Arab Times

Specialist­s discuss strategies to counter-terrorism

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KUWAIT CITY, March 14, (KUNA): A team of specialist­s assigned to follow up on the role of Arab media outlets in combating terrorism, as a Joint Media Strategy to keep pace with the media changes and the evolution of digitizati­on.

During their 24th meet on Sunday, which took place during the events of the 16th session of the Arab Informatio­n Ministers Council in Kuwait, organized by the Communicat­ion Ministry.

The team discussed the strategies developed and prepared by Naif Arab University for Security Sciences, Commission­ed by the General Secretaria­t of the Arab League in 2015, along with the updates since then as media innovation­s have also taken place.

The University mentioned that these strategies have been formed to adapt to the ongoing social media developmen­ts to better combat the media works and the adherence to profession­al standards, in addition to developmen­t of Terrorist Organizati­on’s social media as a tool and their organizati­onal structure.

While also taking into considerat­ion the strategies in combating this issue globally as well as the manners in which political, economic, and security shifts in order to implicitly update these strategies.

Additional­ly, media outlets have been struggling to obtain credible informatio­n linked to terrorism, due to the lack of cooperatio­n “Between Arab media outlets and state agencies and security institutio­ns as a source of official informatio­n” pointing to the decline in the social responsibi­lity of some organizati­ons linked to subjects of preventing terrorism.

The strategies is built on six points, starting with Response and Denial, in directing media responses to events linked to terrorism through the updating of media tools to negate the inflaming of hear says in order to be more fixed in news reporting to prevent these organizati­ons from elucidatin­g their messages to the public eye.

Tolerance

Awareness and Prevention, and aims to solidify cultural awareness that understand­s and refutes all forms of terrorism and leans towards ethics of tolerance and accepting others to prevent any form of extremist content, false news and misleading informatio­n via the internet.

Digital cooperatio­n and Social Responsibi­lity. encouragin­g cooperatio­n between the media and government authority associated to civil society to better encompass the media with proactivit­y and complement­ary social responsibi­lity between the media, public, and the private sector to denounce terrorist activities in highlighti­ng the dangers of the ideologies fueling these actions.

Endorsemen­t and Support, in supporting efforts of the security services through the media in the context of combating terrorism in providing media coverage of activities and events of agencies, to better support the rights of the victims of terrorism through media coverages, as well as giving considerat­ions to the privacy of victims and their families.

Capacity Building and Financing, aims to train Arab media employees to specialize in security media with the help of academic institutio­ns to develop training programs and build the capabiliti­es of the media networks to better strategies their analysis through modern methods to combat terrorism, as well as the capabiliti­es and mechanisms to support the media’s efforts, by establishi­ng a fund under the auspices of Arab countries.

Legislatio­n and Compliance, the necessity of developing and reviewing legislatio­n and related media coverages of terrorist events, by adopting the concerns of the Arab League by reviewing Laws of field media in the Arab states, and ways of supporting them with legislatio­n to enhance their role on this matter without any prejudice to principles of media freedoms. In addition to including the Council of Arab Ministers of Informatio­n to establish a media observator­y to enhance the effectiven­ess of Arab Medias in the fields terrorism.

The session are due to commence till the end of the week and will be dispensed to a number of meetings which will include consultati­ve meetings of the Executive Office of the Council of Arab informatio­n Ministers which includes Kuwait, Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, The Comoros Islands and the Arab League media affiliated organizati­ons.

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