Part 1: Ethics and Reporting Practices for COVID-19
A living collection of resources, tip sheets, and guidance
Covering COVID-19? Below is an incomplete collection of resources, tip sheets, and guides for reporters and editors from organizations that address journalistic ethics and reporting practice. This is an initial, incomplete, rapid-response collection current as of late March 2020 that will be updated weekly. Read the second and third installments here and here.
My additional suggestions, and personal observations of the gaps in current resources, follow the collection below. Read more in this complimentary blog post about my work at Data & Society bridging newsroom practitioners to empirical research about misinformation and disinformation, and how my approach is specifically informed by my training at the intersection of journalism and medicine.
A colleague at our Disinformation Action Lab described the attempt to arrive at truth as asymptotic — you’ll never quite get there because of the complexity of our human interactions; because we are dynamic and always changing, as are the structures around us — but we’re in a better position at the top of the curve than in the middle. It’s the job of journalists to use reporting to attempt at truth, knowing that knowledge is always incomplete.
Careful reporting can trace how the scale of this pandemic could have been minimized through different choices by the federal government, and how saving human lives is not in opposition to bolstering our economy. This is a moment to learn and change the way we organize and disseminate knowledge, and we need editors — perhaps editors that don’t yet exist — who capably straddle the worlds of academia, research, journalism, and science to help us reframe our ideas, translate them into solutions and actions, and communicate them to citizens around the world.
Resources
First Draft
First Draft has pioneered work in this area and offers generous resources for reporters on verification, news gathering, and social analytics.
Open Notebook
This tip sheet, written by Laura Helmuth, the health and science editor for The Washington Post, offers nuanced tips on editorial issues as well as reporting process:
- “Explain what we don’t know. People have a lot of questions that can’t be answered yet, such as how infectious this virus is in people who aren’t yet showing symptoms. Saying that something is a question that researchers are urgently trying to answer can ease your reader’s confusion.”
- “Look for opportunities to show virologists, epidemiologists, nurses, public health officials, vaccine makers, geneticists, and more doing their work. As you know, but as some readers don’t necessarily appreciate, science is a process and it’s done by real people. People really want to see competence right now.”
- “Include context. Where appropriate, help readers understand how the health care system works, how science works, how scientific publishing works, how the immune system works, how viruses work. This is a reachable moment — people who don’t usually pay attention to these subject areas are suddenly fascinated.”
Poynter
Poynter Institute offers a sharp overview of fact-checking efforts globally. They are tracking multiple waves of misinformation in 30 countries and provide a helpful overview of the intersections in various narratives.
Scientific American
“How to Report on the COVID-19 Outbreak Responsibly” is written by professors of epidemiology, and gives recommendations to journalists about how to report responsibly on gaps in data and also how to approach the questions to which we still lack answers. The authors divide the unknowns into three categories: “what we know is true; what we think is true — fact-based assessments that also depend on inference, extrapolation, or educated interpretation of facts that reflect an individual’s view of what is most likely to be going on — and opinions and speculation.”
Journalist Resource
This tip sheet builds on the essay in Scientific American with five tips guiding journalists on how to work with academic researchers as sources, and how to use published research when reporting on COVID-19. Main takeaway: Choose your sources carefully. Even when they are scientists or have PhDs, make sure they have deep expertise in COVID-19 relevant topics.
ProPublica
Caroline Chen at ProPublica previously reported on the SARS and Ebola epidemics and guides reporters to frame specific questions instead of more general ones. She starts to ask the epistemological questions specific to science reporting and reporting on disease epidemics.
Additional Resources:
Gaps and Next Steps
There’s currently a gap in tip sheets on how to cover misinformation that is amplifying racist tropes–for example linking COVID-19 to Asians, immigrants and foreign citizens–and other tactics that white supremacists might be using to spread both misinformation as well as the actual coronavirus. We’re currently trying to understand the scope of the problem. Stay tuned for more on this.
My own observations of “better practice” gaps, as of this writing:
- Journalists should provide multiple entry points into every COVID-19 story for those who have not been able to follow every step of coverage, which is most citizens as we collectively scramble to adjust to the situation and deal with the complex logistical and personal adjustments required in social distancing. Link to explainers of essential information in every story. Give an overview of how we got here and what can be done, individually and collectively. Maintain a meta-narrative that individual stories fit into, so citizens don’t feel a constant scramble to put the pieces together themselves. Make sure the narrative lines are accurate and consistent.
- Broadcast news should stop airing live press conferences from the White House, say media critics, including Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post and Jay Rosen, a professor at New York University. Sullivan writes, “Minor accommodations, like fact-checking the president’s statements afterward, don’t go nearly far enough to counter the serious damage this man is doing to the public’s well-being.” This argument is bolstered by the research of Whitney Phillips, a Data & Society research affiliate. In her report, “The Oxygen of Amplification,” she writes, “Outlets should avoid publishing [false] information whenever possible, especially as part of preemptive debunking stories, which may seek to correct false, manipulative information, but may still spread that information before it has achieved any organic reach of its own. Further, the choice to engage with a false story — even in the effort to refute it — aligns with the interests of the manipulators, who see any form of amplification as a victory.” White House Press Briefings are disseminating inaccurate information and should not be broadcast. They can be accessed online, and news organizations that post them should contextualize and list lies and falsehoods clearly. Marietje Schaake, President of the Cyber Peace Institute, writes, “I’ve never seen more concern at the highest political levels with mis- & disinformation.” Misinformation — particularly from government agencies — should never be included in headlines. News organizations can bolster trust and confidence in the information ecosystem by clearly stating facts, delivered by experts, without enhancing ambiguity or “giving oxygen” to falsehoods.
- Explain to the public that knowledge is always incomplete and instill confidence through reporting practice despite the gaps in data. Media organizations can clearly explain the questions that remain unanswered, the modes of research and fact-gathering that can begin to address these gaps in knowledge, and reasonable timelines for knowledge delivery.
- Remind those who want to be whistleblowers or share important documents in the public interest of safe ways to do so. As per a lawsuit from Knight Institute at Columbia University, CDC employees have been muffled. News organizations should feature links to SecureDrop and detailed digital security instructions prominently on their websites. Medical professionals may not be familiar with these protocols and should be enabled to share information freely.
- Clearly state when government officials are lying. A reporter at NBC News told me a few weeks ago that he does not use the word “misinformation” when dealing with stories from government agencies but instead says “lies.” Trump’s false promises have caused harm to citizens — he has advocated for the use of drugs that have not yet been tested in clinical trials, and lied about resources that are available to medical professionals. Don’t repeat or broadcast the misinformation itself, but address the lie to mitigate potential harm.
- Graphics should be thoughtfully curated to communicate the severity of the pandemic, keeping in mind that misinformation and conspiracy theories continue to spread on platforms. Percentage numbers — e.g. “only 1% will die” — may not be as effective as actual numbers of human lives at risk. Show the real human cost of failures in public policy through profiles of individuals and families who are impacted, and do so in a way that is sensitive. Supplement maps with epidemiological charts that show the exponential growth of the cases. Use timelines.
- Don’t be wary to publish details about the disease. A ProPublica story that reported the details of how the virus presented in a young patient and the intricacies of disease progression was difficult to read, but informative about the real risks of exposure.
- Every story should be framed in a way that addresses the needs of the collective. Outlets should avoid surfacing stories that focus on individual needs and rather highlight the ways we are all interconnected — tell the stories of how different communities are being impacted by various public policy choices. This framework is familiar in public health, but not in the ethos of individualism that underpins our economic ideology. Op-eds that contradict a collective public health framework in favor of a “both sides approach” should not be published because of the real risk to human life. A “both sides approach” in journalism that has been ineffective for the past three years should not be transformed into a binary argument about saving lives through saving the economy vs. saving lives through appropriate public health protocols. This argument needs to be deconstructed by the media, not bolstered, and these kinds of arguments—which have no precedent in the American context — should not be given credibility now.
- Source effectively: only epidemiologists and medical professionals with specific expertise in this context should be featured on broadcast news, or asked to write op-eds. Non-specialists should not be enabled to opine, especially about the economy. Journalists should strive to understand the disciplinary differences in “knowledge reservoir” for public and global health professionals, researchers, practicing doctors, policymakers, health managers, nurses–and these experts should in turn be patient with journalists in explaining these differences and direct them to the right sources. Unicorns with expertise in overlapping disciplines, such as public health and economics, exist — use them as sources! Here are a few:
- Media organizations can encourage social media platforms to take more steps by sensitively reporting on misinformation without amplifying it. Push the platforms to release more data to researchers and journalists who are tracking misinformation flows online. Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms have already, for the first time, altered their content moderation practices to take a hard line and support truthful, accurate content. They’ve actively been removing inaccurate harmful content about COVID-19. Closed Facebook groups, direct messages on Instagram, and messaging apps like WhatsApp and TikTok have remained spaces where misinformation goes viral and is difficult to track. These newer platforms — especially those used by a younger demographic — need to take similar steps in labelling information and using their platforms for public health messaging, even while individual influencers may be using the platform to promote social distancing (the WHO even partnered with TikTok).
- Use timelines. Continue to explain to the public the way this pandemic has been created — and continues to be exacerbated — by structural choices made by the current administration: dismissals of staff (the pandemic response team), the gutting of government agencies, and the dissemination of outright lies and inaccurate information in White House Press Briefings and other communication channels. All these actions have put the American public at risk.
- Highlight the global nature of the pandemic over and over again, and the way the U.S. Federal Government’s failure to contain the pandemic is endangering the rest of the world and the global economy. This story will not get old. Report on vulnerable communities globally: those in Yemen, Kashmir, Palestine, Syria, and other places in the midst of war or in the Global South. Report on vulnerable communities in the U.S. in tandem with these stories.
- Explain the structural fault lines of our medical system and the way hierarchies of class and privilege are impacting access to testing, care, and resources. Report this story over and over again, with solutions, cross-cultural examples, and input from experts across multiple disciplines.
- Inspire hope through historicizing examples of robust public health policy. Explain the many ways public health is prioritized over financial incentivizes on a regular basis — and the way the U.S. had a track record of pioneering public health initiatives globally. Show the public that the U.S. has never put its vulnerable citizens in danger in the way the White House is currently advocating— and that the U.S. has historically pioneered protections for those who are sick, disabled, and at risk. The Family and Medical Leave Act and Americans with Disabilities Act are two examples of the legal protections afforded to citizens. Most of this public policy is invisible by design, and adopting these calculated measures have prevented disease pandemics and other public health catastrophes in the past. For example, those in New York State who are HIV+ have access to free medication through the Aids Drugs Assistance Program. These public policy choices have contained the disease over decades.
For citizens:
- Support journalists. In the absence of truthful, accurate public health messaging from our federal government, journalists are vital. They are on the front-lines of this crisis and may experience vicarious trauma.
- Retweet and share accurate information from trusted news sources, over and over again. Expand your digital community to include a diverse cross-section that is robust and inclusive. Curate a digital community that resembles the complexity of the interdependencies in your life, not just colleagues, friends, and family members. The Fake Newsletter by Jane Lytvynenko, who pioneered misinformation reporting at BuzzFeed, is an excellent resource on misinformation on COVID-19.
Smitha Khorana is the Newsroom Outreach Lead at Data & Society. She’s written for The Guardian, The Intercept, Columbia Journalism Review, and co-edited a book on the Snowden leaks and the surveillance state.
Suggestions, comments, or noticed a resource we missed? E-mail smitha@datasociety.net.
