it is necessary to remember this connection when raising the issue.

Another participant suggested that the discussion in the previous day was too much concentrated on hate speech and, actually, we have to stress more on the modern and fascinating speech that creates prejudices. We cannot make rules against it, we just have to be aware of it and to make people to resist the fascination. This could be the role of school education, but also of NGOs. In addition, in order to react to this, we need to create instruments, tools.

The whole issue of racism and xenophobia is in connection with feelings, especially with fear. Mrs. chair asked for fresh idea about how to cope with these feelings, how to support meanwhile journalism and how to avoid creating the scape goats. A concrete example on how to reach a wider public by media was given: an anti-racist video ("Show the racism the red card") was shown in the break of an important football match, on 40 TV channels.

The representative of European Monitoring Centre in Vienna stress on the idea that we have to work TOGETHER with media as concerning anti-discrimination and anti-racist issues. Not only by sending them press-releases, but trying to involve them, to educate the journalists, to exchange contacts with them. The second item on hate speech was how to avoid it on the media - concrete measures. It was said that if we concentrate on negative aspects we only support them. Therefore we have to move towards positive aspects: how to cope with equality and multicultural diversity. Because for the moment a sophisticated segregation of media still exists: there are minority's newspapers, radio stations, etc. Another example from the real life (this time from Kosovo)was given: a joint radio program - Youth Radio - from both minority and majority young people from Kazoo worked much better than resolutions and petitions. So it is important to insist on associative media because this one develop dialogue, debates and avoid segregation.

From the Dutch Government a suggestion was made to initiate a protocol for the draft crime in the cyberspace (racism, children pornography, etc.) The idea was very much welcome, as well as the one coming from the Swiss delegate asking to initiate an appeal for adding a juridical article about racism in Internet in the international legal instruments. It was also suggested to add the issue of anti-semitism and islamophobia next to racism issue. Going further in the agenda to the music and video games issue and their connection with the racism, examples of neo-Nazi propaganda were given from Poland. Music, publications, advertisement staff promoting the neo-Nazi movement are the instruments of international organizations already. Therefore, these things should not be only monitored, but actions should be taken against.

Anti-racist music should be granted not only financially, but also morally. It was stressed the idea that the anti-racist music is very much in connection with violent actions lately and more attention should be given to this. Because racism and xenophobia are very much linked with feelings, the music is a very easy way to act there. Another example of video game used in the anti-racist education was given this time from Sweden.

One representative of the organizers of the World Conference against Racism next year in South Africa requested in the end more information and 'know-how' in order to organize and integrate parallel artistical (music) events for the coming Conference. The session ended in a very "media-communicational" way, by showing an anti-racist educational video-clip that was suggested to be used all over the countries belonging to the Council of Europe from next year on.