March 13, members of the Supervisory Board of «7x7» gathered for the first meeting at the Sakharov Center in Moscow. Its main issues were confirmation of the formation of the Board, the passing of the regulation, discussion of realities and plans of the online-journal. Coordinators and journalists of regional editorials also came to the capital.
Photo: Yaroslava Parkhacheva
Board members were chosen from experts in the field of media, people with certain moral and ethical principles, close to the editorial board of the online-journal, the moderator of the meeting, chairman of the Komi Memorial Human Rights Commission Igor Sazhin said.
Those who confirmed their membership in the Board: member of the human rights movement in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia, one of the founders of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and until 2012 — a member of the Commission on Human Rights under the President of Russia Lyudmila Alekseeva, a human rights activist, journalist and editor in chief of the online news site "Caucasian Knot" Gregory Shvedov, human rights, civic activist, a member of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation Andrei Yurov, director of the Center for media Rights Galina Arapova, director of the Kirov NGO Support Centre and a member of the Public Chamber of the Kirov region Oleg Tkachev, chairman of the Committee "Civil Assistance" Svetlana Ganushkina. A few more people may enter the Board in the near future.
Today members of the Supervisory Board passed a regulation, the main purposes of which — to monitor the values of the online-journal: democracy, freedom of speech, anti-fascism. Besides, the Board will observe the professionalism and ethics of journalism.
According to the document, the Board will be elected for six years at the suggestion of the editorial board. At the same time the one who is directly related to «7x7» (a journalist or its founder) may not become a member of the Supervisory Board. The number of observers is unlimited.
The Broad agreed to gather at least once every two years, to express their wishes and offers as a simple majority, and each member can make a withdrawal decision on his own.
Gregory Shvedov proposed to develop a code of ethics of «7x7» and discuss what technology will be used to observe its compliance. They also talked about the ethical and legal standards, such as whether to keep the controversial texts in the blogs and how to reconcile it with freedom of speech. Galina Arapova suggested that the online-journal should treat its bloggers as a freelance authors.
“Of course, you are responsible and have to edit such texts, controversial wording, it is reasonable and correct, but you need to decide how you will do it,” she said.
Board member of the Komi Memorial Human Rights Commission Pavel Andreev briefly explained how online-journal sees itself in the near future. According to him, «7x7» will become a symbiosis of media and public project.
“Continuing regional horizontal development of the regions of the country without million-strong cities, we’ll also continue to work with journalists, due to our news feed, scan the informational environment and the problems of these regions, as well as to select interesting people in the field, continue to establish interregional interaction. We won’t be just informants, but also co-organizers of various interregional networking events in different areas,” Pavel Andreev said.
Participants of the meeting agreed to work out the Supervisory Board activity proposals in two months.
Yaroslava Parkhacheva, «7x7»
Original: http://7x7-journal.ru/item/39117
