Fellowship Takeaways podcast series

Caithlin: Welcome to Fellowship Takeaways, bite-sized insights from seminars hosted by the Reuters Institute’s programme for mid-career journalists in 2024. Today’s episode focuses on one of the most pressing issues in modern journalism: the ethical use of AI in newsgathering. 

In  December 2023, Arthur Grimonpont, a project manager at Reporters Without Borders, introduced RSF’s new AI charter for journalism. The charter aims to ensure that AI is used ethically and transparently in newsrooms. Arthur emphasized the importance of transparency and accountability as newsrooms adopt AI-driven tools to enhance efficiency. 

Arthur Grimonpont: In highly competitive markets, individual media outlets are not always incentivised to be cautious. They are incentivized to use AI to increase their workflows, to cut their costs, while potentially in the long run diminishing quality. And this might very well be profitable in the short term, at least from an economic perspective. It may also harm the journalism industry and its social function in the long run. 

Caithlin: Asked whether news outlets and journalists should be working together to hold AI companies to account – for example, in the use of their content to train their models – Arthur said... 

Arthur Grimonpont: If a media organization authorizes a tech company to use their data, they should first make sure that it is not badly used, at least in terms of intention. And when negotiating with AI companies, media outlets should always defend their long term, collective interest. It is also very important because I noticed during this whole process that many in the industry share the fear not necessarily of losing their job or having their intellectual property stolen, but more about the long-term future of the journalism industry. And this is very important because I think that this future the future of this industry depends more on our collective ability to protect the social role of journalism in the face of technological change by building a shared understanding of the challenges and how we deal with them. It depends more on these collective choices. 

Professor Bahareh Heravi, a reader in AI and Media at the University of Surrey’s Institute for People-Centered AI, spoke to us in May 2024. She said:  

Bahareh Heravi: Not surprisingly, one of the most pressing challenges for AI integration in newsrooms are technical challenges followed by ethical challenges. So luckily, many journalists are now aware of the ethical challenges that could be involved and worried about it, or they should be. In terms of generative AI specifically they seem to be worried about no human supervision and inaccurate information and bias, all of which are very, very important. 

Caithlin: From Arthur’s insight into the ethical considerations of using AI in newsrooms to Bahareh’s focus on the technical and ethical challenges it’s clear that AI brings with it both opportunities and risks. While AI can stream processes and cut costs it can also threaten the very fabric of journalism by introducing biases, inaccuracies and ethical concerns. Ensuring that AI is used responsibly requires collective action, transparency and a focus on maintaining the integrity of journalism as a pillar of society. The real challenge will be finding the right balance between embracing AI’s potential and safeguarding the ethical principles that guide our profession. 

Three questions you may want to ponder as a journalist today: 

• Does your newsroom have written ethical guidelines on the use and disclosure of use of AI? If not, does it need them? 

• What do you do to assess unconscious bias in your reporting, and can that process be effectively extended to AI-generated content? 

• If news industry leaders were to take more collective action when it comes to working with AI and generative AI technology leaders, what would that action look like? 

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fellowship Takeaways. We’ll be back with more bite-sized insights from some of the world’s leading journalists and experts. Until then, keep asking tough questions—especially of yourself. 

Caithlin: Welcome to Fellowship Takeaways, bite-sized insights from seminars hosted by the Reuters Institute’s programme for mid-career journalists in 2024. Today, we explore the critical issue of diversity and representation in newsrooms, with a focus on the indigenous perspective and global diversity in reporting. 

In May 2024 we heard from Carmen Parahi, a pioneering former journalist at Stuff.co.nz, who led efforts to improve the coverage of indigenous people in New Zealand. Carmen developed a model that encourages newsrooms to embrace their histories, share power, and improve representation for marginalized communities. 

Carmen Parahi: Indigenous solutions are not the same as diversity, inclusion, affirmative action or a voice referendum. Those terms centre eurocentric and mono cultural perspectives on what they think indigenous and marginalized communities need. Indigenous and marginalized communities know what they need. It is up to the organizations to go and talk to them and find out what they need. 

Step one is simply knowing who you are. Knowing your history. Because if you don’t know who you are, you won’t know where you’re going. 

Journalism and the media were colonization tools used by European settlers to help get settlers and migrants into the country to set up land transactions to hold the government in developing authority and power in those countries. 

‘Mana Taurite’. We need to restore balance in the media. Share power and resources, improve media representation. 

Caithlin: Carmen’s work emphasizes that diversity in newsrooms isn't just about adding more voices—it's about shifting the framework itself to reflect indigenous and marginalized communities’ needs." 

Carmen Parahi: Everyone needs to understand their history and work to improve representation of indigenous marginalized communities. Every single person from the receptionist to the goddamn CEO to the board member and the owner. They all need to do this. Because if you rely on one or two people and if you rely on the people of colour or the indigenous one or two people in your newsrooms, you will fail to change and you will fail your own people as well as those communities. 

Caithlin: We got to see the benefits of a newsroom bringing together diverse perspectives in October 2023, when we spoke to KC Schaper, a Projects Editor at The Washington Post, who led a special project reporting on the story of Maura, a Filipina woman whose remains were part of a racial brain collection at the Smithsonian. 

KC Schaper: Everybody came to this project very passionate about what we were doing and the stories that we were telling. There were certainly times when things got contentious because we were all passionate about how this was going to be told and how this as going to presented. But everybody brought different points of view and I think that’s why this was so successful. We were all able to evaluate what point of view would work or challenges each other’s point of view. What gaze are we using, what biases are we putting out there. We also used each other, leaned on each other to say ‘hey, maybe take a step back for a second and just take those glasses off and take a walk’. 

Caithlin: KC and her team made conscious efforts to include diverse voices and approaches in their reporting. 

KC Schaper: When I first adjusted translating the story, part of it was we felt a responsibility to make Maura’s story as accessible as possible to the Filipino people but it was also a way for us to help the people who are directly affected by the story, you know, the Filipino people, to feel like it was theirs. And to have it in their mother tongue was very important to us as. 

Caithlin: Speaking about the decision to present the story in graphic novel format, KC said: 

KC Schaper: I wanted to reach out to both older and younger audiences but that meant you had an uphill battle to find the different ways and mediums these stories could be presented, also knowing that there are younger viewers out there, not necessarily those looking for news that may come across this story and see this animated video and learn not only about Maura, but the 1904 World’s Fair and what happened then. 

What my best advice would be is to really think about the audience and the type of story that you’re telling. First think about the possible impact and then how do you reach the audiences that you hope to reach, so ultimately I wanted to provide an entry point into this project through the means and mediums in which our audiences already receive their information. That’s why you can access the project in so many ways. You can read it digitally, you can read it in print, you can watch it in video form, listen to it on a podcast.

Caithlin: The Washington Post’s approach to the Maura story reflects the kind of inclusive, diverse thinking that Carmen advocates for in newsroom practices. It's a commitment to accessibility and representation, beyond language, that goes to the very core of how stories are told. 

Both Carmen and KC highlight that representation isn't just about who is at the table. It’s about transforming the table itself, from the editorial decisions to the delivery methods of the story, ensuring that every community has a chance to be heard and seen. 

Caithlin: Three questions you may want to ponder as a journalist today: 

1. How do you ensure that your stories are accessible and relevant to underrepresented communities? 

2. As Carmen says we need to know our history: how well do you know the history of your people and your language? 

3. Are there ways your personal background can inform your storytelling without compromising objectivity? 

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fellowship Takeaways. We’ll be back with more bite-sized insights from some of the world’s leading journalists. Until then, keep asking tough questions—especially about yourself.

Caithlin: Welcome to Fellowship Takeaways, bite-sized insights from seminars hosted by the Reuters Institute’s programme for mid-career journalists in the 2024 academic year. Today’s episode touches on a topic that every journalist should be aware of: moral injury and the mental health challenges faced by those reporting on conflict, trauma, and crisis.

In October, we heard from Dr Anthony Feinstein, a psychiatrist who has extensively studied the mental health of journalists reporting in conflict zones. He explained the concept of moral injury and how it affects journalists in their day-to-day work. 

Anthony Feinstein: The definition that I like for moral injury is it's a condition that can arise by witnessing, perpetrating or failing to prevent, acts that transgress your own moral compass. There's things that you can do, you can perpetrate or witness or things that you fail to do, acts of omission, that can trigger moral injury. And moral injury is associated with emotions like guilt, and shame, and in journalists, anger.

Caithlin: He also explained why moral injury should not be confused with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Anthony Feinstein: Moral injury is not a mental illness, and I hope it never becomes one. But it's a significant condition… often coexisting with PTSD, and might be the conduit to depression or other mental illnesses.

Caithlin: Does everyone who experiences moral injury go on to develop PTSD? Absolutely not.  

Anthony Feinstein: Trauma is not synonymous with PTSD. There’s an enormous gulf between them. People can have traumatic experiences and the majority will not have PTSD. The moment you know, someone goes through a traumatic event, and then glibly says, Oh, well, I've got PTSD because I experienced trauma that basically conflates two issues and it kind of muddies the waters, and then you start having a very confused narrative. And to put PTSD into perspective, the lifetime prevalence in the general population in North American data is going to be 5, 6, 7 percent slightly higher in women than in men. But no individual is going to go through life without experiencing some kind of traumatic experience. That's just the nature of our existence. So you know, 100% of us do not have PTSD. So we really have to be very clear about the definitions.

Caithlin: We all have and must exercise the personal agency to monitor our own wellbeing. But if moral injury is an occupational hazard, what’s the duty of care for newsroom managers? 

Anthony Feinstein: The newsroom has to be acutely aware that if you want good journalism you need healthy journalists. They need to be checking in on the journalists on the frontline, asking from time to time, “how are you doing?”. Because if you’ve got a journalist on the front line who’s not doing well and their reporting is being biased or compromised by their poor emotional health, you’re going to end up with journalisim that’s compromised. Because I’ve been doing it now for 23 years, I’ve seen an evolution. When we first did our original study there wasn’t a discussion about it at all. Just nothing, there was a complete void. In Western news organisations, there’s now a discussion about it, it’s become very important.

The pandemic certainly gave impetus to this. We did a study during the pandemic 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. You can make therapy available to journalists, but you can't mandate it. The moment you start mandating it, you're going to lose the people that you want to help. So you have to win the intellectual argument and persuade people why this is so important. Educate journalists about what the risk factors are, get them familiar with the concepts of trauma, make the resources available to them, win the intellectual argument that is very important if you take this seriously. Ultimately it’s going to come down to the individual. Are you going to use it or not? When you go to great parts of this world, there’s no discussion about this. Journalist are not getting the kind of help they should be getting. Great swathes of this world, outside of United States, United Kingdom, Canada, this is not a topic that’s being discussed. Journalists are doing very difficult work, arguably the most difficult work and they don’t have any recognition of the type of topic that we’re talking about today. And that’s a big problem. 

Caithlin: A final word from Antony for journalists: 

Anthony: You have to look very carefully at your motivation. Why am I doing this work? What is the purpose of journalism? You know, you are one of the pillars of civil society. And if you lose sight of that, and if you're going to be in it for yourself, and you're chasing something other than that, then you're on a slippery slope to moral injury. 

Caithlin: Whether you were reporting from a warzone or monitoring socials from a shiny office in London, the past few years have been marked by immense conflict and violence. Take the time to check in on how this affected your own welfare. 

Three questions you may want to ponder as a journalist today: 

1. Have I been conscious lately of the emotions my work brings up? 
2. Have I been discharging those emotions in a healthy way that doesn’t harm me or the people around me? 
3. Do I understand my motivations and the limits of my responsibility as a journalist? 

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fellowship Takeaways. We’ll be back with more bite-sized insights from some of the world’s leading journalists and experts. Until then, keep asking tough questions – especially of yourself. 

Caithlin: Welcome to Fellowship Takeaways, bite-sized insights from seminars hosted by the Reuters Institute’s programme for mid-career journalists in 2024. In today’s episode, we’ll explore how AI and disinformation have become intertwined, and what that means for journalists battling fake news.

Peter Pomerantsev: In May 2024, we heard from Peter Pomerantsev, a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School of Economics and an expert in disinformation and media manipulation. 

There’s a huge amount of speculation, people are worried about deepfakes, people are worried about the ability to - I think this might be a more accurate fear - you could then use AI to game the Google algorithm much quicker. I think generally though the technology is always evolving, all sides have access to the technology, it’s not really about the technology, it’s about the plan, it’s about understanding the vulnerability of the ecosystem. [Disinformation] is a tiny, tiny little thing that one department of the KGB used to do in the Cold War. The idea that that is the essence of what they do speaks to our lack of understanding of their idea of statecraft, and frankly that’s why we’re losing. The Russians see it as policy, they see it as one thing, because it is one thing for them, it’s one guy co-ordinating all this from the Kremlin on his telephone while we’re trying to parcel it into the language of western bureaucracy. They see perception as the end goal of everything.

Caithlin: Peter highlighted how disinformation can create chaos simply by exacerbating social conflict rather than pushing a specific agenda.

Peter Pomerantsev: It’s very ideologically fluid. It can be far left when it needs to be, far right when it needs to be. It can just exacerbate tensions when that needs to happen. It’s not about promoting one party or one line.

Caithlin: In June 2024, we also heard from Dima Saber, Head of Programs at Meedan, who explained the role AI plays in spreading disinformation, particularly in closed communication channels.

Dima Saber: There is definitely an issue with the effect of Gen AI on the information that's circulating in times of election. The truth is that bad actors … ,Gen AI has made it possible for them to produce media content, deepfakes, videos, text, images and use those images to discredit their opponents. So we've seen Gen AI being used as a tool of political communication with close to no regulation whatsoever, and where it becomes a really important issue and the heart of our work where Meedan sits is that we’re trying to do this work in closed messaging apps. And the reason why this is very important is that these spaces are encrypted, so they're unregulated, so misinformation/disinformation, all this can spread virally with no oversight, really from tech platforms. So despite all the funding that's gone into supporting mis- and disinformation work and campaigns for the last decade, very little happened on closed messaging apps. And this is where the effects of Gen AI are obviously the most felt and the most used.

Caithlin: Both Peter and Dima remind us that AI’s role in disinformation goes beyond simple fake news. It’s about influencing society on a mass scale, making it crucial for journalists to understand the tools they are up against.

Three questions you may want to ponder as a journalist today: 

What is your newsroom’s strategy (and who do you partner with) to stay ahead of AI-generated disinformation, particularly during election cycles? 

Are you in the spaces where disinformation is being shared, and are there tools that could help you gain access to those spaces? 

When you do gain access: is reporting on the disinformation always the most useful approach to dispelling it, or are you helping to spread it? 

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fellowship Takeaways. We’ll be back with more bite-sized insights from some of the world’s leading journalists and experts. Until then, keep asking tough questions – especially of yourself.

Caithlin: Welcome to Fellowship Takeaways, bite-sized insights from seminars hosted by the Reuters Institute’s programme for mid-career journalists in the 2024 academic year.  

Today, we’ll listen to soundbites related to one of journalism's most enduring challenges: navigating ethics when covering sensitive stories.

In October 2023, our journalist fellows spoke to Connie Walker, a Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning journalist from Canada, whose podcast – Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's – uncovered the dark history of Canada’s residential schools. It was a deeply personal story: about her own father's history.

Talking about balancing truth-telling with protecting vulnerable subjects, Connie explained her trauma-informed approach:

Connie: We always tried to leave people in the present, bringing things back to now, as a reminder of their resilience. We prioritised checking in on people after the interviews, and through some of my own education into trauma-informed journalism I realised that it can be a helpful thing.

Caithlin: She also said:

Connie: You’re somebody who’s an empathetic listener and you’re giving space to someone to share their story, in a way that they are feeling respected, that that is not an inherently bad thing that can actually be a helpful and healing thing.

Caithlin: In November 2023, we heard from Anas Aremeyaw Anas, an investigative journalist from Ghana, who’s known for his undercover work exposing corruption and injustice across borders. Unlike Connie, he finds himself interviewing dangerous criminals. He told us:

Anas: For me, if I say you've committed a crime, I show you the hardcore evidence and I prove to you that you did it. The best tool for protecting yourself as a journalist is your evidence. If it’s watertight, no matter the attacks, you will survive. Truth is key. If you have the truth on your side at all costs you will be able to triumph.

Caithlin: Anas and Connie offer two perspectives on sensitive interviews: with victims and with criminals. One calls for the consideration of the emotional weight our questions carry. The other for the weight of evidence that must be explained.

Questions to muse on: 

Caithlin: Three questions you may want to ponder as a journalist today: 

• How did I leave the last person I interviewed feeling, and is there any correlation to the quality of information I collected? 

• Does my next interview require a trauma-informed approach, an evidence-informed approach, or a mixture of both? 

• And, Am I taking the necessary steps to protect both myself and my sources, whether emotionally or legally?

Caithlin: Welcome to Fellowship Takeaways, bite-sized insights from seminars hosted by the Reuters Institute’s programme for mid-career journalists in 2024. Today’s episode will explore how AI is revolutionising newsrooms and opening up new possibilities for journalism

In May 2024, we heard from Professor Bahareh Heravi, a leading researcher in AI and Media, who spoke about the many ways AI is already transforming journalism, particularly in content generation and data journalism.

Bahareh Heravi: I think many news organizations are doing very interesting work and I am particularly encouraged by smaller news organizations who before the likes of Chat GPT didn’t have the resources or access to kind of use AI or create some experimental or create exciting tools and use cases. …There's really a lot of people who do really interesting work in different countries. The issue is that a lot of focus comes back to the Global North. And I would like to encourage focusing more a little bit on the Global South because so much interesting work is going on there.

Caithlin: Professor Heravi encourages journalists to play with the tools to understand the scope of what they’re capable of doing.

Bahareh Heravi: Just start playing with ChatGPT and prompt engineer. ‘Engineer’ sounds like such a complex word, just prompt writing. Write, write prompts. Drop your files in there and see where you get. You’d be surprised. Within a month or two you’re going to be able to do so much, just writing text in ChatGPT, that you would not be able to imagine before. My suggestion normally is don't think about complex AI tools. Just use the simplest ones that you have access to and start experimenting with it. There is a few short learnings so you can train ChatGPT, keep giving it the type of writing that you would like, or the type of writing that you would like to write and after a while it will start writing in your style.

Caithlin: In February 2024, we spoke to Hilke Schelmann, an Emmy award winning journalism professor at NYU, and an investigative freelance reporter whose new book The Algorithm used information from whistleblowers, internal documents, and real world testing to reveal how AI decides who gets hired, monitored, promoted and fired. She offered great advice for how to develop an innovative reporting beat: monitoring how AI systems are implemented. 

Hilke Schellmann: As an investigative journalist, I sort of I'm interested in systemic problems. … There was a learning curve that at the beginning I got these like, pages of pages with companies trying to explain something to me and I'm like, ‘wow, this is like all higher math I really don't understand,’ sounds very good. But over time, I got a little bit more discernible that I was like, ‘Okay, if you can't explain what this tool is about, that is a flaw in how you've built the tool. And I'm pretty certain that that is a fact that needs to be reported. Does it mean that the tool inherently is flawed, probably no but it really should give us pause. 

What I also did is, as I went through this, this world of hiring and AI in the world of work, I cultivated experts and folks that have been you know, one was, for example, a former employment lawyer who worked on AI tools in a firm and he actually did a lot of analysis. But some of the technical reports are very technical and I don’t understand them so some of their sources were really helpful to look at signs of validation coefficients. Everything else, there is one number that will tell you how valid this tool is and in statistics it’s 0.3 is some sort of relevance. So cultivating those experts and sending it to them, I learned through them over time, it also made me a little more confident to be like, ‘what is this?’

Caithlin: Asked where we should be looking for stories, Hilke said:

Hilke Schellmann: I would suggest anywhere where there's high stakes decision making and we use algorithms is a good place to probe. Social algorithms, like anything giving you benefits, any thing that may take away your benefit. A lot of these are built on problematic assumptions but anywhere where, I think also, the future is predicted is, you know, are you going to be committing fraud or something like that? I mean, the future is inherently uncertain for humans so there’s a whole lot to go on.

Caithlin: As Bahareh and Hilke have shown, AI’s potential in journalism is exciting, offering new opportunities to innovate in content creation, data analysis, and investigative reporting.

Questions for Reflection: 

Caithlin: Three questions you may want to ponder as a journalist today: 

• What are your colleagues and competitors using AI for – especially in small newsrooms and in the Global South – and are there lessons you can take from them?

• What AI tools are being used by the organisations that contribute to the social fabric of your community, and does this require your attention? 

• Am I doing enough playing around with tools like ChatGPT in my personal life to assess how they might become useful in my professional life? 

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fellowship Takeaways. We’ll be back with more bite-sized insights from some of the world’s leading journalists. Until then, keep asking tough questions—especially of yourself.

Caithlin: Welcome to Fellowship Takeaways, bite-sized insights from seminars hosted by the Reuters Institute’s programme for mid-career journalists in 2024. Today’s episode tackles a critical challenge for journalists worldwide: covering the climate crisis, with a focus on how local stories can shape global conversations on this crucial topic.

In November 2023, we heard from Dr. Fredi Otto. Dr. Otto is a leading climate scientist at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London. She is a pioneer in the field of climate change attribution, focusing on the role of climate change in extreme weather events.  

Explaining the importance of accurate attribution for extreme weather stories, Fredi said: 

Fredi Otto: I think we have gone from sort of, largely from climate change is not happening in in a sort of a broad part of the media to everything that's happening is climate change. But of course the reality is in between and what we have been aiming to do with our work is to show what climate change means where it's a game changer, also where it's where it's not so that we have a better understanding of what it means for our daily lives. Because only then you have some agency to do something. 

Caithlin: Fredi also spoke about the need to reframe stories based on their human impact:” 

Fredi Otto: The Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty. It's not a treaty to save the polar bear. It's not an environmental treaty, per se.   … This is why the refocusing is necessary because it's it has become much more of a cultural war topic than it used to be… that climate change and particularly climate policy is seen as something that is a luxury that is something for some woke lefties. 

The climate policies that we need make life better for the vast majority of people apart from those very rich who really benefit from the money made by burning and digging up fossil fuels, but that's a tiny percentage of the population. Most of us don't profit from that at all, but suffer the consequences and pay for the consequences with our health, with our lives but also economically. 

Caithlin: In March 2024, we also spoke to Wanjira Mathai, Vice President and Regional Director for Africa at the World Resources Institute (WRI), where she leads efforts to promote sustainable development, climate action, and environmental justice across the African continent. 

She called on journalists to remember to include the voices of the most affected, often in the Global South. Then she highlighted three angles on climate change that have been underreported. 

Wanjira Mathai: Journalism has a key role there in ensuring that we hold accountable those who have committed to cut emissions. You cannot have a situation where people decide they are going to cut emissions but they still continue to grow the problem. So you’re not solving it if you’re growing it at the same time. You also have to tell the missing story, which is the story of adaptation, the story of how communities are cushioning themselves against impacts that are coming and coming fast and furious. The fact that there are gaps in communities being able to do that. I would love to see more coverage on holding accountable those who have made commitments to deliver finance.  

Caithlin: Both Fredi and Wanjira remind us that climate change is not just a distant, scientific issue. It's an urgent, lived reality for many people. Whether you’re reporting from Cologne or Kisumu, the human stories are where the impact truly lies.

Questions for Reflection: 

Caithlin: Three questions you may want to ponder as a journalist today: 

1. Am I telling climate stories in a way that connects with human emotions, rather than just facts and figures?  

2. How can I ensure that the voices of those most affected by climate change are heard in my reporting?  

3. Am I exploring the global connections between local climate issues and broader environmental justice?" 

Caithlin: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fellowship Takeaways. We’ll be back with more bite-sized insights from some of the world’s leading journalists and experts. Until then, keep asking tough questions – especially about yourself. Stay well.

Caithlin: Welcome to Fellowship Takeaways, a new podcast series offering bite-sized insights from seminars hosted by the Reuters Institute’s programme for mid-career journalists in 2024. In today’s episode, we’re looking at the critical role that journalists play when democracy itself is under strain.

In January 2024, Sana Jaffrey, a Research Fellow at Australian National University, spoke to us about the state of Indonesian democracy and the challenges journalists face when reporting on elections in a country where democratic regression is a very real threat.

Sana Jaffrey: So democratic regression is a global trend that we're seeing, not just in developing democracies, like Indonesia, but also in much, much more established democracies, like the United States or even in India. And so these are concerns that are global. Indonesia is sort of part of that trend in many ways. But in Indonesia, democratic repression might look very different to observers from other parts of the world. In Indonesia, elections are held routinely they are mostly free, free and fair. The problem is there is very little opposition in Parliament. So the opposition and the government get along a little too well, and to the extent that there's very little accountability.

Caithlin: Indonesia is a powerful reminder that in places where elections still occur, democracy isn’t always healthy. Journalists must take on the responsibility of shining a light on power imbalances and underreported narratives.

Just ahead of South Africa's May 2024 elections Adriaan Basson editor-in-chief of News24, South Africa's largest digital news outlet reflected on the state of journalism in a nation where change in majority rule ushered in a new age of coalition governance.

Adriaan Basson: How do you report on coalition discussions and negotiations in a way that is unfortunately not that transparent. So we then have a framework where parties must openly declare that they are in consultation or in negotiations prior to coalitions forming. We don't have legislation that, that that requires coalition agreements to be published or to be publicly available. So we're going to have to be trailblazers in that regard. In covering that coalition forming using our network of sources, informants, and then obviously getting official updates from the political parties themselves. It is certainly going to be interesting… I think in terms of in terms of what you report or not, I always err on the side of transparency and complete openness. Unless there's a very good reason to hold back information I can't see us doing that easily.

Caithlin: In Argentina, where President Javier Milei’s government has taken an adversarial stance against the press, journalists face new challenges. Hugo Alconada, editor of the investigations unit at La Nacion, spoke to us on the 1st of May 2024 about the threats posed to journalistic independence and how Argentina's media is organising to counteract these pressures. 

Hugo Alconada: It has not only changed but also exacerbated some tendencies that were there. … Public officers are avoiding journalist to spread the news. They are intensively using social media to spread propaganda just to avoid the, you know, the analysis and the checks done by journalists. I would say that also has increased and exacerbated some tendencies in the social media, bots, trolls attacking journalists and media outlets. We have half-truths or complete lies. In the case President Milei he's going much farther than his predecessors when it comes to virtually harass journalists. Also, you know, he's celebrating attacks done by trolls on social media, liking or retweeting the attacks. And he's, of course, avoiding journalists and blocking journalists on his own Twitter. 

Caithlin: Hugo spoke about outlets working together get around information blockades.  

Hugo: They are gonna insult us. Yeah, they're gonna threaten us. Yeah, they're gonna maybe try to get us into court. Let's do our job. is not easy. It's sometimes not nice. Sometimes your families suffer and you keep going by have to do it in a smart ways. If you know that you cannot get access to a public officer but you know that that public officer will be willing to answer questions from my colleague from abroad, maybe you should be trying to contact that colleague to pass them your questions for them to ask those questions. And actually, I do that a lot.

Caithlin: Sana, Adriaan and Hugo show us that journalism in times of democratic regression is about far more than reporting events—it’s about protecting the very framework of freedom. It’s a reminder that the fight for democracy happens not just in government halls but also in the stories that are told.

Three questions you may want to ponder as a journalist today: 

• What steps can your newsroom take to build networks with international colleagues in order to access critical information that may be withheld by local officials? 

• How do you decide when to hold back on publishing information that might fuel political instability, and when to prioritise transparency? 

• What narratives contribute to the erosion of democracy, and how are you challenging them in your reporting?

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fellowship Takeaways. We’ll be back with more insights from some of the world’s leading journalists. Until next time, keep asking tough questions—especially about yourself.