BBG Executive Director Jeffrey Trimble Addresses DW Global Media Forum
At Deutsche Welle’s fourth annual Global Media Forum, BBG Executive Director Jeffrey Trimble outlined how international media can support global development and human rights. The forum, held June 20-22 in Bonn, Germany, brought together participants in the fields of journalism, politics, culture, business, and development from around the world.
In his remarks, Trimble noted that good journalism can impact the struggle for human rights in a number of ways.
“It is the role of journalists to shine a bright light on the abuse of human rights, wherever these abuses take place,” Trimble said. “At the same time, journalists must devote substantive coverage to success stories about combating or rectifying abuse – instances and best practices utilized to resolve problems, so that others may learn and take heart from these examples.”
Trimble also stressed that access to information is also a basic human right, one that journalistic organizations must band together to protect.
“We must stake out a united front to hold governments and other groups to this commitment. We must continue to protest controlled access to the Internet or interference with access to content through blockage of web sites,” Trimble said. “Specifically, we must continue – as the DG 5 broadcasters have done – to protest in any way that we can the jamming of radio and, more recently, satellite television, which Iran in particular continues to do regularly, in flagrant contravention of international law.”
To read a transcript of Trimble’s full remarks, click here. For more information about Deutsche Welle’s Global Media Forum, click here.