I’m now in Bali Island but not for the legend sea shore and historical views. It’s the first time that I’m here joining the 3rd Global Inter-media Dialogue(GIMD), a conference backing by two distinction countries, Norway and Indonesia. Deputy Minister Wegard Harsvik shared me the story how this GIMD was founded three years ago: Indonesia was one of three countries(China, Indonesia and Vietnam) Norway conducted talks on human rights with. And eventually after those talks, Indonesia become more democratic and healthy on politics today. They win the friendship of Norway as well. So the two governments set up the conference quickly in month in 2006.
I enjoyed some of the sessions especially those about local issues and community practices, but more happily to see old friends( Ying Chan, Kavi Chongkittavorn, etc.) there. I was surprised with the coverage of this conference because the organizers did invite a broad range of journalists from almost around the world. Amazingly, Cuban journalist, Lic. Magda Resik Aguirre, almost flied around world to attend this conference. The first session I joined was about the minority coverage problem of current media where a guy called Said Ibrahimi came from Afghanistan added me more knowledge about this country on the situations of reporters, as well the problems in that not-far-away country. What should global journalists do with such issues? Be more participatory or be more professional watcher? How to keep ethics in extreme situations?
If we just think about such issues in traditional ways. I can’t help because they are actually the all time issues bothering journalism the whole discipline. The common problem to journalism in any countries, of course, its prejudice and ethical correctness. In our session called “Global Happenings” most on China issue, I quickly shared the future journalism could be the best collaborative spectrum between amateur journalism and professional journalism by applying the new technologies especially those web 2.0 ones. The stories in China were actually telling not only the possibility of such blurring between amateur and professional journalism, but also the possibility to approach truth.
About the truth, actually it’ll be forever issue in our society but a real challenge to current traditional media. Even we can see some stories from the mainstream media covering minorities timely, it may be easily eclipsed by the limited bandwidth and persistency of the media. However, since everyone of us has more channels today to get information, you can sense how important the future journalism will be with new media technologies. Further saying, if people can provide and well use the throughput of new information channels, they can find more supporting materials to support their co-perceiving the truth. Obviously, the traditional media and journalists should change themselves proactively to fit for the trend.
The last minute before I click “publish” of this post and go to the Bali beach, there’s a new notification from Twitter telling me one of my friends Maria Trombly recommended a new article about journalism: The future of journalism. Though there are different perceptions on the future of journalism, the holy thing to me in Sharism age is that you can meet magic of coincidence with new technologies all the time. Isn’t it part of future journalism?
