Respect Words 18 - Direct Provision

Donie Tarrant talks to Senator Aodhan O’Riordan. On 15 July 2014 Ó Ríordáin was appointed Minister of State with responsibility for New Communities, Culture and Equality at the Departments of Justice and Equality and Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. As Minister of State he prioritised reforming the Direct Provision system. More on the project: Amid a troubling global context – the dehumanisation of migration policy, a decline in sensitive to human life and human rights, a rise in Islamophobic and xenophobic speech, the commercialisation of journalism – more than 150 European radio outlets and nearly 1,300 journalists from the eight RESPECT WORDS partner countries represented by IPI (Austria), Radio Dreyeckland (Germany), ERT (Greece), Civil Radio (Hungary), Near FM (Ireland), Radio Popolare (Italy), Radio Student (Slovenia) and the project coordinator EMARTv (Spain) have joined together to help strengthen media coverage of migrants and minorities, an indispensable tool in the fight against hate speech. Under the theme “Ethical Journalism against Hate Speech”, the RESPECT WORDS project focuses on the need to rethink the way in which media outlets and journalists cover issues related to migration and ethnic and religious minorities. As part of the project, each partner is producing a series of 20 programmes exploring how media deals with migration and minorities in each partner country.