By Innocent Onoja
The United States Embassy Nigeria will mark the 2018 World Press Freedom Day with multiple events from May 2 through May 5, 2018, in partnership with Nigerian institutions and organizations.
Visiting Nigeria for the activities will be an American journalist, Ms. Linda Hervieux.
Ms. Hervieux is both a journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the Daily Beast among other publications.
She will speak on “The Role of Media in Holding Government Accountable” and “The Impact of Hate Speech on Press Freedom.”
U.S. Ambassador W. Stuart Symington and the U.S. Embassy Counselor for Public Affairs, Mr. Aruna Amirthanayagam, are also scheduled to give remarks at some of the events.
The week-long activities begin on May 2nd when the Embassy will host a screening and panel discussion on the investigative movie “The Insider,” a fictionalized account of the true story of a man who decided to tell the world what the seven major tobacco companies knew (and concealed) about the dangers of their product.
May 3rd there will be a World Press Freedom Day lecture at the Nile University of Nigeria, to students, faculty members and invited journalists on “The Role of the Media in Holding Government Accountable.”
May 4, Ms. Hervieux will join other panelists and an invited audience of journalists, government officials and civil society activists to discuss“The Impact of Hate Speech on Press Freedom.”
The series of engagements for Ms. Hervieux will conclude on May 5th when she will interact with journalism students at the International Institute of Journalism to discuss “Ethics in Journalism: Combating Fake News.”
She will also deliver keynote remarks at the NUJ Press Freedom Awards 2018. The topic of her address will concern “The Role of the Media in Holding Government Accountable.”
