KUWAT, March 12 (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 hearsays in order to be more fixed in news reporting to prevent these organizations from elucidating their messages to the public eye.

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. (end) yt.aas.aq

Source: Kuwait News Agency