"Succeeding in a New World" presents some of the challenges that international students face while living abroad. From the language barrier and academic pressure to the difficulty of making new friends from other countries. The special presentation also shows how they overcome cultural differences to have a great experience in the US.
Producer: Manu Ferreira
Director: Emmie Larson
Advisor: Kenneth R. Erdey
Copyright 2022
University of Illinois
In order to better understand the relationship between global journalism ethics and nationalism and populism, I first looked for the definition of the “isms”. In the article “Nationalism and Populism: What is the difference? How are they connected?” by Liberties, the author defines Nationalism as a “belief and political ideology that the sovereignty, interests, and identity of one’s own nation take precedence over other states and groups of people.” Populism is described as a “political strategy of appealing to “the people” in opposition to ‘elites’ who are making the lives of ‘the people’ worse.”
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Understanding the meanings was important to observe how society has changed due to the use of these strategies and how they contributed to the shift in people’s attitudes towards the media. Moving forward, it was relevant to realize how global journalism ethics is necessary to help solve that issue.
In the article “Global journalism needs global ethics”, published by The Conversation, Christopher Kremmer mentions the book Radical Media Ethics: a global approach (2015) and how the author claims that “in a global, media-linked world where stories cross borders and can inspire positive change – but also incite massive violence – we need globally-minded journalism.”
As Stephen J. A. Ward says, new forms of communication are reshaping the practice of journalism at local, regional, national, and international levels. One of the imperatives of global journalism ethics states that journalists must act as global agents with a focus on serving the citizens of the world. “The goal of their collective actions is a well-informed, diverse and tolerant global “info-sphere” that challenges the distortions of tyrants, the abuse of human rights, and the manipulation of information by special interests.”
That implies being objective to avoid bias, being accurate and balanced, and producing content with relevant international sources and multiple perspectives. Global journalism also asks journalists to be more conscious of how they frame the global public’s perspective on major stories. According to Ward, “Public duty calls for independent, hard-edged news, along with investigations and analysis.”
In my opinion, the set of principles and standards for the practice of journalism proposed by Ward is the way to survive this age of nationalism and populism. We, as journalists, have to stick to the basic core and values that the profession implies: be objective, accurate, factual, and serve the public but, in addition, carry a global perspective, embracing diversity.
Globalization and digital disruption brought us into a different world. To keep up with the constant changes, journalism ethics needs to re-invent itself. It must decide which principles can and should be preserved, while other ideas are no longer maintainable. To sum up, I agree with Kremmer when he says that “if the purposes of our work, and how it is funded, and the methods we use to perform it change, ethical principles can and do evolve to meet the changed realities.”
*This article was submitted as a memo assignment for the course "Current Issues of Journalism" at the University of Illinois.
In an era of the internet, social media, fake news, and newsrooms layoffs, investigative journalism is more than necessary. In-depth reporting based on verified facts is one of the solutions to combat misinformation in shallow media coverage.
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Despite its relevance, it appears that investigative journalism is under threat since journalists have been losing their jobs due to the transformation of the media's business model. That is explained by the fact that investigative journalism takes time and is expensive to produce when compared to a regular news story. Sometimes it requires a team of journalists, photographers, videographers, editors, data scientists, and lawyers.
However, technology has been an ally and has changed media coverage, especially when it comes to international investigative journalism. Nowadays is possible to involve professionals from all over the world to report in-depth stories. As an example, I would mention The Ericsson List, an investigation led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which counted with the collaboration of journalists from 19 countries, and had media partners from more than 20 countries.
A second example is the ICIJ’s “U.S. Aid in Latin America” investigation that inquired how anti-drug money is funneled through corrupt military, paramilitary, and intelligence organizations and violates human rights in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. And, of course, the Wikileaks case, in which its publications mobilized the media in the whole world.
Bringing it into current days, we can also observe the use of technology in how journalists covering the war in Ukraine have been using WhatsApp, Telegram, and other messaging apps to communicate, share news, and keep track of their moves for security purposes. As Joel Simon says in the article “For journalists, Ukraine is a WhatsApp war”, published on CJR, “WhatsApp and Signal groups connect colleagues in the field—and provide a level of real-time battlefield information that, a decade ago, would have been available only to a top general.”
AI and Machine Learning
Besides connecting people and information, technology like AI has powered investigative journalism. Machine learning can analyze massive datasets in less time to identify leads, name, and predict misclassifications. Emilia Díaz-Struck, research editor and Latin American coordinator for the ICIJ, said in the article “The impact of AI and collaboration on investigative journalism” (here) that there is a lot of potential in using machine learning for journalism when dealing with vast amounts of data. “For these kinds of investigations, it would take years to manually go through and screen millions of records and make sense of them.”
Nevertheless, reporters are still required to do their work as well, such as talking to sources and cross-checking the data with public records. “Machine learning can help us find a needle in a haystack, help us be more efficient, and help journalists figure out if we are missing connections that could actually help with our reporting.”
Regardless of using technological tools or old methods, covering national or local stories, I believe investigative journalism is essential. And it is time to reflect on the worth of original in-depth reporting and its value to a healthy democracy and informed society.
*This article was submitted as a memo assignment for the course "Current Issues of Journalism" at the University of Illinois.
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