How China used the media to spread its Covid narrative — and win friends around the world

‘Over half of the 50 nations surveyed at the end of 2020 reported coverage of China had become more positive in their national media since the onset of the pandemic, while less than a quarter reported it had become increasingly negative.

‘The change was most favorable in Europe, which scored 6.3 on a scale of one to ten, where one is the most negative and ten is the most positive. China’s image plummeted in North America, coming in at 3.5.

‘The overall increase in positivity coincided with an uptick in Chinese outreach. Three-quarters of the journalists we surveyed said China had a visible presence in their national media, compared to 64% in a previous survey we conducted for IFJ in 2019.’

Read here (Nieman Lab, May 14, 2021)

Political warfare, inequity, and insufficient data in coverage of the vaccine rollout

‘Ellen Ruppel Shell, a professor of science journalism at Boston University, told me yesterday that vaccine framing can be “schizophrenic—alarmism followed by sometimes misleading reassurance.” This is true, for example, of many stories warning about vaccines’ possible reduced efficacy against new variants of the virus, whose scary headlines often belie more nuanced expert assessments and key questions that have yet to be answered...

‘It’s hard to generalize, obviously, but it’s increasingly clear that much vaccine coverage is stuck in conventional journalistic rhythms that don’t serve the story well. Given that the pandemic is a “once-in-a-hundred-years event, it’s time for journalists to step back and think about what our priorities need to be,” Shell told me. “We don’t just take notes and put them out there. Almost every piece should have some analysis in it.” In the course of this reflection, we need to reckon, too, with the idea that vaccines may not be a magic bullet. Elena Conis, a science historian and journalism professor at Berkeley, told me yesterday that her biggest concern with vaccine framing is that “we have rushed to cover, talk, and think about vaccination all while failing to have much harder conversations about other things we can do to keep this epidemic in check.”

Read here (Columbia Journalism Review, Feb 3, 2021)

Longform podcast: Ed Yong of The Atlantic

‘Ed Yong spent 2020 covering the pandemic for The Atlantic. His latest feature is "How Science Beat the Virus." He says: “I am trying to give readers a platform that they can stand on to observe this raging torrent that is the pandemic, this cascade of information that is threatening to sweep us all away. I’m trying to give people a rock on which they can stand so that they can observe what is happening without themselves being submerged by it. But I am trying to construct that platform while also being submerged in it.”

Listen to the podcast here (Longform, Dec 23, 2020)

Threatened, maligned, jailed: Journalism in the coronavirus pandemic

‘What we are currently seeing is not the arrival of new authoritarian regimes or attacks on freedom of the press, but rather an increase in tendencies that already existed before the pandemic hit. One could say the crisis has hardened the approach many authoritarian or dictatorial governments have taken against journalists.

‘We will not be able to say with certainty just how many journalists have disappeared or been jailed since the coronavirus pandemic began until the end of the year. However, we can report that as of today at least 231 professional journalists and 115 so-called citizen journalists and bloggers — that is, people disseminating information on authoritarian governments via YouTube or Facebook — are currently behind bars. Another 14 media professionals (photographers, camera operators, editors, etc.) are in jail as well.’

Read here (DW, May 3, 2020)