Reporting the pandemic
COVID-19 is a health and safety issue for journalists.
From March 1, 2020 to April 10, 2021, at least 1060 media workers died from COVID-19. The month of March 2021 was particularly deadly with 93 journalists deceased from the coronavirus, or three per day. An additional concern is that the age of victims is dropping, with nearly half of journalists dying from COVID between the ages of 40 and 60 in March 2021… Of the 1,060, more than half died in Latin America, or 611 in 19 countries. Asia follows with 183 deaths in 17 countries, ahead of Europe (including Russia and Turkey) with 167 deaths in 19 countries, Africa with 52 deaths in 16 countries and North America 47 (2 countries).” - Press Emblem Campaign, April 13, 2021[i]
COVID-19's impact has been particularly brutal to the media industry which has been struggling for almost 15 years — first from the impact of the global financial crisis and then the immense disruption of the digital transformation that continues to savage the industry.
MEAA estimates that, in calendar 2020, COVID-19 contributed to the suspension or permanent closure of more than 150 newspaper mastheads, many of them in regional Australia, and that 1000 editorial jobs disappeared.[ii]
The impact of this sudden and massive decline in Australian media is profound.
The pandemic placed enormous pressures on everyone. For media professionals, despite being classified as essential workers, it has been a very trying time.
COVID meant a skeleton crew working in the office under strict controls. Working from home meant trying to interview and broadcast from a spare room — sometimes with everyone else in the home confined with you. It meant discovering that the NBN didn’t always work and neither did Zoom calls. It meant travel to news stories was arduous and needed to be conducted under strict safety measures. The slump in advertising left many specialist journalists, including freelancers, without work for months — and that problem is ongoing as the media may take a long time to recover fully, if at all.
The disturbing escalation of misinformation placed journalists in a position of being abused by people who choose not to believe media reporting. That has spilled into protests of groups opposed to the wearing of face masks, gatherings of anti-lockdown protestors, and protests by anti-vaxxers — people prepared to believe social media posts but not working journalists.
All this made COVID-19 a massive workplace health and safety issue for working journalists. Like everyone in the population there were fears of catching the virus and there are many instances of losing loved ones to the disease or having family members trapped behind borders or overseas and unable to get home.
The harm to mental health that the pandemic inflicted is severe.
COVID also changed the way journalists work, and the pandemic’s effect on press freedom is considerable, causing a significant dislocation. The impact of the pandemic is ongoing.
In a March 2021 report, Medianet reported that a survey of 1008 Australian journalists found that 90 per cent of journalists believe the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened threats to public interest journalism due to the closure of newsrooms and media organisations.
Most journalists believe the financial impacts of the pandemic on media organisations have:
• Undermined journalists’ ability to work effectively,
• Affected job security for journalists, particularly women and non-binary people and those without permanent positions, such as freelancers,
• Changed workloads for journalists, and
• Changed content for journalists, including a greater emphasis on producing content that will generate revenue.[iii]
Sixty-six per cent of survey respondents said the closures of media companies and newsrooms had affected journalists’ ability to work effectively and the same number of respondents said the closures of media companies/newsrooms have heightened threats to public interest journalism.
“Many respondents highlighted the effects newsroom closures may have had in smaller or regional communities, for example in holding local authorities accountable. Some also noted the impact the closures have had on remaining media, such as increasing pressure on journalists to produce content quickly, reducing the depth of coverage and placing further stress on resources.”
There were signs of despair among some survey respondents. “It feels like the journalism industry is crumbling, with so many titles either closing or laying off staff, or drastically reducing budgets.”
Another said: “Our newsroom already suffered cutbacks. This could be the nail in the coffin.”
Another respondent said what government help that had been promised was not enough to keep newsrooms alive: “So many newsrooms have closed or downsized but thankfully there have been many grassroots new independent start-ups. Disinformation has been rife making it more important than ever to have local news but local news from independent outlets receives little to no government funding or support through tax or charitable measures.”
The hurt was particularly painful in regional media outlets. “It was awful to see so many small country newspapers close or have to reduce their paper page numbers due to COVID. In country areas, newspapers are vital to providing information to the community. COVID-19 has also dramatically impacted the viability of media organisations even further. My old editor at a country newspaper always said he enjoyed having multiple competitors in the area because it keeps all journalists on their game and encourages good journalism. His newspaper was the only company that survived COVID-19, the other newspapers closed their doors.”
The report said: “Half of the journalists surveyed said their employment circumstances have changed in the past year.” The most common changes were an increase in unpaid work, salary cuts, and reduced hours. Digital and print journalists said they experienced higher losses of job security than those working in TV or radio.
“Work for freelancers [18 per cent of survey respondents] has been particularly affected, with 41 per cent saying they have far less job security since the beginning of the pandemic, and 61 per cent reporting a decrease in workload.”
The survey, conducted in November and December 2020, also found women (59 per cent of survey respondents) have been more affected than men by the pandemic when it comes to job security and employment. Fifty-five per cent of female journalists said they have less job security because of the pandemic, compared to 42 per cent of male journalists.
One survey respondent said: ‘I believe journalists were already in a position where lack of resources and staffing were an issue, but the pandemic accelerated that.”
The pandemic led to markedly different ways of working. Before the pandemic, 18 per cent of respondents said they were working from home, this jumped to 82 per cent at some point during the pandemic, with Victorian respondents reporting the lowest return-to-office rates in the country.
Fifty-nine per cent of respondents believed there has been an increase in disinformation as a result of the pandemic, heightening threats to public interest journalism. One respondent warned: “The increase in social media has seen many reports on various topics that have been proven to be false or at best misleading, and as more people use social media as their first source of news, they are mistakenly seeing mainstream media outlets as almost irrelevant.”
A journalism.co.uk survey found that more than 60 per cent of respondents had been negatively affected, with many suffering from late payments and increasing financial pressure.[iv]
Racism
In the United States, the Coalition for Women Journalists is cataloguing threats, assaults and attacks on press freedom surrounding women journalists. Recently, it has reported on a disturbing rise in threats to Asian-American journalists in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic[v].
“Numerous incidents of discrimination, violence, and hate crimes have been reported since the former U.S. president coined terms such as “Kung flu” and “China virus” to reference the coronavirus. The former president also insinuated that Chinese people were responsible for the eruption of the virus in the country. In reality, it was President Trump who could not control the pandemic situation in the United States. During this time the CFWIJ recorded Asian-American women journalists at the receiving end of vicious xenophobic and racist comments online from the former president. The hate fuelled by the right-wing supporters online is now showing its physical manifestation…
“Many hard-working and talented Asian-American journalists have also shared how they were gaslighted in newsrooms, and at times, by a former president of the United States.”[vi]
On May 13, 2020 at a press briefing held in the White House’s Rose Garden, then US President Donald Trump responded to a question from CBS News’ Weijia Jiang, a Chinese-American journalist. The president told her to ‘ask China’ instead of her own country about its reaction to the coronavirus. ‘Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically? That I should ask China?’ Weija challenged the president. He went on to call her question “nasty” before moving on to another reporter.”[vii]
[i] “More than a thousand journalists have died from Covid-19 around the world”, Press Emblem Campaign, April 13, 2021 https://www.pressemblem.ch/pec-news.shtml
[ii] “Urgent need for a mandatory news content code”, MEAA, July 8, 2020 https://www.meaa.org/mediaroom/urgent-need-for-a-mandatory-news-content-code-meaa/
[iii] “COVID-19’s Impact on Journalists and the Media in Australia”, Medianet, March 8 2021 https://www.medianet.com.au/releases/197714/
[iv] “The bittersweet impact of the pandemic on freelance journalism”, Katherine Cenaj and Marcela Kunova. journalism.co.uk, February 1 2021 https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/the-fate-of-freelancing-in-a-post-covid-world/s2/a791039/
[v] “Asian American Journalists on the Frontline of hate and negligence, CFWIJ reports”, Women In Journalism, March 18 2021 https://womeninjournalism.org/cfwij-press-statements/asian-american-journalists-on-the-frontline-of-hate-and-negligence-cfwij-reports
[vi] ibid
[vii] “United States: Trump’s reprehensible treatment of women journalists continue ahead of November elections”, Women in Journalism, September 11, 2020 https://womeninjournalism.org/cfwij-press-statements/united-states-trumps-reprehensible-treatment-of-women-journalists-continue-ahead-of-november-elections?rq=weijia%20jiang
