It was chaired by Hannah Storm, Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) with guests Rachel Corp, deputy editor of ITV News; Louise Ridley, co-founder of Second Source and freelance journalist currently running news special projects at HuffPost UK; Jasmine Andersson, also a co-founder of Second Source and an investigations reporter at PinkNews along with Mark Di Stefano, media and politics reporter for Buzzfeed News, London.

Welcome to the @frontlineclub's panel discussion on how to deal with sexual harassment in the media – we'll be tweeting highlights from the panellists, and the event will also be made into a Frontline Club podcast! pic.twitter.com/N1RePPRMBo

— The Second Source (@the2ndsource) March 7, 2018

Starting the discussion Storm asked Corp to share her experiences when she began working in the industry roughly twenty years ago and if she thinks there has been a cultural shift in the way women are treated within the newsroom.

Crop commented: “When I started working in television and broadcast there was this sense that if you were a young woman you were slightly fair game. It wasn’t necessarily at the desk but around socialising for work which was necessary part of getting on in your career and you had to have sharp elbows. But I hope in certain parts of the media we have come a long way from this fair game culture.”

Talking about the sea change which has come since campaigns such as #metoo Storm asked Andersson how her organisation is pushing for improvemnts. She replied:

…I think now when you enter the industry, it’s a lot about patronage, it’s a little bit more sophisticated, more insidious. So hopefully together we can present an active force and say that, ‘this isn’t going to happen anymore’

Louise Ridley emphasised that Second Source through being an informal network keeps solidarity among women and holds events to bring all the conversations together. It is also collecting sexual harassment and Human Resources policies of different media organisations to see where the loopholes are.

She said: “We are launching a mentoring scheme to help women in the first few years of their career…women who think they might drop out of Journalism, particularly we want to focus on working class women, women from ethnic minorities. We want to offer all the normal career advice and support but what is really important for us is that we offer help on those personal and difficult issues as well.”

On the particular subject of harassment in the newsroom Storm turned to Mark Di Stefano who has recently reported on a number of such cases. He said:

I feel as though there has been a noticeable change particularly in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations and every young man in the industry should pause and take stock and reflect on their own behaviour…it’s also how we deal with our female friends, in group chats, in WhatsApp threads

There’s is a general disassociation within the media on debates around feminism and harassment of women. They are scared of putting their head above the parapet – tonight’s panel discussion on sexism within media. pic.twitter.com/Ujm1ubcgrO

— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) March 7, 2018

He added: “The hardest thing you come across when you are reporting on harassment allegations in this environment in Britain is that libel laws are very strong and reporting from anonymous sources is very hard…I have had a dozen anonymous sources who have all corroborated each other on something that could have taken down a very senior media person but I could not get past my editors because I needed someone on the record which was very hard.”

A number of questions from the audience followed the formal discussion and some shared their personal experiences of harassment. The question of redress for freelancers who have been sexually harassed was also raised.

For this Storm suggested that organisations working with freelancers, such as Acos Alliance and Frontline Register among offering other support should also embed conversations around harassment into their protection mechanism.

To watch the talk click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzmR5mUwypg

For more information about The Second Source visit: http://www.thesecondsource.co.uk/

Introducing The GroundTruth Project – Please Join us For a Drink and Discussion

The GroundTruth Project, a Boston-based non-profit news organisation, is dedicated to supporting the next generation of international correspondents.

On the eve of the US election, GroundTruth founders Charles Sennott and Gary Knight look forward to introducing GroundTruth to the London media community.

Calvin Sims, former New York Times correspondent and GroundTruth Board member, will moderate a panel discussion with columnist and author Laurie Penny and GroundTruth journalists from the US and the UK.

The Bonfire of The Vanities: America’s Election and the Media in an Age of Disaffection and Distrust

This US election is unprecedented. Partisan politics and aligned journalism have all but destroyed the reach of the US mainstream press.

Millennials prefer to voice their grievances on Twitter than in the polling booth. And in the media maelstrom, opinion often passes for fact.

We ask:
How much credibility has the media lost in this election?

Where does journalism fit in the polarised political and social landscape? What role should the media play to improve discourse?

Where will millennial journalists take the role of the media and can social media get out the millennial vote?

Chair:

Calvin Sims has more than 20 years of experience in journalism, philanthropy, and international affairs. He has served in senior roles at International House, The New York Times, Discovery Times Channel, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Ford Foundation, and leading non-profit organisations. At The New York Times, he served as bureau chief and foreign correspondent in Argentina, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia.

Speakers (full panel announced soon):

Laurie Penny is a journalist, feminist and author of five books including Unspeakable Things (Bloomsbury 2014), Cybersexism (Bloomsbury 2013) and Meat Market (Zer0 2011). She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a contributing Editor at New Statesman. Writes and speaks on social justice, pop culture, gender issues and digital politics for The Guardian, The New York Times, Vice, Salon, The Nation, The New Inquiry and many more.

Michael Goldfarb is a journalist author and broadcaster. He has reported for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and Global Post.

Matt Negrin is a freelance journalist who has written for Diane Sawyer, Politico, and The New York Times.

Kevin Grant is The GroundTruth Project’s Co-founder and Managing Editor. Previously Senior Editor of Special Reports at GlobalPost, he edits award-winning coverage on global religion and youth unemployment among others. He holds an M.A. in Online Journalism from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, where he was a Dean’s Scholar and the founding Executive Editor of Annenberg’s thriving 24/7 news organization Neon Tommy. Grant is the former Operations Director of semantic news analyzer Inform.com.