Journalists from across the Commonwealth were reminded of technology’s impact on their profession yesterday, with Culture Minister Mario de Marco telling delegates citizen journalism has come of age.
He used events in the Arab Spring to illustrate his point, contrasting Arab dictators’ control of mass media to their citizens’ use of new media and online social networks.
“We can say today that the smart phone is more power-ful than the sword,” Dr de Marco noted.
He was speaking at the opening of the ninth Commonwealth Journalists Association conference, titled Journalism And Democracy In The New Media Age, that ends on Thursday.
It was a theme which recurred across the conference’s opening sessions, with Anthony De Bono, Malta’s Ambassador to Jordan and chairman emeritus of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, highlighting the challenge of using information technology to empower people and create knowledge-based societies.
Mr De Bono encouraged journalist delegates to take advantage of growing IT opportunities. “If many Commonwealth countries lost out on the agricultural and industrial revolutions, they mustn’t lose out on the ICT revolution too.
Opportunities for developing countries have never been better.” CJA International President Hassan Shahriar praised Malta for its upholding of human rights and contrasted it to the “worsening” persecution of journalists across the globe.
Allied Newspapers executive director Adrian Hillman argued that rather than asking whether digital media was good for democracy, people should be asking in what ways such media was changing the public sphere.
One of the problems, Mr Hillman said, was that the media was not unified in its understanding of its democratic role, with print, public and private broadcasters and digital media proponents all positing different arguments.
He insisted that if people were to be encouraged to participate in society, media stakeholders had to understand just how people engaged with new media and support their active participation.
Allied Newspapers executive director Adrian Hillman. Photos: Chris Sant Fournier