EBU launches summit for top media women

The European Broadcasting Union has established a high-level summit for women in the media.

Senior women from the European media industry met in Brussels on 5 February 2014 for the first EBU Women Executives in the Media (WEM) summit, the brainchild of the Union’s Director General Ingrid Deltenre. She hopes it will become an annual forum for women media executives to network and share professional experiences and work towards achieving greater influence in their sector.

“The media both reflects and creates socio-cultural realities and is a powerful force in shaping public opinion and culture,” she said. “But women are still badly underrepresented in the upper echelons of the sector.

“I wanted to enable women media leaders to meet face-to-face once a year to share ideas and experiences. WEM is about bringing together media professionals with similar profiles so that we can learn from each other and be proactive about gender equality in the media.” 

The first guest of honour was French political journalist Michèle Cotta, formerly President of Radio France, Director-General at France 2 and News Director at TF1.

Issues covered included: Is there a future for quality journalism? Europe, where do we go from here? The dual European model of broadcasting. The importance of a network for women executives.

The first WEM summit was held at the EBU’s Brussels offices, but organisers hope future events will be hosted by a different EBU Member each year.