Association Carta di Roma

The project

The Association Carta di Roma was founded in December 2011 with the goal of implementing the Journalist’s Code of Conduct on immigration (called Carta di Roma) signed by the National Council of Journalists (CNOG) and the National Federation of the Italian Press (FNSI) in June 2008. Carta di Roma seeks to be a stable reference point for those who work on daily basis with media and minorities issues: journalists, media operators, as well as various institutions, associations and activists involved in promoting and supporting the rights of asylum seekers, refugees, minorities and migrants in the field of media reporting.  

The Association seeks to promote: 

• training activities for media operators;  
• research and monitoring activities;  
• organisation of discussions and seminars dealing with the portrayal of asylum seekers, refugees, victims of human trafficking and migrants in media; 
• special awards aimed at encouraging the correct and responsible reporting about main topics of the Carta di Roma;  
• initiatives and public events aimed to encourage the correct and responsible reporting about immigration, minorities or the right to seek asylum;  
• collaboration between media operators, university institutes, civil society organizations and editors, with the goal of promoting respect and guarantee of the rights of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants or minorities in general.  

Besides being multi-stakeholder, innovative and culturally sensitive, the good practice is also replicable: indeed, other countries (Greece, Bulgaria, and others) are adopting a similar mechanism so as to report misconduct and discrimination in the media.  

Finally, from July 2012 up to now, the project has allowed to create a unique experience at EU level, so that the EC Commission DG Home Affairs has mentioned Carta di Roma as a best practice at Eu level. 

The impact of the good practice

The project was able to create a regional common mental health strategy, aimed at taking care of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and unaccompanied minors, based on a multidisciplinary and multicultural inter-sectorial approach (public and private-social sector), also involving the personnel operating in the public health sector such as

Carta di Roma Association has become a space of constant exchange and dialogue among journalists organisations, civil society, the National Equality Body and  UNHCR, so as for a network of University faculties studying media analysis on this topic, which composed the National Carta di Roma Observatory. 

Since July 2012 the Association realised 12 meetings/short training sessions directly in the editorial staff of the mainstream news and the editor in chief (i.e. La Repubblica, Corsera, ANSA, ADN Kronos, TG2 and La7), training sessions in 8 schools of journalism and obtained the Carta di Roma training compulsory for all the Italian Schools of Journalism. They also organize and take part in professional trainings for journalists on a regular basis. Dozens of letters and press releases has been sent to news agencies and mainstream news journalists and directors, as well as several official procedures has been sent to the regional Ordini for relevant violations of the Code.