Twenty young journalists from the Middle East, the southern Mediterranean states and the EU took part in a seminar on Journalism and Intercultural Dialogue at the Euro-Mediterranean Academy for Young Journalists (EMAJ) in Amsterdam from 5 until 16 October 2009.
Immigration, Islamophobia and dialogue – the participants in the second iteration of the Euro-Mediterranean Academy for Young Journalists in Amsterdam were dealing with volatile subject matter. The objective of the ten-day seminar was to promote intercultural journalism based on personal experience. Therefore participants had been chosen from more than 300 applicants from countries on either side of the Mediterranean. This cultural bridge between journalists from two different regions helped to challenge misconceptions that are often reproduced by the media themselves.
Dialogue, discussions on current issues and lectures by international experts supported the participants as they examined various aspects of migration. The practical work of the EMAJ team was supervised and assisted by experienced trainers, experts and journalists from each region, while contributing their own point of view about journalism in Europe and the Middle East. “Since 9/11, everything has changed. Europe and the Middle East are beginning to grow ever further apart. We hardly understand one another,” sayd Maciej Woroch, foreign correspondent in London for the Polish television network TVN and EMAJ trainer, to emphasize the importance of the academy.
The idea of bringing together journalists from the EUROMED region – i.e. EU member states and Mediterranean countries involved in the Barcelona Process – arose during the 2007 Euro-Mediterranean Youth Parliament in Berlin. The Euro-Mediterranean Academy for Young Journalists (EMAJ) is the follow-up project. The first iteration of EMAJ, organized by the Goethe-Institut Amman, took place in May 2008 in Amman (Jordan). The second EMAJ was organized by the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam in cooperation with partners and former participants.
