From a small, amateur local radio station, Arta has developed within a few years into an exemplary ethical and professional media organisation. Arta worked closely with various international organisations to improve its institutional and editorial standards and its managerial capacity.
Editorially, Arta developed comprehensive and detailed editorial policies and guidelines addressing the challenges it faces. These not only include general, standard editorial policies and guidelines, but also specific, even unique, ones such as the “Religious Content Policy” and the “Multilingualism Policy”, in order to help its journalists produce high-quality and balanced content within their complex local context.
Organisationally, Arta has developed comprehensive and detailed policies and procedures for all aspects of institutional and media work (finance, HR, procurement, safety and security and so on).
Following the Turkish attack on north Syria in October 2019, Arta also started to digitise all its paperwork to reduce security risks. It also introduced bilingual paper templates (in Arabic and Kurdish) for all its administrative forms. It was perhaps the first institution in Syria to do so.
Arta also developed an effective internal complaints mechanism, through which the management receives anonymous feedback, suggestions and complaints from its employees regarding both the content and administrative issues. It is also in the process of developing an independent external complaint mechanism for its audience.
