Is journalism another casualty of COVID 19?

Webinar with the Foreign Press Association

Will Church, Head of Journalism and Media Programmes at the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), and I, joined Ian Williams of the Foreign Press Association USA to discuss the new TRF report on The impact of COVID-19 on Journalism in Emerging Economies and the Global South.

Across the world, the virus has affected media as well as the health of journalists. The pandemic has driven fake news and evoked a surge of threats against the media in emerging economies.

Sent out to cover the epidemic, hundreds of our colleagues have died, others have been threatened by governments and proprietors for reporting inexpedient truths, in some countries they have been banned from government press conferences, while 17 countries have introduced double-edged laws against “fake” news, where governments decide “what is truth.”

Watch the video. Download the transcript.

Bios

A practicing journalist, Professor Damian Radcliffe is a Professor in Journalism and an affiliate of the Department for the Middle East and North Africa Studies (MENA), at the University of Oregon.

Will Church is Head of Journalism and Media Programmes at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Mr Church will share context and information about why the Thomson Reuters Foundation commissioned this report, and the nature of the journalist alumni who contributed so heavily to it.