Brussels - On 13 September, the International Labour Organization (ILO) hosted a training for the editors of Equal Times, a trilingual news and opinion website which has been producing quality journalism on labour issues since 2012. The training aimed to further improve reporting on labor migration and fair recruitment by sharing tools for journalists and editors.

The workshop was attended in Brussels at the ITUC headquarters by the English (Tamara Gausi), Spanish (Marta Checa), and French (Mathilde Dorcadie) language editors of Equal Times as well as Ira Rachmawati and Silvia Cormacci from ITUC. Equal Times works with a wide network of authors and journalists and covers labour, human rights, culture, development, the environment, politics and the economy from a social justice perspective.

The training was provided by ILO consultant Charles Autheman, who structured the workshop in 5 chapters: Numbers, Words, Images, Frames, and Channels. In these chapters, the focus was on showing good practices to follow when engaging with labour migrants and reporting labour migration.

Under Numbers, statistics on labour migration were shared, while in the chapter Words, key concepts were discussed to dispel confusion between concepts such as 'refugee' and 'migrant' or 'human trafficking' and 'human smuggling'. Resources including the Media-Friendly Glossary on Migration or the ILO media toolkit on forced labour and fair recruitment were presented to encourage ethical reporting on labour migration. In the chapters on Images, Frames, and Channels, evidence from previous media monitoring was discussed in order to identify how Equal Times can develop its approach to labour migration reporting and avoid common pitfalls.

Consult the tools shared during the training:

Reporting on forced labour and fair recruitment: An ILO toolkit for journalists

Virtual launch of the ILO toolkit for journalists: Reporting on forced labour and fair recruitment

Gender-sensitive reporting and communication on labour migration

Media engagement on forced labour and fair recruitment

Information Brief: Promoting balanced media reporting on migrant workers in the Arab States

Migrant Voice report: Heroes, Threats & Victims