Challenges of Malaysian journalists in reporting and misinformation on COVID-19 (2021 – 2022)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists took on the challenging task of gathering and distributing accurate information. Journalists exist as part of an ecology in which their work influences and is influenced by the environment. Using the framework of disaster communication ecology, this study explores the challenges of Malaysian journalists in news reporting and misinformation on the pandemic from 2021–2022. To this end, six journalists from different media organizations and news desks were interviewed to get their perspectives regarding their challenges in news reporting and misinformation during the pandemic. Five themes — struggles in gathering news on COVID-19, Work from Home and follow-ups, database of sources, downsizing of media outlets and creativity of journalists — emerged from the interviews and are discussed in this paper. The study also looks at how journalists think of misinformation and how the public should be more active in their fact-checking. At the time of the study, the six journalists interviewed also talked about the reopening of the news media organizations and their practices in 2022. In conclusion, it is important to note that journalists are important in mediating the information on COVID-19 to the public so that the latter will be better informed and better equipped for the new normal, during and post pandemic. © SEARCH Journal 2022.

Playlist: Work

[...]as we dream of different futures, we face multiple, competing narratives of post-pandemic work: mass refusal, as we recognize how much of life work steals from us;individual "pivots" to new careers vaunted in the media;the tantalizing possibility of universal social benefits;the cruel reality that a return to "normal" means a return to exploitation, inequality, and the daily grind of capitalism. Facing stagnating wages, poor conditions, and pandemic risks, workers across the continent are collectively organizing into unions, building solidarity, and waging successful strikes and job actions, including baristas, graduate students, video game developers, journalists, and warehouse workers. Yet, they argue, "intellective and physical labour are required to produce messages and the technologies used to disseminate them" (p. 493), encouraging a turn to labour in media and communication studies that has produced a rich and dynamic body of literature examining work and labour as it intersects with media, technology, and culture. A search of the CJC archive using the terms work and labour results in many articles on a range of work-related issues, a selective index of which could read: * care work (labour, technology-mediated work) * creative and cultural industries (working conditions, contracts, collective organizing, policy) * gender and technology (deskilling, intensification, power) * journalists (professional routines, working conditions, unions) * knowledge work (theories of, ideologies of, gendered divisions, deskilling, surveillance, rationalization, resistance) * labour, unions, strikes (media coverage of) This playlist features four articles that hold enduring lessons about work for the pandemic and beyond. The so-called minority union, which represents a small part of the company's workforce, aims to engage in worker activism rather than to bargain a collective agreement, as its wall-to-wall model includes workers outside of the standard employment relationship.

From Precariously Managing Risks to Building Social Resilience: The Safety of Women Journalists in Brazil

Attacks on journalists and the media in Brazil have a long history but have become even more problematic through the use of social media, particularly following the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president in 2019. In times of industry restructuring and coronavirus pandemic, the systematic attacks on individual journalists and on the media by Bolsonaro and his associates are posing unprecedented challenges, and are part of a pattern of abuse to suppress media freedom and discredit journalists' work. This article focuses upon journalists' abilities to access different types of capital to anticipate, cope with, and create options to overcome perceived threats and generate positive outcomes. This study builds upon the works of Voss (Behemoth-A Journal on Civilisation 1 (3): 39–56, 2008), Obrist, Pfeiffer and Henley (Progress in Development Studies 10 (4): 283–293, 2010) and Hess' (Communication Theory 23 (2): 112–130, 2013) "mediated social capital” to advance understanding of the nexus amongst risk, vulnerability and social resilience, and examines structural inequalities in and through the media. By employing a mixed-methods approach, we combine the results of a survey and in-depth interviews with high-profile figures of leading newspapers and professional bodies in the country. The findings open up possibilities on how news media's "mediated social capital” might enhance women journalists' capacity to move from vulnerability to social resilience, improving their safety. [ FROM AUTHOR]

The blurring line between freelance journalists and self-employed media workers.

This study uses the question, 'what makes a freelancer specifically a journalist' as a starting point for investigating the ways Australian freelance journalists experienced and managed precarious employment in COVID-19 impacted 2020. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 32 self-identified freelance journalists, we analyse the types of work they did, the influence of the precarious job situation on their work choices and the consequent ways they chose to display their identity as journalists. Our findings reveal a complex picture, which calls into question some of the binaries established around journalism. While nearly all participants had to resort to work outside journalism in 2020, at least half still displayed strong links to journalism, demonstrated by their sense of belonging to a community of journalists, and their continued interest in doing self-funded public interest journalism as 'passion projects'. However, we also noticed a blurring between the descriptors of journalist and writer, based partly on employment opportunities but also, importantly, on interest in increasing creativity in the journalistic space. These results lead us to question work-test definitions as a signifier of a freelancer's bond to journalism and to propose, instead, that freelancers merit a new standing in the flattening hierarchy of journalism.