Tag: Media

  • Reporting the Covid Pandemic from the Global South

    This piece in The Open Notebook delves into the experiences of “journalists in India and throughout the Global South” who were covering the Covid pandemic and the challenges they faced (and overcame) “as they sought to tailor coverage of a global pandemic to their unique, regional audiences.” 

    This is how the authors of the piece frame the commonalities in these experiences: 

    “There was the language issue, of course: The world’s 8 billion people speak over 7,000 languages, yet English is the lingua franca of science and scientific research, and many other languages lack even the terminology to convey science’s more complicated technical concepts. But newsrooms also had to bridge the social and cultural divides that often separate the science world from the communities they serve. Meanwhile, they were battling an infodemic of false and misleading claims, which spread across borders, continents, countries, and into even the most remote communities almost as quickly as the virus itself.”

    The authors spoke to journalists from India, Nigeria, China, Peru, Colombia, Philipines, and Kenya for the report. 

    Read the full article here.

  • Including the Global South in Science Writing in the West

    In this piece for The Open Notebook, which “is widely regarded as the leading online source of training and educational materials for journalists who cover science,” freelance science and technology journalist Karen Emslie talks about coming to the realisation that the Global South is under-represented or often completely absent from science writing and reporting: 

    “As a Scottish journalist reporting predominantly for publications in the United States, I have spent most of my career writing in English and interviewing expert sources in Europe and the U.S. That has been the easy path for me and many others. After all, most leading scientific journals are published in English; many studies’ corresponding authors are in the U.S. or Europe. And it generally takes less time for me and other English speakers to connect with sources in these countries than in others where we might run up against language and cultural barriers.”

    As she points out, this is an important issue because its consequences “aren’t just about a loss of narrative detail—they risk misportraying what science is, and whom it is done by.” 

    Realising that she “wasn’t entirely sure where to start looking for geographically diverse scientists to talk to,” Emslie sets out to remedy the situation. To that end, she shares “a few tips to leverage some of the tools and strategies you probably already use in cultivating sources.” 

    Furthermore, she has compiled a nonexhaustive yet growing “sampling of directories and other resources that can help reporters find expert sources around the world, with a particular focus on regions of the Global South.” 

    Read the full article and access the directory here.

  • A Creative Commons Primer for Journalists

    Creative Commons, in partnership with Open Newswire, recently released this “practical primer on Creative Commons for journalism, and how to make the most of CC licenses.”

    According to the Open Newswire website:

    “Open Newswire is a consolidated feed of freely-republishable news articles written by professional journalists from around the world! Articles are written in over 90 languages and are available to be used under Creative Commons licenses or similar guidelines.”

    This guide is a useful tool because, as the Creative Commons post says, “some journalists may not be aware of the potential and ease of these tools.” Furthermore, the guide itself is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. 

    The complete “A Journalist’s Guide to Creative Commons” can be downloaded or read for free here.

  • Buzzfeed News Shutting Down

    As this report summarises: 

    “Last week, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced that BuzzFeed News is being shut down, leading to layoffs of about 15% of BuzzFeed staff. The layoffs will affect the company’s business, content, tech and admin teams as well as some staff in international markets. In an email to staff reprinted by CNBC, Peretti said they can no longer fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone operation.”

    Reportedly, the company’s news content will be shifted to Huffpost: 

    “The company’s sole news provider will now be HuffPost. BuzzFeed.com will continue its signature clickbait content, including listicles, quizzes, celebrity gossip and more.”

    Read a comprehensive report on the issue here.

  • PBS and NPR Stop Using Twitter

    As widely reported, PBS and NPR have stopped using Twitter. 

    According to the National Public Radio or NPR website: “NPR is an independent, nonprofit media organization that was founded on a mission to create a more informed public.”

    According to the Public Broadcasting Service or PBS website: “PBS is a membership organization that, in partnership with its member stations, serves the American public with programming and services of the highest quality, using media to educate, inspire, entertain and express a diversity of perspectives.”

    To access multi-media content put out by NPR, visit their website here. To take a look at PBS programming, visit their website here or their Youtube channel here.

  • Kenyan Deputy President Loses Twitter Verification

    A story not picked up by international media is Kenyan Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua losing his Twitter verification as a consequence of the rollout of the company’s latest policies. What makes the story noteworthy is that Gachagua did not get a grey verification badge that government officials are supposed to get under the new Twitter design, even though the Kenyan President’s account got the said grey badge. 

    According to one local media report, Gachagua “is the first high-ranking individual in Kenya to lose his verification badge in the wake of changes on the Social media platform.” 

    Read coverage of the story in mainstream Kenyan media here and here.

  • Countering Fake News and Ideological Bias in Reporting

    Ground News is an interesting effort to counter fake news and ideological bias in reporting. According to their website: 

    “Ground News is a News Aggregation platform that helps users expand their view of the news and easily compare how a story is being reported across the political spectrum. We identify all news articles written on a story and arrange the organizations reporting on the event into categories of political bias, geographic location, and chronology. News is aggregated from over 50,000 news sources, including many alternative, independent sources that aren’t confined to the mainstream news narrative. This puts our community in a position to choose and easily compare the news they want to read, not just have it pre-selected for them by algorithms designed to drive clicks.”

    Some features on both the website and app versions are behind a paywall, but either version can be used/downloaded for free. 

    Visit the Ground News website here.

  • US Media's Coverage of the Latest IPCC Report and the Willow Project

    Media Matters has put out this piece condemning the coverage (or lack of it) in US corporate TV news on the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the controversial Willow project, an oil drilling project in Alaska. The report claims  “national TV news mostly failed to contextualize the Willow project’s recent approval within the framework of the IPCC report.”

    Talking of the expected role of the media in such matters, the report says:

    “National TV news has the potential to shape public opinion and drive action on climate change and therefore has a crucial role to play in holding the fossil fuel industry and politicians accountable for their role in exacerbating the crisis. Making these connections is one of the key actions climate correspondents can take whenever they are asked to discuss major climate news.”

    The main conclusion of the report is that “the overall lack of coverage of the IPCC report and the failure to connect it to the Willow project represents a missed opportunity to demand accountability from the fossil fuel industry and the Biden administration for its continued support for new fossil fuel infrastructure.”

    Read the full article here.

  • Visibilising Women as Sources in African Media

    The International Journalists’ Network’s website ijnet.org has this piece about a “South Africa-based nonprofit media company called Quote This Woman+ (QW+) [that] has curated a database of women experts in Africa for journalists to reach out to.” 

    The problem that this non-profit and others like it are trying to solve is that: 

    “In Africa, only 22% of the people seen, heard or read about in the news are women, according to a 2021 Global Media Monitoring Project report. Women sources are especially less visible in issues like politics and the economy, which often dominate news coverage across the continent.

    The lack of women sources doesn’t just fuel inequality; it also creates room for biased reporting. According to the International Labor Organization, 46% of stories published by media enable gender stereotypes.”

    Read the full article here.

  • Reporting Accurately on New Research

    The Journalist’s Resource, a project of Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, put out this tip sheet on how news outlets can report on new research studies more accurately. It warns that sometimes press releases “mistakenly state researchers have proven something they haven’t.” The author, Denise-Marie Ordway, lays out four pointers to using the correct language to convey the strength of the evidence that the new research has put forward instead of claiming it has “proven” something, a rarity outside of mathematics. 

    Read the full article here.

  • On Social Media Companies Charging for Basic Services

    Geoffrey A. Fowler writes for The Washington Post: “Social media used to be free. That’s starting to change, in part, because the profits are no longer piling up quite as high in Silicon Valley for companies that built businesses on targeting us with ads. So they’re looking for new sources of growth that are actually worth paying for.”

    Comparing these subscription plans to mobsters asking for protection money, Fowler writes: “Facebook’s current support limitations are costing people time, money and relationships. It’s true that, unlike Twitter, Facebook is not removing any existing security features from everyone else to begin charging for them. But don’t even think about offering premium customer service until you’re able to keep a product or service functional at a basic level for everyone.”

    Meta’s Zuckerberg has responded to such concerns with: “Verifying government IDs and providing direct access to customer support for millions or billions of people costs a significant amount of money. Subscription fees will cover this and will also pace how many people sign up so we’ll be able to ensure quality as we scale,” he wrote.

    But users and commentators are far from convinced by this explanation.

    As Fowler concludes: “These are Zuckerberg’s and Musk’s problems to solve, not ours. Meta’s net income last year was $23 billion, mostly made off our personal data. Protecting us is a cost of doing business.”

    Read the full article here.