What does 2023 have in store for journalism?
Also, journalism in a time of 'permacrisis', feminist burnout, and questions over social media platforms' ability to safeguard African elections
Hey Checklisters!
Happy New Year to you! We hope you had a restful and meaningful holiday season.
This is the first issue of The Checklist for 2023. In this issue we take a look at Nieman Lab’s Predictions for Journalism for 2023. From addressing issues of mental health of journalists to promoting independent news businesses so that they can lead the way on healthy work cultures - many of these predictions resonate with our work and that of our partners.
This week in The Checklist, we bring you a Q&A with Watching Western Sahara, our partners in Western Sahara, who talk about their work in the region. They also talk about the FiSahara annual film festival in the Sahrawi refugee camps. The festival has two critical objectives: raising international awareness about Western Sahara and using film as a tool to preserve and transmit Sahrawi identity and culture.
The Check Global Report brings an update from India where it is being predicted that the standoff between India and U.S. tech giants will intensify in 2023. As we talk about addressing mental health, we take a look at an article that dives into why it is challenging for feminists to exercise self-care. We also bring to you excerpts from an interview with the Colombian president Gustavo Petro during his visit in Brazil for President Lula´s inauguration ceremony.
Also, take a look at the Townsquare section where we share opportunities and events.
If there are updates you would like us to share from your country or region, please reach out to us at checklist@meedan.com.
Q&A with Watching Western Sahara: Bringing one of the world’s most invisible crises to the spotlight through citizen journalism and cinema
Western Sahara’s more than 40-year conflict is also one of the world’s most invisible crises. The territory lies between Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria and its long coastline stretches along the Atlantic Ocean. In this Q&A, we learn more from the Watching Western Sahara/FiSahara team about the situation in Western Sahara, the region’s activism, refugees, human rights violations, and how culture can be used to fight state-sponsored misinformation in a “news black hole”.
Can you share a bit of background around the Western Sahara conflict? And how would you describe the situation in 2022?
Sahrawis have endured almost half of a century of occupation of their homeland by Morocco. Half of the indigenous Sahrawi population has remained under occupation, while the other half lives in refugee camps in Algeria. Families were ripped apart by the invasion and live on either side of the 2.700km-long separation wall built by Morocco that traverses the territory like a long scar, lined with 7 million landmines. After a 16-year war between the Moroccan military and the Sahrawi liberation army, the Polisario Front, the UN, in 1991, brokered a ceasefire agreement promising Sahrawis a referendum on self-determination.
But more than 30 years have passed and Morocco has refused to hold up its end of the deal, refusing to implement the conditions of the peace accords and stalling the process.
The Check Global Report
By Meedan’s Check Global team in Beirut, Belo Horizonte, Kochi, Bhimtal, and Nairobi
Journalism in a time of permacrisis (Nieman Lab Predictions for Journalism 2023)
The new global discourse on mental health and sustainability in the workplace brought about by these times of crisis has extended to journalism and the people who work in journalism. In the face of great uncertainty and change, many people are suffering — from limitations on press freedoms, from vicarious trauma and stress, from inflation, conflict, layoffs, violence, hate and countless other issues.
"In a time when it feels like so much of our world is upside down, the work ahead needs to include supporting the whole person in the workplace and ensuring we have the energy, joy, and spirit to show up fully for our selves, our teams, and our audiences in difficult times." — An Xiao Mina
India’s Face-Off With Big Tech Will Intensify in 2023 (The Wall Street Journal)
The standoff between India and U.S. tech giants will intensify in 2023 as New Delhi cooks up its own regulatory medicine for the world’s second most populous internet market—an unusual concoction of Europe’s strict antitrust approach and Chinese-style government surveillance. Three significant pieces of legislation likely to pass in 2023 will harden positions on both sides.
India will probably see more explicit resistance from American Big Tech this year given what’s at stake: Silicon Valley’s dominant position in India’s rapidly growing digital economy and the politically perilous possibility of being drafted as a foot soldier in a more muscular Indian surveillance state. What would be particularly worrying for tech giants like Meta and Alphabet is if India’s unique approach becomes a blueprint for other large emerging internet markets.
Questions linger over Facebook, Twitter, TikTok’s commitment to uphold election integrity in Africa, as countries head to polls (TechCrunch)
A dozen countries in Africa, including Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, DR Congo, Libya and Mali, are expected to hold elections in 2023, and questions linger on how well social media platforms are prepared to curb misinformation and disinformation after claims of botched content moderation during Kenya’s polls last August.
“Social-media platforms, especially Twitter, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, WhatsApp and Telegram, should step up efforts to identify and deal with election-related misinformation, disinformation and conspiracies as well as intercepting violent or intimidating messages” — Audu Bulama Bukarti, senior fellow, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
The feminist burnout. Can we inhabit feminism without burning ourselves and leaving the ashes in it? (Volcanicas)
Feminists talk all the time about self-care, but when it comes to exercising it, many of us give up. We talk about the importance of setting limits and perhaps this is what is most difficult for some of us, and when we finally decide to do it, we are branded as selfish and not very empathetic.
“Self-care should be a strategy and commitment , both individually and collectively. Self-care as a political tool, as a collective commitment and as a transgressive weapon. Well-being, the enjoyment of activism, enjoyment, pleasure and satisfaction should also be an ethical commitment. The commitment to be well to serve the struggles more. That too is political and revolutionary”. — Ita María Díez
If we repeat the formula of the 1st pink wave, failure will be resounding, says Petro (Folha De S. Paulo)
Folha de Sao Paulo, interviews the Colombian president Gustavo Petro during his visit in Brazil for President Lula´s inauguration ceremony.
"We have to transform ourselves into a beacon for world progressivism. Everyone is looking at us. From Colombia's side, we see the potential for the region to be a reference for progressivism in the world. Perhaps the newly elected Latin American movements did not realize it, but the world is looking at us today. We have responsibility. Before, we were the ones looking at Europe or even China. Today look at Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, at me, at Lula, and Chilean President Gabriel Boric. If we fail, world progressivism fails. That is why it seems necessary to me to build a discourse that is ours for the 21st century and for humanity." — Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia
Townsquare
JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2023
Reuters Journalist Fellowship Programme The Journalist Fellowship Programme at the Reuters Institute is one of the world’s leading schemes for practising, mid-career journalists to take some time out from their day jobs to explore journalism in depth. Find out how to apply. The application deadline is 6 February.
Rainforest Journalism Fund: The Rainforest Journalism Fund (RJF), launched in September 2018, represents a major investment in international environmental and climate reporting. Through the Pulitzer Center, the RJF will support nearly 200 original reporting projects over five years, along with annual regional conferences designed to raise the level of reporting on global tropical rainforest issues like deforestation and climate change–leading to stories that make a difference. You can find more information here.
ProPublica Launches Investigative Editor Training Program: The yearlong ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program aims to increase the ranks of investigative editors from diverse backgrounds. The application period will open on Feb. 1, 2023. You can sign up for the ProPublica Jobs newsletter to be notified when this opportunity becomes available.
What else we’re reading
These predictions for journalism by people in media and journalism forecast what is coming in the next 12 months. (Nieman Lab Predictions for Journalism 2023)
This report looks back from Ukraine to Uvalde, Capitol Hill and Supreme Court to the NFL broadcast booth, and everything in between. (A Poynter Report Special)
On a more grim note, 66 journalists were killed in 2022 amid decline in press safety. Read the IPI report here. (International Press Institute)
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