Isonnevantie 26 a 4
00320 Helsinki
Finland
- Democracy and community development
- Human rights
- International/Cultural relations
- Media
- Religion
- Research
In recent years we have seen a polarisation of talk about migration and asylum issues and cultures in Finland, similarly to elsewhere in Europe. Confrontation and stereotypes are being upheld by time pressure in news outlets, conflict-seeking headlines, bad background research and unsatisfactory follow-up of issues and events. This is very dangerous to society, as it gives fuel to radical groups to play into fears and concerns in society and mobilise them for their ends.
We want to provide a well-researched and interesting alternative to mainstream media reporting, with a specific focus on religious and cultural issues. We will go beyond just providing more and better information: our media outlet will be the place where people can ask questions about differences, even question the views of others, in a way that does not undermine the human rights of each one of us. The ultimate aim is to prevent conflicts in society before they even start.
Human rights are at the core of our mission. We will seek to make human rights more concrete to people by bringing people together and talking about difficult topics while respecting others. Our project is loosely based on the concept of ‘conciliatory journalism’, which is being researched at the University of Tampere in Finland. (Blog in Finnish: https://sovittelujournalismi.wordpress.com/) We will experiment with different ways to apply conciliatory methods to journalism. It is especially important to make people talk with each other as well as listen to each other.
We will target ordinary Finns who have concerns related to migration and different cultures and who are willing to look for answers. We will never give a platform to extremists or people who do not respect human rights. Some mainstream media outlets have done this in the past in the name of “objectivity” -however, this only makes disrespectful and even racist views seem legitimate. Instead we will be giving a voice to more moderate voices and facilitate real debates. We are calling for the silent majority to unite and save our democracy.
Online media outlet
The first step to achieve our goal is to found a new high-quality online media outlet that is based on the principles on conciliatory journalism. We will recruit both Finnish and immigrant journalists to produce text, photographs and video for our website. We already have around twenty journalists who would be interested to contribute. However, in order to do this in a professional manner, we need funds to pay the journalists.
In our vision we see ourselves as the best Finnish expert in writing about cultural and religious issues as well as integration. We will achieve this by creating an extensive network of NGO:s, scientists and individuals in the field as well as recruiting journalists with different backgrounds. We will publish content in both Finnish and English (maybe also Arabic) -this enables also immigrant journalists to write for us.
Training materials
“Conciliatory journalism” is a new concept that is not properly understood at this point. Our media outlet will be a great place to test different practices and see how they really work. We will document our experiences and then produce training materials that can be used by other journalists.
We are looking to build an extensive network with people who want to create better cross-culture and cross-religion dialogue. As a media outlet, we are a valuable asset to the members of the Anna Lindh network. Too much great research, important views and experiences never hit the headlines in Finland. As an independent media outlet with the specific focus on cultural and religious issues we will contribute by giving a platform to these voices.
Our aim is to bring people together. The ALF network is a very good place for us to get more contacts and find people who have similar targets as we do.
We are also interested in the grants of the network as we currently have no funding for the project.