Council of Europe
European Union

The MARS Online Resource Centre is an online platform providing material on media, diversity and non-discrimination. This includes practice examples from the areas of media production, journalism and media training, media literacy education and editorial management; Council of Europe references , and selected web content on diversity and non-discrimination. Additionally, the MARS Online Resource Centre hosts the first European contact database including more than 450 media diversity and non discrimination practitioners.

All these training tools, resources, practice examples and the diversity practitioner database are classified according to their areas of action (journalism training, ethics and editorial management and media production) and are labelled with specific tags to easily accesses and search the MARS online resources centre: MED = Media, DIV = Diversity, DIS = Discrimination, SPO = Sport, TRA = Training, ETH = Ethics, EM = Editorial Management, PRO = Production, ADV = Advocacy and SFJ = Sources for journalists. We recommend to use these abbreviations to conduct an effective search in the MARS online resource centre.

The joint EU/CoE programme MARS - Media Against Racism in Sport sought to question the media’s ability to include diverse and non-discriminative approaches in the way they were covering sport issues. Sport is considered as an important area for building social cohesion and it is also a major sector of investment in the media industry. However, sport media coverage does not always reflect social and cultural diversity and does not ensure equality for all. The MARS - Media Against Racism in Sport programme was an opportunity to highlight the benefits of including diversity and non-discrimination in the media content design and production processes.

In 2011/12 over 1000 participants from the areas of media production, journalism training, media literacy, media ethics and editorial management have committed during 15 national encounters, 3 European encounters and in over 30 cross-media exchanges to the MARS – Media Against Racism in Sport programme. They produced cross-media reports, media or journalism training tools and case studies to strengthen the media’s ability to include diversity and non-discrimination in their daily work. The MARS Online Resource Centre makes these tools, examples and references easily accessible to the general public.

The CoE Campaign focused on the role of journalists and media outlets in an intercultural and diverse Europe. The Campaign enhanced media professionals’ capabilities to develop an inclusive approach of media production. The Campaign’s main results are the training toolbox Journalism Training, Discrimination and Diversity, the guidelines Tell me about Diversity! A practical approach to intercultural media content and the report Media & discrimination: When young journalists investigate.

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The joint EU/CoE MEDIANE – Media in Europe for Diversity Inclusiveness Programme seeks to strengthen the media’s abilities to include diversity and non-discrimination in their daily media work. Therefore, MEDIANE supports 160 European Exchanges of Media Practices (EEMPs), 10 European and Thematic Encounters to share practice examples and tools on diversity inclusiveness and the development of a Media-Self-Monitoring-and-Action-Support-Tool on Diversity – the Media Index on Diversity Inclusiveness.

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