Journalism Today: 14 Nov 2024

By Matthew Leake and Eduardo Suárez

??? 3 top news stories

1. Inside Modi’s crackdown on the foreign press. Foreign journalists in India are coming under increasing pressure from authorities for their work. Three have been forced to leave the country this year and reporting has become extremely challenging, as access to officials is denied and they become the subject of the government's vendettas. In a new piece on our website, our contributor Raksha Kumar looks at the increasingly hostile environment for foreign correspondents in the country and how outside reporting fits into the wider news ecosystem. | Read

• A quote: “A foreign correspondent who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity said that their visa was extended only for six months at a time. This made it impossible for this person to move their family to India or even plan for stories that took longer than six months to report. ‘No deep investigation is possible,’ they said, adding that self-censorship was always there, but now the list of issues that they think twice about before reporting on have increased,” she writes.

?? From our archive. Earlier this year Raksha wrote an article on how high-profile Indian journalists were turning to YouTube to side-step censorship and how Modi’s government was trying to silence their work on that platform. | Read

2. Listen: Journalists and moral injury. The latest podcast in our Fellowship Takeaways series is out this week. In this bite-sized episode we hear insights from renowned Professor Anthony Feinstein on his work understanding moral injury and the mental health challenges faced by those reporting on conflict, trauma, and crisis. Our own Caithlin Mercer hosts. | Listen

• A quote. “We did a study during the pandemic in which we show very clearly that if you put therapy in place, the journalists who get therapy do better than the journalists who don't,” says Dr Feinstein.

?? From our archive. For journalists in Lebanon and Israel, dealing with the threat of war has become the ‘new normal,’ editors at An-Nahar and Haaretz tell our colleague Matthew Leake. Both have initiated therapy sessions in their newsrooms to help their journalists deal with the consequences of reporting on conflict and witnessing deeply distressing scenes. | Read

3. A big Spanish newspaper leaves X. A few hours after the Guardian announced its decision to stop posting on Elon Musk’s platform, one of the most read Spanish newspapers is following suit. Barcelona-based La Vanguardia said it will no longer update their accounts from now on. The newspaper argues X has become “a network for misinformation” and notices how misogyny, racism and hate speech are flourishing on the platform. | Read (in Spanish)

• Room for debate. La Vanguardia’s decision has sparked a lot of debate amongst Spanish journalists, with some applauding the decision, others criticising it, and a few more following suit and leaving for other channels.??

?? A datapoint from us. According to this year’s Digital News Report, 16% of Spaniards get their news from X, and 25% use the platform for any purpose. WhatsApp (27%), Facebook (26%), YouTube (22%) and Instagram (21%) are more used for news than Twitter in the country. | Read our Spain’s country page

?? Chart of the day

?? Finding trustworthy news on X. Up to 24% of the people we surveyed for our Digital News Report say they find it difficult to identify trustworthy news on X. The percentage is bigger for X than for any other platform, except for TikTok (27%). The three platforms where audiences find it easier to identify trustworthy platforms are Google Search (60%), YouTube (54%), and Facebook and WhatsApp (both 51%). | Read our report in full

?? Coffee break

A network of bot accounts using AI-generated content is believed to be part of an influence campaign to prop up Ghana’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) ahead of elections next month. | Read

The Amazon rainforests’s community radio stations have become vital outlets for sharing news of the pressing social and environmental issues | Read

Some of Al Jazeera’s reporters in Gaza have stopped broadcasting due to months of unpaid expenses. Some say they have not been paid their salary. | Read

Spotify’s co-president Gustav S?derstr?m shares his thoughts on the place that AI-generated music and podcasts have in the audio platform | Read

?? One piece from our archive.

?????? A six-step newsroom plan to fight strategic litigation. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are designed to silence and intimidate journalists by burdening them with legal costs. These lawsuits, often baseless, aim to exhaust newsrooms ultimately leading to self-censorship. Our Fellow Patrycja Maciejewicz spoke to journalists and legal experts in Poland and the Balkans to know how SLAPPs have been used there. Her project explains how SLAPPs affect journalists’ work and what newsrooms can do to avoid facing one. | Read her project

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