Zoran Pašali?. Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula
Irfan Bukhari
The Peninsula
Zoran Pašalić, the Protector of Citizens of the Republic of Serbia (Ombudsman), has said that international cooperation and coordination is needed to counter growing threat of hate speech and violence on social media.
“This conference on social media is very important which will produce good results. In Serbia, we are dealing with online incitement to violence and hate speech and these issues must be addressed on priority,” he said recently while talking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of International Conference on ‘Social Media: Challenges and Ways to Promote Freedoms and Protect Activists’ which was held on February 16-17 in Doha.
He said that Serbia would introduce new pieces of legislation to address the issue of online hate speech. “The cooperation and coordination between the countries is needed to counter the challenge as social media knows no borders.”
Pašalić further said that the conference would also help proposing workable recommendations to address issues related to online violence. “The conference is very well-organised, topics of discussion are very good as well as experts from all over the world talked on them,” he added.
Meanwhile, Zuliana Lainez, President of International Federation of Journalists’ (IFJ) Latin American regional group, said that print and other traditional media would continue to thrive despite social media.
“The international conference on social media hosted by Qatar is very good initiative to discuss many issues and challenges revolving around traditional media and social media and I appreciate Qatar for organising such an event,” Lainez said recently while talking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the conference.
Zuliana Lainez said that social media would not replace traditional journalism, but it would make journalists more eager to provide good content to excel on social media.
She said that journalists should practice self-criticism, scrutinise their work, and ensure that the information and news they published was correct in order to restore readers’ confidence in traditional journalism.
“The role of a journalist is not to just transfer the information as it is but they also must verify its authenticity. Those who uncovered many of the major scams in many countries of the world are professional journalists.”
She further said that readers had lost confidence in social media because of the misinformation, fake news which were being repeated and promoted on those platforms and readers had started returning to the traditional media because they wanted to obtain real information that only professional journalists could provide. “We must work to restore the journalists’ dignity and defend strongly this profession,” she added.
