A taxi driver wearing a protective face mask reads the newspaper as he waits for customers amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Singapore May 5, 2020. REUTERS/Edgar Su
The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) has joined the Independent News Emergency Relief Coordination (INERC) to assist with coordinating help from funders who are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
ICFJ is conducting independent research mapping the broad impacts of COVID-19 on journalism worldwide as part of the Journalism and the Pandemic Project underway in collaboration with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. This includes a global survey targeting news organisations, journalists, editors and CEOs which is offered in seven languages (English, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Chinese). The aim is to help inform journalism’s recovery.
As part of its role with INERC, ICFJ will help the Reuters Institute to gather additional data to further assist funders in formulating a response to the pandemic. This will involve targeted distribution of a separate INERC survey, which focuses specifically on how the pandemic is impacting on the finances and audience reach of independent news media across the globe.
The INERC survey is now available in English, Spanish, Arabic, French and Portuguese, doubling the potential reach and making it more accessible by adding languages with a combined estimated 1.3 billion speakers. This survey is a rolling survey fielded exclusively through INERC group members directly to their contacts and networks. If you are interested in potentially taking part in the survey but have not yet received it from any of the INERC members, please contact us at inerc@politics.ox.ac.uk.
INERC is based on the idea that better information on the need for and supply of emergency funding relief can help ensure this relief is more effectively distributed globally and avoid a situation where a few well-known news media get a lot of support from many different funders while many more equally important but less well known get little or no support.
INERC’s ambition is to help guide tens and hopefully hundreds of millions of US dollars to those independent news media around the world who need the help the most in this difficult situation during the coronavirus crisis.
This story was updated on 12 June 2020 to clarify ICFJ's role within INERC
