Courageous and responsible reporting in the time of a pandemic

We are in the midst of very difficult times. The battle against the coronavirus continues and there is no victory in sight. Sometimes, you learn about a friend or someone you know succumbing to the dreaded disease and you realise that it can often be a losing battle.

The challenges for reporters, photographers and editors are now immense – unprecedented in recent memory. One of the challenges is to report accurately and safely. Helping readers understand the crisis better with words and pictures is not an easy task, especially when people are now seized of the crisis and are afraid of what lies ahead. However, there is no doubt that people are better off with good, clear and honest reporting.

And that is what many journalists have tried to do, braving the exceptional odds. Indeed, without such courage, how would we have known (and seen), for example, about migrant workers from Andhra Pradesh heading back home on foot and by cycle to Jharkhand? Stories have highlighted the lack of money, fear of COVID-19, and the desire to meet loved ones that led the workers to take the drastic step.

Some of their cycles needed repairs, but again, no one would touch them, fearing infection. There was no option but to continue on foot, in the blazing heat.

A woman is forced to deliver her baby by the roadside. How would we have known about the lockdown making it even more difficult for women and children – of having to fight battles of another kind, of domestic violence and abuse within households?

There are reports of domestic violence cases having increased two-fold and many women are unable to go out or report to the police about the violence and abuses due to the lockdown.

Across different social and economic strata, women continue to face restrictions, some of which have been normalised to the extent that we don't even recognise them as restrictions.

To try and help journalists at a time like this, the Thomson Foundation has teamed up with a range of specialist partners to produce a series of free, online courses on its Journalism Now platform. The courses cover safety while reporting a story; verification of facts, and content production. The interactive courses have been created with assistance from Free Press Unlimited (Netherlands), Ethical Journalism Network, International Federation of Journalists, First Draft and the Dart Centre Europe.

A journalist’s first instinct is to get to the scene quickly, but now with the coronavirus, there is a huge risk. The courses give practical advice on assessing the risks so journalists are better prepared to go on assignment. Advice includes an awareness of the rapidly-changing global environment and restrictions on movement, techniques to ensure safe communication with sources and the general public when in the same physical space, knowledge of the equipment and tools to protect reporters and interviewees, and the right hygiene protocols to adopt.

The course on verification will give journalists a thorough understanding of how to identify false and misleading data using open-source tools and how to critically analyse information to offer balanced coverage and combat the spread of fake news.

Journalists would also do well to read New York-based First Draft’s study and tools on health misinformation. Also to avoid words and phrases such as ‘no end in sight’, ‘turmoil’ ‘killer’, ‘catastrophe’, etc. Such words could lead to panic among readers. What we need is balanced reporting that provides a sense of calm. The Reuters Institute has produced a factsheet that journalists will find helpful while wading through the landscape of COVID-19 misinformation. 

Overall, as a WAN-IFRA report says, news outlets have displayed diversity and creativity while covering the pandemic. Coverage has included visits to hospitals to show the harsh conditions that health care professionals work under, some useful infographics that depict the scale and the speed of the spread of the virus, and data journalism employed to depict the spread of the outbreak. And, mind you, many of editors and journalists are working from home, which makes the end results even more satisfying.