Keynote speaker Julie Posetti presents grim results from a global survey of journalists.
Survey shows real effects on journalists and ‘pandemic-level spread of a viral load of disinformation.’
By Scott Mitchell
The first major survey of journalists since the onset of COVID-19 found that journalism has been plunged into a grave crisis by the pandemic. The survey of journalists around the world shows the vast majority covering the pandemic are suffering from mental health issues, workload concerns, social isolation and a fear of contracting the virus.
The same study found a “pandemic-level spread of a viral load of disinformation.”
The grim results of the international survey were shared in Friday morning’s keynote by researcher Julie Posetti at Carleton University’s symposium Journalism in the Time of Crisis.
Posetti is Global Director of Research with the International Center for Journalists an lead researcher on a joint study being conducted by the ICFJ and Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic or journalism. The project’s first major report was just released.
The first report deals with data gathered through a survey of more than 1,400 journalists. An astonishing 82 per cent of respondents said they were experiencing at least one negative health impact from their work covering COVID.
“It’s quite clear that while putting themselves at great physical risk to cover COVID-19 … there was also a really serious mental health crisis in evidence,” Posetti said.
“Our respondents were indicating … that they were struggling to cope, at an emotional and psychological level, as well as a physical level.”
Posetti said 70 per cent rated the psychological and emotional impacts of dealing with the COVID-19 crisis as the most difficult aspect of their work. “You’re seeing here, a picture of very significant personal suffering, in reference to the pandemic, including in the course of their daily work.”
The top five reactions included increased anxiety, exhaustion and burnout, more difficulty sleeping, a sense of helplessness, and dark and negative thoughts. “We also saw significant representation of people being diagnosed with depression for the first time, worsening depression, and being diagnosed with anxiety for the first time.”
The survey was conducted between mid-May and the end of June, “just at the peak and then the end of what we might refer to as the first wave of COVID-19, and broadly speaking we are now heading full force into the second wave of COVID-19 on a global scale,” Posetti said.
“And really alarmingly, from a journalism safety perspective … 30 per cent of our respondents said that their news organizations were sending journalists into the field without any safety equipment,” Posetti said. “Not a mask, not a pair of gloves, not a hand sanitizer, no social distancing … which to me, is a really alarming statistic, given this is a deadly pandemic.”
Posetti said journalists reported feeling unsafe and that they were the targets of online and sometimes even physical attacks.
“There’s been an escalation in attacks on media freedom and journalism safety during this period,” Posetti said. “We’ve seen state actors and others using the pandemic as a cloak to enable the extension of existing threats to media freedom, or to mount new restrictions. One example would be the so-called fake news laws that have been either enacted, extended, or rolled out during the course of the pandemic.”
Posetti went on: “So very few journalists in our survey indicated they had access to some kind of support or training to help them deal with online violence. And we say that knowing that of course trying to undertake or offer training in the middle of a pandemic is not an easy thing to do, but it’s the lack of a sense of support, or the lack of an understanding of what could be done that was significant.”
And one of the most startling findings of the research was the absolute flood of disinformation, much of it coming from political leaders or “attention-seeking trolls.”
“We talk about a dis-infodemic, because while the infodemic refers to the general flood or torrent of information,” Posetti said. “What we have identified is a really significant pandemic-level spread, a viral load, of disinformation”
Posetti and the moderator of the session, symposium chair Allan Thompson, joked that the grim presentation should probably have started with a trigger warning to warn members of the audience.
Posetti said there was some positive news in the findings.
“I don’t want you all to go away and feel like this is a hopeless case, because it’s not,” Posetti said. “We found that 61 per of journalists we surveyed felt an increased commitment to journalism.”
“We found that 61 per of journalists we surveyed felt an increased commitment to journalism.”
— Julie Posetti, Global Research Director at ICFJ
Indeed, despite all of the serious mental health, psychological and emotional reactions noted, the top three emotional and psychological reactions among journalists were in fact positive.
Many journalists surveyed reported that they “experienced an increase in audience trust,” based on a range of things including the fact that 25 per cent of respondents said that audience feedback was more positive than normal.
Journalists also talked about an increase in engagement, and an increase of willingness of audiences to collaborate on fact-checking and reporting.
“So you’re seeing this increased investment of audiences, and those who are appreciating the role of public interest journalism in the midst of a pandemic, feeding the journalism — which in turn, is probably feeding this sense of increased commitment to reporting,” Posetti said.
“We really are in a situation where we have to address this crisis of disinformation in a way that’s urgent and appropriate … but at the same time, figuring out how to ensure that press freedom, that media freedom, that journalism safety are not compromised unnecessarily in this process.”
See a recording of Posetti’s presentation here.
