Journalism Today. 11 Nov 2024

By Eduardo Suárez and Matthew Leake

??? 3 top news stories

1. An investigative hub focusing on the US-México border. A new piece by investigative journalist Priscila Cárdenas looks at the work of the México Border Investigative Reporting Hub, an initiative to close the gap between journalists operating in Northern México and big news organisations based in the nation’s capital. Since its launch in 2018, the hub has trained dozens of local journalists and fostered investigations into government contracts, poisoned water and drug cartels. | Read

• A key quote: “Border region journalists have had to face many challenges and we’ve struggled to prevail doing journalism. To conduct coverage safely and thoroughly, one of the best solutions we’ve found is finding strength in numbers, and establishing networks with other journalists and news outlets,” says Rocío Gallegos, a journalist from the Ciudad Juárez-based investigative outlet La Verdad.

?? From our archive. A project from our Journalist Fellow Noelia Vetach looked at what journalists in other countries can learn from their Mexican colleagues on how to approach the coverage of organised crime. | Read

2. The true toll of content moderation. “If you take your phone and then go to TikTok, you will see happy things. But in the background, I personally was moderating, in the hundreds, horrific and traumatising videos,” says former moderator Mojez, who’s based in Nairobi and speaks about his harrowing experience at a new documentary Zoe Kleinman has prepared for BBC Radio 4. | Read

• The testimonies. The ex-moderators Kleinman spoke to used the word “trauma” in describing the impact the work had on them. Some had difficulty sleeping and eating. One described how hearing a baby cry had made a colleague panic. Another said he found it difficult to interact with his wife and children because of the child abuse he had witnessed.

3. A reporter’s view on racism in the UK. BBC presenter Mishal Husain recently said that her experience of racism in Britain changed in the aftermath of the race riots that took place over the summer. A few years ago, Husain said that Britain was “probably the only country in Europe” where it was possible to achieve her level of success in broadcasting with “a very obviously Muslim name”. | Read

• The quote. “This year I have felt racism in a way that I probably haven’t at any point in my career before. I always felt that the UK was way ahead of so many other countries and I don’t feel as sure of that today,” she said after she accepted the British Journalism Review’s Charles Wheeler award.

?? From our archive. Our Journalist Fellow Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff looked at structural racism in British newsrooms as part of her project on the coverage of missing people in the UK. “There remains a refusal to plainly acknowledge racism across British newsrooms,” she wrote. “Missing White Woman Syndrome – the disproportionate coverage of young, white, middle class, often good-looking women, and girls – undeniably exists in the UK. This is why key stories continue to be overlooked.” | Read

?? Chart of the day

Generative AI's expected impact. According to survey data from six countries, most people think generative AI will have a large impact on social media companies, search engines, science and news media. Fewer people think it'll have the same kind of impact on retailers, law enforcement or political parties. | Read the report

?? Coffee break

Meta’s Threads app is “inundated” with liberal conspiracy theories about the election being stolen, writes Taylor Lorenz. | Read

“The national news media is more limited in its reach and influence than ever in the modern era,” believes Max Tani, on the growing influence of podcasts in the US election. | Read

Forbidden Stories was set up to continue the work of slain journalists and protect the work of those under threat. Its editor Sandrine Rigaud explains how her Egyptian and Syrian upbringing put her role in perspective, “using my voice, freely, to report on what other journalists had been silenced for.” | Read

AI-generated “slop” is feeding the engagement algorithms of social media, leading to “runaway growth” of such content, writes John Naughton, while also leading people to question genuine images. | Read

There are now almost no professional journalists left in the north of Gaza to cover what “several international institutions have described as an ethnic cleansing campaign,” says the Committee to Protect Journalists. | Read

?? One piece from our archive.

A chatbot from Paraguay. What would it be like to speak to a woman imprisoned for drug trafficking? That’s the reason Paraguayan news outlet El Surtidor launched Eva, a chatbot created to find a different way to tell the story of how communities, especially women, are affected by drug trafficking. To learn more about the project, our contributor Laura Oliver spoke to El Surti reporter Juliana Quintana, who has spent years reporting on this topic, and journalist, UX consultant and conversational designer Sebastián Hacher. | Read

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