Reporters and news organizations should engage the public in debunking information in their own networks, said Andy Carvin, senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), during an ICFJ webinar Thursday.
Finding accurate and reliable data on the spread of COVID-19 has been at the center of every journalist’s effort in covering the pandemic and its resulting societal impacts. But what can reporters do when faced with scarce or incomplete data sources?
Cuando llegaron los primeros casos de COVID-19 a América Latina, los chequeadores de datos de la región ya sabían que los países no iban a enfrentarse solamente a una enfermedad de la que ya hay centenares de miles de casos en todo el mundo. Con los ejemplos de China, Europa y Estados Unidos como antecedentes, anticiparon que, junto con el coronavirus, llegaría otra preocupación viral: publicaciones falsas o malintencionadas.
When reporting on the global pandemic, where can reporters find the exact figures for the number of people who are infected with COVID-19?
More than 120,000 people around the world have died of COVID-19 as of the writing of this piece. Journalists aren’t just working overtime to keep up with the pace of new information, regulations and implications of the myriad effects of the pandemic — they are grappling with how to document the losses many communities are grieving.
South Africa provides a stark comparison of the government’s reaction to two deadly epidemics — HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, Mia Malan, a veteran journalist who covered both outbreaks, said in an ICFJ webinar on Thursday. In the case of HIV, government officials had an extremely hostile relationship with the news media, she said. With COVID-19, Malan said South Africa’s government did an about face.
Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, photojournalists around the world already faced challenging working conditions. Job security was waning, pay was minimal and a majority felt physically unsafe at least sometimes while on the job, according to a 2018 report by World Press Photo. The current health crisis has only magnified these challenges.
India is currently in the midst of a 21-day nationwide lockdown ordered on March 24 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Journalists, who remain exempt from the lockdown, are on the frontlines covering the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes with little or no gear to protect themselves from infection. A panel of experts delved into how reporters can stay safe while covering the pandemic.
Reporting on COVID-19 can be tricky because of the medical and technical jargon that is inevitably involved. If you’re not a seasoned health or science journalist with a deep understanding of these terms, you run the risk of using them incorrectly, which could cause confusion at best and trigger a barrage of misinformation and fake news at worst.
Yusuf and Sumaiya Omar have trained communities around the world to create their own video storytelling projects through Hashtag Our Stories, a cross-platform video publishing company the couple founded. Now, with COVID-19, the ability to harness the power of user-generated video content is becoming essential for journalists all over the world, they said in an ICFJ webinar on Wednesday.
