Journalism in the pandemic: challenges and innovation
17m
·
Pod Academy
·
Journalism has sometimes been a dangerous profession during the pandemic, but there has been real innovation, too. In this, the third part of our series on Journalism in the Pandemic, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield considers how Covid 19 has influenced the future of journalism. Rachael Jolley: Welcome to Pod Academy and our third podcast in this series on journalism during the pandemic. In this episode we look at the challenges that reporters were just not prepared for. And what are the innovations and changes that come out of the crisis that will be significant for the years ahead. As the pandemic kicked off, the big challenge for many news organisations was to move their reporting teams to work completely remotely, so there was a massive shifting of equipment to people's homes. Suddenly all sorts of questions were being asked about filing stories in different ways and how to cover stories while reducing risks of infection. Very few had experience covering a pandemic before. And so there was no obvious formula to follow. Then there were the technical challenges of using new equipment or older equipment differently. At the same time, staff were off sick or on furlough or newsrooms were cut back because of financial pressures. So what were the toughest obstacles and what are the innovations that might make a difference to how journalism is done in the future? We talked to experts around the world to find out. First, we went to Milan, the epicenter of the pandemic in Italy, and talked to Laura Silvia Battaglia, the coordinator, and soon to be director of the Catholic University of Milan's journalism school and a journalist herself. We kicked off by talking about the challenges for the journalism school and its students. Laura Silvia Battaglia: Here in Milan, we started in February thinking about how could it be possible to cover the pandemic. But we weren't really conscious about the challenges for our profession and also about the risks at the beginning. No one knew exactly what COVID-19 was. We started thinking about the safety for our students and the risks related to covering these areas. So the challenges were very significant because we used to send our students around like every reporter does. But at the same time they are students. We told them immediately, to try to keep a distance, the safety distance, how to cover yourself using masks, using face shields. So we provided all this stuff to our students and we decided only the people that really wanted to go out for reporting (of course, covering themselves and trying to avoid any risk and following the rules). So only the people that wanted to they did it and the others who didn't want to go reporting, they would not, they would work at a desk for our publications. Rachael Jolley: Here is Richard Sambrook, a former director of global news at the BBC and now director of the centre for journalism at Cardiff University on why it was difficult for news organisations to know where to start.... Richard Sambrook: Nobody has had direct experience of reporting a pandemic like this before. So I think it took quite a while for people to understand how to use the statistics, how to use the figures, what to expect from the science and so on as well. That took quite a lot of catching up with even for some of the health specialists. There's the whole question of being remote from the community they serve. Because actually, if anything that we've learned over the last few years is journalism has been too remote needs to get closer to the community. But now the pandemic's come in and now got in the way of that as well. So trying to report the impact, you know, in ways that are still COVID compliant is difficult and challenging and quite complicated. And then we've seen a huge rise in disinformation around COVID and around ...
The episode Journalism in the pandemic: challenges and innovation from the podcast Pod Academy has a duration of
17:16. It was first published
More episodes from Pod Academy
Grandmothers and ‘intensive parenting’
“My grandchildren are so busy with all their extra classes that I seem to spend most our time together acting as a taxi service.” “When the children come to stay I’m constantly worried about keeping them safe.” “ I’d love to have fun with them, but my daughter expects me to supervise their homework and test them on their spelling.” Are today’s grandmothers too protective and anxious? Benedetta Cappelini, Professor of Marketing at the University of Durham, certainly thinks so. She talks to Sally Feldman, who is currently writing a book of advice for new grannies, about the effects of the new trend in intensive parenting. 'Intensiveparenting', with its emphasis on extra curricular activities, supervised 'playdates' and conversations about thoughts and feelings is fast becoming the norm for this generation of parents, requiring the investment of significant amounts of time, money and energy in raising children. What are the implications for grandparents who did not raise their own children in this way, but who regularly look after their grandchildren?
Grandmothers and ‘intensive parenting’
“My grandchildren are so busy with all their extra classes that I seem to spend most our time together acting as a taxi service.” “When the children come to stay I’m constantly worried about keeping them safe.” “ I’d love to have fun with them, but my daughter expects me to supervise their homework and test them on their spelling.” Are today’s grandmothers too protective and anxious? Benedetta Cappelini, Professor of Marketing at the University of Durham, certainly thinks so. She talks to Sally Feldman, who is currently writing a book of advice for new grannies, about the effects of the new trend in intensive parenting. 'Intensiveparenting', with its emphasis on extra curricular activities, supervised 'playdates' and conversations about thoughts and feelings is fast becoming the norm for this generation of parents, requiring the investment of significant amounts of time, money and energy in raising children. What are the implications for grandparents who did not raise their own children in this way, but who regularly look after their grandchildren?
How to be a (nearly) perfect grandmother
What are grandmothers for? That’s what Sally Feldman wondered when she first learned that her daughter was pregnant. As a former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she was familiar with so many aspects of female experiences. But faced with the prospect of a grandchild, she realised she was clueless. So now she’s writing a book of advice for new grandmothers. This podcast is a conversation with four grandmothers. Their discussion is a taster of the forthcoming book, featuring some of the joys and challenges of this most precious role. Sally would love to hear from other grandmothers, so do send your comments here, or else contact her at: [email protected]
NHS: A cold Covid winter ahead?
With Covid rates remaining stubbornly high and a huge pent-up demand for hospital care, the UK's National Health Service faces a tough winter. Intensive care wards are the canary in the mine, reports Rachael Jolley. Mark Toshner: We can make beds, but what we can't make are specialised staff to run those beds. The accident and emergency department needs a very specific skill set. And once you run out of their capacity, you don't really have anywhere to turn. The winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how difficult that is, I think we don't know, but it's going to be difficult. If you hear people from intensive care, telling you things are tough, that's a really important canary down the mine, because these people are the SAS of clinical staff. And if they are telling you it's tough, you should be listening. Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area. Rachael Jolley: Welcome to Pod Academy. My name is Rachael Jolley. I'm a journalist and podcast producer. In this episode, we look at the challenges for the National Health Service as it faces COVID in winter 2021. With Welsh hospitals reporting some of the longest waiting times ever and the Scottish government calling in the army to help drive ambulances are we as prepared as we can be for the winter ahead? And what does it feel like inside one of the UKs most famous hospitals right now? In September Prime Minister Boris Johnson said further restrictions could be put in place if the NHS is threatened this winter. By the end of the month COVID hospitalisations were already at a high level. To find out more and see how different this winter might be from the last one I spoke with two doctors who work at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. We talked about how they'd coped so far and how they're preparing for this winter and what their biggest worries were. I spoke with Mark Toshner, an academic at Cambridge University, who is also a pulmonary physician, a specialist in illnesses relating to the lungs, at Addenbrooke's. While Mark doesn't normally work in intensive care last year, he was called into help out during the worst of the emergency. And Pod Academy also heard from Andrew Conway Morris, a clinical scientist at Cambridge University and a consultant working in intensive care at Addenbrookes. First we heard from Mark Toshner. Mark, if I were the Secretary of State for Health, what would you be asking me to do right now? Mark Toshner: The first thing I would be asking is for our really honest acknowledgement that we're in a difficult place and that we have just under, I think we might even have topped 8000 people in hospital now and we've had that for weeks now, between about 7000 and 8,000 and that this was supposed to be our period of rest, or quiet time, during the summer. In actual fact we've seen almost historic highs of healthcare utilisation. That's a really tough start to then go into winter for, and, so we're in a really vulnerable position. Rachael Jolley: And Andy, what is it like in intensive care right now? Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area Mark Toshner: I've got plenty of colleagues who've essentially just been the coal face now for the better part of a year and a half or longer, and you can see the toll that it's taken on some of them. And it has a pretty heavy toll. And so the winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how difficult that is I think we don't know, but it's going to be difficult. We start off with one of the lowest ratios of doctors to population any way.
COVID-19 and the geopolitics of health
It's not about individual countries. It's not about individual regions. It's not even about blocks. This doesn't work unless we vaccinate everybody. But is geopolitics getting in the way of good public health policy as we strive to overcome COVID-19? In this podcast, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield considers how geopolitics is affecting government decisions around vaccines and distribution, with guests from the US, UK and the Philippines. Mark Toshner: It's not about individual countries. It's not about individual regions. It's not even about blocks. This doesn't work unless we vaccinate everybody. John Nery: The survey shows that something like 68% of Filipino adults have doubts about whether they should take the COVID-19 vaccine or not. Then that's just really worrying. Jeffrey Wasserstrom: So we can think of it as soft power sort of related to having a space program, to have this idea that Beijing is one of the world capitals that's at the forefront of various technologies. Michael Jennings: And if you look at many African countries, they've responded extremely effectively. They've made use of technology. Rwanda has been making use of drones to get messaging to very remote communities. Rachael Jolley: Hello, my name is Rachael Jolley and welcome to this episode of a series of podcasts I've hosted for Pod Academy on the global politics of the pandemic. In this episode, I talk to academics in the UK, USA and the Philippines about how national agendas are affecting decision-making, how the virus has to be tackled internationally and how history can sometimes get in the way. We also talk about misinformation around the disease and why, if we don't think globally, then in the end, the virus wins. Geopolitics is increasingly a major factor in the discussions around COVID whether about access to PPE or access to the vaccine. Delivery of stocks or stopping vaccine supply arriving over a border often gets tied up with the politics and economics between countries. As some nations trumpet how well they've done, they rank themselves against others. There's something of a global competition to see which national leader can take the most glory. In the midst of this, there are countries trying to win friends and influence people by delivering stocks of vaccine to those that don't have any. Economic alliances are being built or improved while others are being undermined. With us on the podcast are Mark Toshner, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a pulmonary vascular physician who spends a lot of time on Twitter answering the public's queries about vaccines when he's not looking at the impact of long COVID. We also hear from John Nery, who's based in Manila in the Philippines and teaches media and politics, and is the chair of the journalism centre at the Ateneo de Manila University. Also joining the conversation are Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor in the history of China at the University of California at Irvine, and Michael Jennings, Michael is a reader in international development in the department of development studies at SOAS, University of London, and researches global health and development. I started by talking to Mark Toshner. Mark, are you worried about geopolitics getting in the way of people's acceptance of vaccines? Mark Toshner: [00:03:09] The short answer to that is yes. I usually deal on social media with individual concerns about vaccines. And so I spend a lot of my time just addressing people and what their concerns are and, and I think they're complex and they vary from region to region. They vary from place to place, but the one thing that I think hasn't really been addressed very well in looking at how we improve uptake is that we've got a whole world to vaccinate here. So it's not about individual countries.