Journalists from Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Spain, Slovenia, and Serbia visited the Alabama Public Radio newsroom on Friday. The delegation was part of a U.S. State Department initiative known as the International Visitor Leadership Program. APR, the University of Alabama’s Digital Media Center, and UA’s School of Law gave presentations ranging from journalism ethics to the Alabama based 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision “New York Times versus Sullivan,” which governs how news outlets can be sued for publishing knowingly false content.
The delegates’ visit to Alabama Public Radio also provided an opportunity for APR student interns Chris Ahlf, Torin Daniel, Emily Ahearn, and Matthew Moran to speak one-on-one with these veteran reporters from Europe. Ahlf and Daniel also addressed the delegation on upcoming stories they’re producing for APR on human trafficking and COVID-19.
Along with in-depth presentations, delegation visits through the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program afford the chance for foreign visitors to experience the local flavor of host communities. In Tuscaloosa, that includes Alabama Crimson Tide football. Alabama Public Radio offered the delegation the opportunity to take souvenir photographs with a commemorative Crimson Tide football signed by the 1992 championship team led by Coach Gene Stallings.
This is the seventh time Alabama Public Radio has presented for delegations of IVLP, which is the U.S. State Department’s premiere “future world leader” spotter program. Previous groups included future British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and Oscar Arias of Costa Rica before he won the Nobel peace prize. Previous talks have focused on APR's fourteen month investigation into human trafficking before a group from African, avoiding news disinformation before a delegation from Europe, Central Asia, the Baltics, and the Balkans, APR also presented twice for a similar initiative known as the Congressional Office for International Leadership. That effort included speaking to a delegation of journalists from the former Soviet nation of Belarus, and group of reporters from nations associated with the "silk road," including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, The Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia.
The U.S. State Department publicly cited the positive international impact of APR's presentations, including the creation of a podcast for teenagers in Lithuania to help them avoid fake news. This content was produced by IVLP delegate Tomas Martinaitis, who was recently elected as a member of the Lithuanian Parliament.
These international visitors are sponsored and coordinated oy the Huntsville based citizen diplomacy group Global Ties Alabama.
