23 June 2006 – The journalism ethics charity MediaWise is relocating to the St Matthias Campus of the University of the West of England in nearby Fishponds, after 13 years based at the Easton Business Centre in the heart of the inner city.
As from 1 July our new address will be The MediaWise Trust, University of the West of England, Oldbury Court Road, Bristol, BS16 2JP. Tel: 0117 93 99 333. Our email (info@mediawise.org.uk) and website (www.mediawise.org.uk) addresses will remain the same.
“This is a move we have been planning for some years, and it is made all the more appropriate as UWE launches its new MA in Journalism this autumn. We hope to play an active part in its development,” says MediaWise Chair Charles Fletcher.
Unfortunately the move also coincides with a loss of staff. We are particular sorry to lose Di Kent who has been a stalwart administrator over the last seven years. Like so many small charities our biggest problem has been in attracting core funding. We have to rely increasingly on earnings from training programmes and projects.”
MediaWise will remain an independent charity devoted to improving the standards and standing of journalism. We shall continue to provide free professional advice to members of the public affected by inaccurate or intrusive media coverage, but we hope to develop new partnerships especially with the academy. We shall continue to share offices with the Exiled Journalists’ Network which grew out of our Refugees Asylum-seekers and the Media (RAM) Project.
Current MediaWise projects:
Children and the Media – Our association with UNICEF continues with a team visiting Iran in July to help in the creation of a children’s supplement for a national newspaper. We are expecting to expand our role in the development of children’s media projects internationally.
Health and the Media – This autumn should see publication of our new handbook ‘Making News of HIV and AIDS’ for World Health Communication Associates, with whom we are also working on the creation of a World Health Editors’ Network (WHEN).
Journalism and Public Trust is an ongoing research exercise in partnership with Cardiff University School of Journalism and Nick Davies of The Guardian.
Refugees, Asylum-seekers and the Media – We are awaiting a publication date from National Refugee Integration Forum for our joint report with the Information Centre on Asylum and Refugee (ICAR) on the effectiveness of the PCC guidance to editors, meanwhile we continue to monitor media coverage. Following publication of our ‘Exiled Journalists in Europe’ report, we are working with European partners to improve facilities for persecuted journalists who seek asylum in Europe.
Suicide and the Media has several strands. The results of our study about the efficacy of guidelines for journalists should be published by the Department of Health funded Shift Stigma programme this autumn. Two action-research projects, in Sri Lanka and Taiwan are due for completion in 2007.
Mike Jempson
Director, MediaWise
(Bulletin No 123)