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Reporting objectively from a conflict is never easy. Concerns for your own personal safety and daily scenes of death and destruction mean that journalists can be overcome by personal emotion, while feelings of patriotism and “us against them” can be difficult to extinguish.

The professional ethical dilemmas presented by reporting from a conflict zone are very familiar to Anya, a journalist from the city of Donetsk, who has been covering the conflict in and around Ukraine from the beginning.

“It is difficult to remain objective in such situations,” says Anya, fully aware that journalists across all sides of the conflict face similar professional dilemmas. She was among 200 journalists and media experts from both sides of the line of contact who gathered in Mariupol, a city in the south of the Donetsk region, for the Donbas Media Forum from 9 to 12 June 2016 to discuss her personal and professional experiences of reporting on the conflict.

It was clear during the Forum, which was organized by local NGOs such as the Donetsk Institute of Information and the Donetsk Press Club that tensions among journalists deeply persist. These are partly down to the diametrically opposed political reporting on the conflict by the journalists. Indeed most of the journalists from the Donetsk region, including Anya, preferred to remain anonymous at the Forum.

[node id="250356" preset="medium" align="left" description="Oleksiy Matsuka, journalist, founder of the web-based project ‘News of Donbas’ and organiser of the Donbas Media Forum 2016, talks about difficulties media professionals face in the field, Mariupol, 10 June 2016. (Evgeny Sosnovsky)"]

Best practices on objective reporting

The discussions at the Forum explored ways of enhancing the professionalism of the reporting in ways which can help rekindle trust between communities and counter deliberate misreporting.

One of the tools presented was 'Conflict Sensitive Journalism - Best Practices and Recommendations’, a new manual published by the Officer of the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine. Among many other things, the guide offers tips on how to work with vulnerable populations or how to verify facts and illustrates in plain language and through real-life case studies what media professionals need to do in the field in order to enhance their reporting.

“The guidelines aim to both advance the safety of journalists covering the conflict in Ukraine and support the development of conflict-sensitive media coverage”, says OSCE PCU National Project Officer Maryna Bezkorovaina.

Reporting from a conflict zone: Some tips

• No story is worth your life! Journalists need to ensure their personal protection in combat operations zones – preparatory planning in advance of the trip and attending hostile environment and first aid courses are crucial.
• Truth is the first victim in a conflict. Tensions are high and people pick sides. But it is crucial for journalists to stay impartial and to seek the truth – or at least be transparent in a story about the fact that information is hard to verify due to the reporting circumstances. 
• Do not stigmatise or discriminate when writing about displaced persons and other vulnerable groups and do not facilitate political manipulations on the subject.
• Make a person the centre of your story and think about consequences of your reporting.  
• Do not distort reality for the sake of a nice picture and sensational text. Journalists have no justification for twisting facts, inventing non-existent things or using footage that does not reflect reality.

Source: ‘Conflict Sensitive Journalism - Best Practices and Recommendations’, published by the Office of the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine (2016)

A threat to peace

Objective reporting from the conflict zone is important, because misreporting and propaganda can inflame tensions. The manual is therefore a product aiming to contribute to efforts to bring peace in Ukraine.

The lack of interest in and the dehumanization of the “other side” can threaten the potential for sustainable peace, says journalist Dejan Anastasijević with the Serbian weekly Vreme. At the Donbas Media Forum, he recalled his experiences as a correspondent on the Yugoslav wars of secession. “Do not make the situation worse by using harsh language against each other.”

The handbook features the results of a study implemented by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in partnership with the Ukrainian NGOs Telekritika and the Institute of Mass Media, which revealed serious misconceptions among leading editors and prominent Ukrainian journalists regarding the role of the media in times of conflict.

[node id="250361" preset="medium" align="left" description="Dejan Anastasijevic, Serbian journalist from Vreme newspaper states: “Do not make the situation worse by using harsh language against each other,” in a panel discussion at the Forum in Mariupol, 10 June 2016. (Evgeny Sosnovsky)"]

The study highlighted over-generalized reporting, narratives characterised by an 'us' versus 'them' perspective, inflammatory language and dehumanization of the conflict sides. Half of the analysed national online publications reported incomplete information about the conflict, while about a quarter of the material primarily relied on data from social networks. Moreover, the problems and needs of the people living in the areas not controlled by the Ukrainian government received little or no coverage.

“Journalists need to understand that they are not soldiers fighting for a particular side,” says Oleksiy Matsuka, a journalist and founder of the web-based project ‘News of Donbas’. “The manual helps journalists return to the origins and basic rules of their profession.”

The manual was a crucial element of the OSCE Project Co-ordinator’s “Supporting Conflict Sensitive Journalism in Ukraine” project, which is partially funded by the Government of the United Kingdom and the International Media Support (IMS) NGO. The manual draws on the most up-to-date practices based on the highest quality academic research.

The book was also earlier presented in Lviv Media Forum, in western Ukraine, and English, Ukrainian and Russian versions of the book are available on the OSCE website and as an app for iOS and Android devices.

“It is extremely useful for journalists to have a handbook they can easily access whenever and wherever they need it,” says Mariana Seminishin, organizer of the Lviv Media Forum. “The manual provides both life-saving information and guidance that could pave the way for peace in Ukraine.” 

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KYIV, 5 AUGUST 2016 –OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Madina Jarbussynova, on Friday concluded an official visit to Ukraine aimed at raising awareness of human trafficking and the risks encountered by the most vulnerable groups as a consequence of the current crisis.

During her five-day visit, she met with representatives of the Donetsk Oblast state administration and female Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Kramatorsk. Ambassador Jarbussynova also travelled to Kharkiv to talk to relevant civil society representatives about the situation on the ground, how to prevent the expansion of the conflict-driven human trafficking phenomenon, and to evaluate existing mechanisms of identifying, referring and assisting victims of trafficking in human beings.

“More than one-and-a-half million citizens have been displaced – a vast number that demands a comprehensive response,” Jarbussynova said. “This vulnerable group can easily find itself in situations where human trafficking may occur.”

In Kyiv, the OSCE Special Representative met with Ukrainian authorities to discuss progress in anti-trafficking measures and review future plans.

“The Government of Ukraine has recently demonstrated a high level of commitment to addressing human trafficking, particularly in enhancing its victim identification efforts and in filing cases to relevant courts”, said Jarbussynova.

At the same time, she noted that there are still considerable gaps in the National Referral Mechanism for victims, and that long-term, sustainable measures should be sought.

The Special Representative travels regularly to Ukraine, engaging with high-level authorities and holding training sessions together with the Special Monitoring Mission and the OSCE Project Co-ordinator to strengthen the capacity of the Ukrainian institutions and OSCE monitors to spot human trafficking trends and to report on alleged cases.

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Ractopamine is a drug given to pigs and cows in the last months of their lives to "make the meat more lean". Taiwan has been blocking imports of meat from the US over concerns that the drug's residues that stay in the meat are less than healthy. At a recent Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting, the meat producing and exporting countries, and those heavily lobbied and pressured by US diplomats prevailed in a close vote to make the agency adopt a standard for residues of ractopamine in meat. That means that the countries that resist meat from doped animals will have a harder time to justify why they don't want to subject their citizens to yet another experiment for the sake of the economy of large-scale animal-to-meat operations. Scott Tips of the National Health Federation has represented the consumer side at Codex and he reports on the meeting: After taking a vote by secret ballot this late morning, the Chairman of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, Mr. Sanjay Dave, announced the results of the voting on whether or not Ractopamine (a steroid-like vet drug, the residues of which remain in the slaughtered animal to then be consumed by meat-eaters) standards were adopted. Out of 143 ballots cast, the vote was 69 for Ractopamine, 67 against Ractopamine, with 7 abstaining. If only one vote had shifted from the “for” camp to the “against” camp, then the result would have been completely different and the Ractopamine standard would not have been adopted. This voting was forced upon the Commission by the insistence of the United States, Costa Rica, and Brazil that the long stalemate over the adoption of a standard for Ractopamine MRLs (Maximum Residue Levels) could not be resolved through the Codex-preferred process of “consensus” but would, after all, have to be voted upon......

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We continue our discussion of apostolic succession by examining some common objections given by Protestants, found in a sermon outline published on Calvin College's CCEL Historical Church document site. It becomes clear that for Protestants, reaction against apostolic succession is not based on solid Biblical or historical grounds, but rather on the need to question and reject the authority of Rome (papal and magisterial) and its excesses, which are not necessarily a part of the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.

Recently I have come across an anti-Orthodox polemic which rejects our veneration of icons on the grounds that venerating an image painted on a board of Christ, His Mother, or His saints is contrary to the practice of the apostles and of the earliest Church. The objection is stated with some sophistication, and is not the usual fundamentalist reference to the Mosaic Law’s proscription of carved statues used in worship (e.g. Exodus 20:4f). This more sophisticated objection acknowledges that there were indeed images of Christ, His Mother, and His saints used in the early Church such as can be found in the funerary art of the catacombs and on the walls of churches (such as that of Dura Europos). But, it points out, there is no evidence that these images functioned as anything more than mere decoration. That is, the people did not come up to the wall to kiss the wall art or venerate the images.

As a Christian you should expect to be mocked or to be the object of disgust but the Lord will heal you. You'll not be the first to be ridiculed!

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The problem of dispatching is key to management of shared bicycles. Considering the number of borrowing and returning events during the dispatching period, optimisation plans of shared bicycles dispatching are studied in this paper. Firstly, the dispatching model of shared bicycles is built, which regards the dispatching cost and lost demand as optimised objectives. Secondly, the solution algorithm is designed based on non-dominated Genetic Algorithm. Finally, a case is given to illustrate the application of the method. The research results show that the method proposed in the paper can get optimised dispatching plans, and the model considering borrowing and returning during dispatching period has better effects with a 39.3% decrease in lost demand.

Aim/Purpose: This paper focuses on designing and implementing the rubric for objective JAVA programming assessments. An unsupervised learning approach was used to group learners based on their performance in the results obtained from the rubric, reflecting their learning ability. Background: Students' learning outcomes have been evaluated subjectively using a rubric for years. Subjective assessments are simple to construct yet inconsistent and biased to evaluate. Objective assessments are stable, reliable, and easy to conduct. However, they usually lack rubrics. Methodology: In this study, a Top-Down assessment approach is followed, i.e., a rubric focused on the learning outcome of the subject is designed, and the proficiency of learners is judged by their performance in conducting the task given. A JAVA rubric is proposed based on the learning outcomes like syntactical, logical, conceptual, and advanced JAVA skills. A JAVA objective quiz (with multiple correct options) is prepared based on the rubric criteria, comprising five questions per criterion. The examination was conducted for 209 students (100 from the MCA course and 109 from B.Tech. course). The suggested rubric was used to compute the results. K-means clustering was applied to the results to classify the students according to their learning preferences and abilities. Contribution: This work contributes to the field of rubric designing by creating an objective programming assessment and analyzing the learners’ performance using machine learning techniques. It also facilitates a reliable feedback approach offering various possibilities in student learning analytics. Findings: The designed rubric, partial scoring, and cluster analysis of the results help us to provide individual feedback and also, group the students based on their learning skills. Like on average, learners are good at remembering the syntax and concepts, mediocre in logical and critical thinking, and need more practice in code optimization and designing applications. Recommendations for Practitioners: The practical implications of this work include rubric designing for objective assessments and building an informative feedback process. Faculty can use this approach as an alternative assessment measure. They are the strong pillars of e-assessments and virtual learning platforms. Recommendation for Researchers: This research presents a novel approach to rubric-based objective assessments. Thus, it provides a fresh perspective to the researchers promising enough opportunities in the current era of digital education. Impact on Society: In order to accomplish the shared objective of reflective learning, the grading rubric and its accompanying analysis can be utilized by both instructors and students. As an instructional assessment tool, the rubric helps instructors to align their pedagogies with the students’ learning levels and assists students in updating their learning paths based on the informative topic-wise scores generated with the help of the rubric. Future Research: The designed rubric in this study can be extended to other programming languages and subjects. Further, an adaptable weighted rubric can be created to execute a flexible and reflective learning process. In addition, outcome-based learning can be achieved by measuring and analyzing student improvements after rubric evaluation.

A well-documented architecture can greatly improve comprehension and maintainability. However, shorter release cycles and quick delivery patterns results in negligence of architecture. In such situations, the architecture can be recovered from its current implementation based on considering dependency relations. In literature, structural and semantic dependencies are commonly used software features, and directory information along with co-change/change history information are among rarely utilised software features. But, they are found to help improve architecture recovery. Therefore, we consider investigating various features that may further improve the accuracy of existing architecture recovery techniques and evaluate their feasibility by considering them in different pairs. We compared five state-of-the-art methods under different feature subsets. We identified that two of them commonly outperform others but surprisingly with low accuracy in some evaluations. Further, we propose a new subset of features that reflects more accurate user perceptions and hence, results in improving the accuracy of architecture recovery techniques.

Aim/Purpose: This article examines how learning activities draw on resources in the work context to learn. Background The background is that if knowledge no longer is seen mainly as objects, but processes, how then to understand boundary objects? Our field study of learning activities reveals the use of pictures, documents and emotions for learning in the geographically distributed Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority Methodology: The study is a qualitative study consisting of interview data, observation data, and documents. Contribution: Contribute to practice based theorizing. Findings: Three ideal types of representing practices have been identified, i.e., ‘Visualizing’, ‘Documenting’ and ‘Testing’. All three are combined with storytelling, sensing, reflections and sensemaking, which point at the importance of processes in learning. The article also add insights about how emotions can be an important resource for boundary spanning – and sensemaking – by creating the capability of reflecting upon and integrating different knowledge areas in the in- practice context. Recommendations for Practitioners: Look for boundary objects within your field to promote online learning. Recommendation for Researchers: Study boundary objects in work context to understand learning. Impact on Society Role of objects in human learning. Future Research: Focus on how emotions can be used for online learning.