What is UNESCO-Al Jazeera's Journalism Matters project?

As journalists prepare to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3, there is much to discuss.
Why are journalists still being killed with impunity? Can the media, increasingly demonised by political leaders, survive? How should reporters cover the far right? What will become of the battle against fake news?
Al Jazeera, in consultation with UNESCO, is launching Journalism Matters - a space where these questions will be addressed.
In the run-up to World Press Freedom Day, we will be sharing critical analysis and reflections from international journalists and experts.
You can join the conversation too, using the #WPFD2017 hashtag on social media.
As they attended UNESCO's "Journalism under fire: challenges of our time" conference recently in Paris, Guy Berger, UNESCO's director of freedom of expression and media development, and Giles Trendle, Al Jazeera's acting managing director, shared their views.
Al Jazeera: Why have you come together to launch this project?
Guy Berger: UNESCO has had a long partnership with Al Jazeera on the issues of press freedom and the safety and quality of journalism. When we looked into World Press Freedom Day this year we thought: which respected international broadcaster has a good track record of co-operation with us?
Giles Trendle: We have a long, and painful experience of our journalists being attacked, arrested, imprisoned and, in some cases, killed.
Violence against journalists is a key concern for us and so we looked for a partner with international credibility that shares our core values for media freedom and the safety of journalists.
Al Jazeera: World Press Freedom Day is coming up on May 3. What has changed in terms of press freedom over the past decade?
Trendle: A worrying development is the deliberate targeting of journalists … whether in being arrested, murdered or whether in being maligned, like the American media labelled by the American president himself as "the enemy of the people".
The more the media exposes falsehoods, the more it creates actors who decide to hit the media through threats, intimidation, physical attacks or economic boycotts.
Guy Berger, UNESCO director of freedom of expression and media development
Guy Berger: Previously the media was always attacked for bringing to light hidden stories which those in power didn't want.
Today it's even worse because the media is now being attacked not for what it is exposing, but for what it is debunking as fake news. This could partially explain the escalation of attacks against journalists because the more the media exposes falsehoods, the more it creates actors who decide to hit the media through threats, intimidation, physical attacks or economic boycotts.
Al Jazeera: Giles, you spoke of the media's "crisis of identity" during UNESCO's "Journalism under fire" colloquium. How does the industry need to develop to fulfil its role of monitoring the powerful?
Trendle: On one hand, we need to embrace the digital revolution and the disruption that's been caused and be ahead of the game, and change and adapt. But on the other hand, we need to hold firm to our editorial principles and the quality of our journalism.
I don't see them as mutually exclusive, so we have to change and adapt, but hold firm to our core principles of journalism. And that's the point: we can't just change for the sake of change and try to get more clicks and get involved in junk-food journalism and lose our editorial soul.
Berger: I think it's being true to the spirit of journalism and the role of journalism in society, but also actually it's a good business position because the more journalists become involved in junk journalism the more they disappear into the huge amount of unreliable, unchecked information.
Now is the time for journalism to say, "People out there, do you want trustworthy information, do you want fact-checked information, do you want informed opinion? If you want this stuff, this is the niche of traditional journalism and this is what we offer you."
If you start running into the gossip, the jumping the gun and so on, you have no distinct identity anymore.
Al Jazeera: Journalism, from one day to the next, is changing in terms of training methods, platforms, its relationship with the public it serves. In your view, what is the role of journalism?
Trendle: The role of journalism in today's society is for us to do our jobs to the best quality and maintain editorial standards. The protection of the role of the journalist - and I don't just mean the physical protection, but the protection of editorial quality - is the preservation of democracy.
Berger: I think journalism itself needs to become more reflective because some things that were done in the old days are no longer exclusive to journalists. And I think sometimes journalism has focused too much on elite politics.

Source: AL Jazeera