El Simposio Internacional de Periodismo Online (ISOJ) une a periodistas de todo el mundo, en persona o virtualmente.

Un buen ejemplo de ello es la cobertura del ISOJ 2023 realizada por miembros de CONNECTASHub, una redacción regional de más de 136 periodistas que trabajan en 19 países latinoamericanos.

Los miembros de CONNECTASHub, que escriben desde República Dominicana hasta Venezuela, produjeron 12 artículos en español que cubrieron tanto la 24ª edición del ISOJ como su encuentro compañero, el 16º Coloquio Iberoamericano de Periodismo Digital, una reunión para periodistas de América Latina, España y Portugal que tradicionalmente tiene lugar después del ISOJ.

El esfuerzo fue coordinado por Carlos Eduardo Huertas, fundador y director de CONNECTAS, un centro transnacional de periodismo colaborativo para América Latina, con sede en Bogotá, Colombia.

“Estamos sumamente agradecidos con Carlos Eduardo, con su equipo y con los periodistas de CONNECTASHub repartidos por todo el hemisferio. Su proyecto especial de reportería realzó el impacto del ISOJ en América Latina”, dijo el profesor Rosental Alves, director del Centro Knight para el Periodismo en las Américas y fundador del ISOJ.

A continuación, encontrará enlaces a toda la cobertura del equipo CONNECTASHub.

El futuro del periodismo de opinión: cómo ha evolucionado el género en la era digital

Censura y demandas judiciales amenazan el ejercicio del periodismo

Productos periodísticos para dejar de depender de las redes sociales

Inversiones filantrópicas para crear modelos sostenibles

¿Puede la inteligencia artificial hacer más eficiente el trabajo de los periodistas?

La cobertura de la crisis climática necesita del periodismo de soluciones e historias personales

¿Cómo mejorar la salud mental de los periodistas?

El periodismo en la era de los filtros de realidad virtual

Contra el elitismo acomodaticio

Tenemos que atacar la desinformación de forma integral, para que los responsables rindan cuentas

Por un periodismo más subversivo

Periodismo en el exilio: ¿cómo reportar desde el exterior y tener impacto en casa?

Latin American newsroom covers ISOJ 2023 in Spanish, expanding conference’s reach in the Americas

The International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) brings together journalists from all over the world, whether they attend in person or virtually.

A prime example of this is coverage of ISOJ 2023 carried out by members of CONNECTASHub, a regional newsroom of more than 136 journalists working in 19 Latin American countries.

The CONNECTASHub members, writing from the Dominican Republic to Venezuela, produced 12 articles in Spanish that covered both the 24th ISOJ and its companion gathering, the 16th Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism, a meeting for journalists from Latin America, Spain and Portugal that traditionally takes place following ISOJ.

The effort was coordinated by Carlos Eduardo Huertas, founder and director of CONNECTAS, a transnational collaborative journalism center for Latin America, based in Bogotá, Colombia.

“We are extremely grateful to Carlos Eduardo, his team and the CONNECTASHub journalists spread throughout the hemisphere. Their special reporting project enhanced the impact of ISOJ in Latin America,” said Professor Rosental Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and founder of ISOJ.

Below, you can find links to all coverage from the CONNECTASHub team.

El futuro del periodismo de opinión: cómo ha evolucionado el género en la era digital

Censura y demandas judiciales amenazan el ejercicio del periodismo

Productos periodísticos para dejar de depender de las redes sociales

Inversiones filantrópicas para crear modelos sostenibles

¿Puede la inteligencia artificial hacer más eficiente el trabajo de los periodistas?

La cobertura de la crisis climática necesita del periodismo de soluciones e historias personales

¿Cómo mejorar la salud mental de los periodistas?

El periodismo en la era de los filtros de realidad virtual

Contra el elitismo acomodaticio

Tenemos que atacar la desinformación de forma integral, para que los responsables rindan cuentas

Por un periodismo más subversivo

Periodismo en el exilio: ¿cómo reportar desde el exterior y tener impacto en casa?

Journalists from around the world discussed the precarious state of media in their home countries during a panel chaired by Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, at the 24th annual International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) on April 14.

According to the Reporters Without Borders’ 2021 World Press Freedom Index, more than 70% of journalism globally is either blocked or seriously constrained.

“This is not just a story about journalism,” Lipinski said. “It is a story about contagion and our international democracy recession.”

This is not a problem far away from the United States, Lipinski said. The U.S. is ranked only 42nd in the Press Freedom Index and the reconsidering of landmark Supreme Court case The New York Times v. Sullivan has put journalism at risk, she added.

Afghanistan

Fahim Abed, a former New York Times reporter, said Afghanistan’s collapse in August 2021 and subsequent Taliban takeover forced hundreds of journalists to flee the country.

“The pressure from the Taliban was enormous,” Abed said. “The group didn’t accept the idea of free speech and used every opportunity to suppress journalists.”

The remaining journalists in the country were subjected to harassment and beatings as pressure from the Taliban increased, he added. Several were victims of torture for covering the 2021 Afghan women’s protest.

After six months of Taliban rule, another wave of journalists fled. Those who remain are subject to harassment and attacks. In the last year, 115 journalists were arrested, tortured or beaten and five were killed. Roughly 60% of Afghan media outlets are closed or on the verge of collapse, causing many reporters to turn to service industry jobs.

“The world is silent about Afghanistan and the country is not [an] interesting topic for the major media outlets anymore,” Abed said. “Me and many other Afghan journalists lost their country then our careers.”

Nigeria

Adefemi Akinsanya, international correspondent and anchor for Arise News, said journalism dies suddenly or gradually.

Akinsanya said Nigeria was already grappling with its global image when #EndSARS, an anti-police brutality movement, went viral in 2020. The #EndSARS ended when Nigerian military police opened fire on protesters in late October 2020. The country has gone viral for similar hashtags before.

When Akinsanya and her crew were covering the anniversary of the shooting in 2021, Nigerian police took them into custody and confiscated their equipment, a move condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Along with attacks and blockages, Nigerian suppression of media also appears in legislation. Additionally, journalists are suffering financially, making them more likely to exchange favorable stories for money, she said.

Low pay and pressure from the Nigerian government make journalism off-putting to young writers, but new media outlets, such as Arise News, are showing promise.

“When we discuss the state of journalism in Nigeria, there may not be much to look back to with pride,” Akinsanya said. “There is undoubtedly plenty to look forward to with hope.”

Bangladesh

According to Sheikh Sabiha Alam, senior reporter for Prothom Alo, said government legislation gives them total control of publishing.

The paper Alam worked for in Bangladesh was heavily criticized by the government for its investigations into inequality and corruption, calling it “the enemy of the government, democracy and people.”

“I have never felt so depressed as I feel now,” Alam said. “I never thought that the prime minister would ever so carefully criticize my newspaper.”

Kidnappings and arrests of journalists and their families are becoming more frequent, especially further from the capital. Police agencies are alleged to be behind the kidnappings, but actively deny their involvement.

Under the Digital Security Act, 200 media workers are in custody, facing trial. The country also has legislation allowing for the legal shutdown and canceling of publishers, becoming a weapon to terrorize the press, culminating in a ban of a popular opposition paper.

Working journalists are under surveillance and media owners are often pro-government. This causes people to turn to other forms of media, increasing the spread of misinformation and disinformation.

“We have lost our credibility to a great extent,” Alam said. “People are withdrawing their trust from the mainstream media and resting it on Facebook and other social media platforms.”

Turkey

Pinar Ersoy, Istanbul editor for BBC’s Monitoring Turkey team, said the state of journalism in her country has changed as pro-government businesses continue to buy media outlets, but opposition papers have become popular.

“Authorities regularly issue bans and fines over their coverage,” she said. “Their journalists are harassed and arrested, and they are more prone to the impact of economic woes as most are not backed by large holding companies.”

But many newsletters, podcasts and fact-checking websites have entered Turkey’s digital sphere. Additionally, the popularity of social media in the country has allowed for in-depth political debate and information to be distributed.

“We’re seen over the last decade scores of journalists migrate to online platforms after they were fired or forced to quit,” Ersoy said. “Some have put together full scale broadcasting operations, others report the news on the day, coverage with interviews and analysis.”

However, the Turkish government is now trying to suppress the digital landscape by censoring content, forcing companies to have in-country offices.

Cambodia

Bopha Phorn, an independent journalist based in Phnom Penh and the first Nieman Fellow from Cambodia, was detained over her coverage of government corruption.

In an emotional presentation, Phorn recalled the paper she used to work for, the Cambodia Daily, was known for investigating the government but had to shut down in 2017 following attacks. Attacks on other independent journalists and newsrooms, covering topics such as corruption and power abuse, led to further closures and arrests.

TV news media are corporately owned and do not cover corruption in the Cambodian government, headed by Prime Minister Hun Sen. Journalists who formerly worked for shuttered newsrooms either turn to other jobs or take offers to work in the government, Phorn said.

“The message is clear,” Phorn said. “Don’t write any negative story about the government or even about [their] country.”

Phron received a standing ovation from the ISOJ audience of international journalists and academics after her speech.

Ukraine

Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, every media outlet has turned into a war outlet, said Taras Prokopyshyn, publisher and CEO of The Ukrainians Media.

Journalists are targeted by the Russian government while trying to cover the frontlines of the war and war crimes — 233 media outlets have been fully or partially closed, 52 media workers have been killed, eight while reporting, and 15 were subjected to torture.

A few weeks after the Russian invasion, journalists were forced to evacuate their homes and took refuge in their news stations. They continued to work under constant stress, bombardment and low pay.

“The war has numerous challenges, making work much more difficult for Urkrainians,” Prokopyshyn said.

Ukraine is currently under martial law, making media outlets adhere to self-censorship while the government utilizes TV and social media to spread its messages. Investigative reporting has increased, he said, focusing on Russian war crimes.

Guatemala

José Zamora, chief communications and impact officer at Exile Content, said journalists are hit with “arbitrary criminal proceedings” or exile for reporting on corruption and anti-democratic behavior by the government.

More than 25 judges, juries and journalists are in exile and many more have been jailed, including Zamora’s father, José Rubén Zamora.

“Some of the highest profile judges, prosecutors, activists and journalists have been targeted by the regime,” José Zamora said.

El Periodico, a newspaper in Guatemala known for taking down corrupt members of Congress, had to significantly decrease production to avoid further government attacks, but still publishes online.

“The persecution has strengthened the ties between journalists from different news organizations,” Zamora added. “The support of the journalism community and of everyone [at the panel] gives me hope.”

Author’s Bio: Kylee Howard is a first-year UT Austin journalism student from Waco, TX. She currently writes for The Daily Texan, the student newspaper for the University of Texas.

A group of journalists who have been exiled because of their reporting called on lawmakers, news organizations, and nonprofits to help find ways to sustainably support reporters in similar situations.

The journalists gathered at the International Symposium of Online Journalism (ISOJ) in Austin on April 15 to discuss how they were forced out of their countries and how they continued their work from outside of their nations’ borders.

Before leaving their homes, the journalists reported from Russia, Nicaragua, Myanmar and Guatemala. Each country is experiencing monumental restrictions and prohibitions on freedom of the press.

In Nicaragua, Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios, panel member and the founder and editor of Confidencial, said there has been a barrage of assaults on journalism, including the murder and imprisonment of reporters, censorship and forced closure of news organizations. The insecurity forced the journalist from his home, and he now directs the news site from exile in Costa Rica.

“Despite all of that, we never stopped reporting and broadcasting. Not even a single day,” Chamorro Barrios said. “[President Daniel Ortega] has never been able to silence journalism itself, and the media continues to report from exile.”

In Russia, independent journalism has also proved to be very difficult, if not impossible. Journalist Olga Churakova explained how censorship has increased since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

For example, reporters are now unable to use certain words, such as “war” to describe the military invasion of Ukraine. Instead, the government requires journalists to use the words “special operation.”

“When full-scale war started, all of us had to leave the country,” Churakova said. “Nobody wants to lie to their readers and listeners.”

Similarly to Chamorro Barrios, Churakova has found ways to continue her reporting from outside her country’s borders. She co-founded the popular anti-war podcast “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent,” in which she and her co-host talk about the attacks on so-called “foreign agents,” or people and entities that the Russian government considers under “foreign influence.”

Journalists being resourceful

These sorts of difficult political environments have prompted innovation, such as journalists discovering technological workarounds and new avenues for publication and funding.

However, the reporters emphasized that their work in exile might be made easier with the help of organizations, lawmakers and even citizens from countries outside of their region. One simple way for people to help is just by paying attention to news in other countries, Juan Luis Font, journalist and radio host of ConCriterio in Guatemala, said.

“We would like to see much more interest, not only in the U.S. media, but also in the regional media,” Font said. “Mexico almost ignores whatever is happening in Central America, and I would say that Colombia doesn’t pay that much attention. Those are countries that have a lot of influence over us because they are the biggest economies in our region.”

After being forced out of Myanmar, Danny Fenster, editor-at-large of Frontier Myanmar, is now a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and studies how journalists in his situation have continued to report on repressive regimes. He said that there may be hope for exiled journalists through a legal framework.

“You’re basically a refugee once this has happened. They need financial support just to stay alive and to eat,” Fenster said. “But other work that I believe is really important are these legal scholars and human rights workers who can find new systems or new legal vehicles for somebody who is now stateless or somebody who needs a visa but does not have an employer.”

Moderator Kathleen McElroy, a professor at the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, said that it was important for people outside of these countries to prioritize these attacks on journalists. When highlighting the insecurity in these regions, she listed two recent examples of attacks against reporters in the United States, including a journalist in Las Vegas who was killed because of his reporting and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich who is being detained in Russia.

“The cases receive a lot of coverage here in the U.S., and it demonstrates just how relatively safe, though difficult and discouraging, it can be to do journalism here in the U.S.,” McElroy said. “It’s not that way outside of our borders.”

Author’s bio: Sierra Juarez is a researcher and fact-checker based in Mexico City.

At the 24th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ), journalists from seven countries will present on the state of global news media. The session will take place on Friday, April 14, at 3:30 p.m. U.S. Central Time. There’s still time to register for ISOJ and attend either virtually or in person. However, registration will close soon, so sign up today.

Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, will chair the round up. Lipinski previously worked as editor-in-chief and senior vice president of The Chicago Tribune. As a reporter, she won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on corruption in the Chicago City Council.

Lipinski will be joined by:

• Fahim Abed, an independent journalist who reported for The New York Times in Kabul, Afghanistan, until the Taliban took over the country in 2021. He has also worked at the Tribune-Review, the BBC World Service and local Afghanistan outlets.
• Adefemi Akinsanya, an international correspondent and anchor for Arise News in Lagos, Nigeria. Akinsanya is currently working on building a news management platform to help journalists tell the stories of marginalized communities.
• Sheikh Sabiha Alam, a senior reporter for the Prothom Alo newspaper in Bangladesh. She has won UNICEF’s Meena Media Award four times for her coverage. Prior to Prothom Alo, she worked for the BBC, bdnews24 and The Daily Star.
• Pinar Ersoy, an editor for the BBC based in Istanbul. She runs the Turkey branch of BBC Monitoring, which tracks, analyzes and summarizes global media.
• Bopha Phorn, an independent journalist based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera, Nikkei Asia and The Associated Press. She was previously a senior reporter and editor for The Cambodia Daily.
• Taras Prokopyshyn, publisher and CEO of The Ukrainians Media, an independent media company focused on high-quality and long-form journalism. He has developed the organization into a media ecosystem with four outlets, a print magazine, a storytelling and podcast studio, and educational projects.
• José Zamora, chief communications and impact officer for Exile Content in Guatemala. He previously served as senior vice president of Univision News and managed the Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge, a program to spur global media innovation.

Join the conversation by registering for ISOJ 2023 today. You can participate either virtually or in person in Austin, Texas.

ISOJ, which began in 1999, brings together journalists, media executives, scholars and students to discuss the impact of technology on journalism today and in the future. It is an innovative conference that bridges the gap between the news industry and academia. 

For updates and additional information, you can visit ISOJ’s website, Twitter or Facebook. If you have any questions, please contact us at isoj@austin.utexas.edu.

Cases of “exile journalism” have been proliferating around the world and will be discussed at the 24th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) at the University of Texas at Austin.

The panel will have speakers from four countries – Guatemala, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Russia – where independent journalists have suffered persecution from authoritarian regimes.

“Exile journalism: Forced out of their countries, journalists use technology to report from abroad and have impact back home,” will take place on Saturday, April 15, as part of ISOJ 2023. Register now to attend.

Kathleen McElroy, professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, will moderate the panel with Olga Churakova from Russia; Carlos Fernando Chamorro from Nicaragua; Juan Luis Font from Guatemala; and Danny Fenster, editor-at-large of Frontier Myanmar.

Churakova is a Russian journalist and host of the award-winning podcast, “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent.” While working for investigative journalism outlet Proekt, she wrote about corruption, internal Russian policies and protests in Belarus. In 2021, authorities designated Churakova as a “foreign agent” and labeled Proekt an “undesirable organization,” which led to its closure. Churakova’s designation meant that she had to publish a lengthy disclaimer with her work and send financial reports to authorities, or incur fines and jail time. She is now outside of Russia and is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Chamorro is founder and director of Nicaraguan digital news outlet Confidencial and news program Esta Semana. A well-known critical voice of the government of Daniel Ortega, he fled Nicaragua for a second time in June 2021 “to safeguard his freedom” after police raided his home. Just a month earlier, police raided the studios of Esta Semana and Confidencial for the second time. In August 2021, authorities imposed multiple criminal charges on Chamorro. He now works in exile from Costa Rica.

Font is director and host of news radio show Con Criterio. He left Guatemala in 2022 after a former communications minister brought a second criminal lawsuit against him. A potential conviction carries up to eight years in prison. Font has been involved in the creation of multiple media outlets in Guatemala, including Revista ContraPoder, elPeriódico and Diario Digital. He now broadcasts ConCriterio TV and Radio ConCriterio from the U.S.

Fenster is editor-at-large for the award-winning investigative news magazine Frontier Myanmar. Following his reporting on military-linked businesses, Myanmar’s military junta imprisoned him. He was convicted on multiple chargesand received an 11-year sentence before being pardoned. He was also charged with sedition and terrorism, but the charges were later dropped before he went to trial. After spending six months in prison and following negotiations between the military and former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson, Fenster was released and returned to the U.S. He is now a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

In the cases of all four of these journalists, their persecution is part of a larger crackdown by authorities on critical voices.

These journalists will explain why they were forced to leave their homes and newsrooms, and how they continue to work and cover the countries they had to abandon.

The panel speaks to the heart of how the internet can expand opportunities for journalism, especially when that exercise is limited or prohibited by authorities.

Registration is now open for ISOJ 2023 and virtual and in-person participation is available.

ISOJ, an annual gathering of journalists, media executives and scholars, will take place online and in person at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center at the University of Texas at Austin on April 14 and 15, 2023.

More information about the conference, including a program and list of speakers and their biographies, is available at isoj.org.

This is how leading fact-checkers from Latin America and Spain see it: Laura Zommer, executive director of Chequeado (Argentina); Liliana Elósegui, editor-in-chief of Verificado (Mexico); Cristina Tardáguila, Senior Program Director of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ); and Clara Jiménez, co-founder and CEO of Maldita.es (Spain). They spoke in the panel “Fact-checking and Disinformation in Latin America and Spain” on Sunday, April 3, 2022, as part of the 15th Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism.

Collaboration facilitated important fact-checking initiatives that made a difference in the fight against disinformation around various events of global impact in recent years, such as the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines, and Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.

“In our case [collaboration] is what we do every day, all the time. We have an impact, but we have much more impact because we work collaboratively and we don’t repeat ourselves. We don’t invent the wheel over and over…”, said Zommer, who served as moderator of the panel held at the University of Texas at Austin.

One of the most important achievements of LATAMChequea, the collaborative fact-checking network created in 2014 under the coordination of Chequeado, has been its collaboration against disinformation around COVID-19. Since before SARS CoV-2 arrived in the Americas, fact-checkers from around the world organized themselves to verify the data that was popping up about the new virus. This is how the #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance emerged, coordinated by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) of the Poynter Institute.

The Spanish part was led by LATAMChequea — in which 32 organizations from 15 Latin American countries are currently participating — through LATAMChequea Coronavirus, a platform with data on thousands of pieces of verified information linked to the pandemic. It also includes explanatory content about COVID-19 that any network member can use to debunk fake news in a timely manner.

Two years after its launch, the #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance has generated more than 16 thousand verifications in 43 languages, on information from more than 70 countries. Three chatbots were also developed for WhatsApp (one in English, one in Spanish, and one in Portuguese). The initiative’s databases are open and to date continue to be updated.

In 2021, LATAMChequea launched LATAMChequea Vacunas, with data verification on immunizations against COVID-19; and “The Misinformants,” with investigations on the actors in different countries that have systematically misinformed throughout the pandemic.

With the coronavirus crisis, Internet fact checkers learned that in global disinformation phenomena, trends and waves of misleading information emerge in one place but end up going around almost the entire world.

“Waves that were in Europe soon reached the United States and from there they went on to Latin America,” Tardáguila said. “It was also very curious to see that misinformation has a local flavor: just as in India people said ‘drink cow urine [to cure yourself from COVID-19],’ in Spain they said ‘drink wine,’ in Argentina it was ‘drink tea,’ and in Honduras it was ‘eat avocado’… These waves adapt to each country.”

When the #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance started to make an impact, it caught the attention of big tech companies, who at the time were trying to come up with strategies to counter the misinformation crisis that was spreading on their platforms. This is how companies like Google supported the initiative through financing.

“Collaboration begins with a little notebook and no money. And suddenly, if it takes off, it attracts attention and social media comes, big tech comes and gives money,” Tardáguila said.

In 2022, the experience gained in verifying the pandemic was applied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine through the #UkraineFacts project, developed by Maldita.es. After the Spanish media realized that several fact-checkers in Europe were verifying the same content about the conflict, it decided to create a collaborative database and join forces with colleagues from other countries to generate digital products in different languages and help deny fake news about the conflict.

From the database, which to date contains more than 2,400 verifications carried out by 71 fact-checkers from 80 countries, in a few days a platform was created that can be embedded in any website, which shows a map that geolocates verified information about the war in Ukraine.

“What we’ve learned after this process is that we have to sit down and make a database that we can use in times of crisis. For there to be verifiers that hook the database to their APIs [Application Programming Interfaces] for the data to automatically be entered there. To use an API instead of a spreadsheet so we can launch a chatbot in 24 hours,” Jiménez said.

The panelists agreed that it is necessary to analyze and structure the lessons learned from recent advances in fact-checking so that future disinformation crises can be tackled with more optimized tools and better-defined methodologies. Zommer announced that in the next edition of the Global Fact conference, the most important global meeting of fact-checkers, they plan to discuss how to standardize joint fact-checking databases.

“That’s what we have to work on, that’s next year’s challenge: to figure out how a common database is governed, who owns that data, who does and who does not have access to it, how to monetize it,” Jiménez said.

First, report reality as it is, not as journalists wish it would be. And the second is to serve as a counterweight to power.

Ramos gave a keynote address to the ISOJ audience remotely from Miami, Florida, on April 2 during a session chaired by El País managing editor Borja Echevarría.

“The most important social responsibility that we have, I believe, is to question and to challenge those who are in power. Architects and engineers build beautiful structures, doctors save lives . . . our responsibility is to challenge those who are in power,” Ramos said.

When a democracy works properly, journalists normally don’t have to take a stand, but when democracies are challenged either by dictatorships, corruption or human rights violations, journalists must take a stand to be able to make a difference, the veteran news anchor said.

“The word in Spanish that defines what I think a journalist should do is ‘contrapoder’ (counter-power). That means that if we want to do our job, we always have to be a ‘contrapoder’,” he said. “We always have to be on the other side of power and if we are always on the other side of power, I think we will be okay. That’s our place, that’s our role.”

Ramos made it clear that taking a stand doesn’t mean quitting objectivity and impartiality, but being on the side of democracy, human rights and freedom of expression. Reporting reality as it is, he added, also means calling things by their name when it comes to threats to democracy. That is, not to be afraid of calling a leader a “danger to democracy” or calling an armed conflict a “war.”

“Either we say the things, we say what we see and we report reality as it is, or we are simply not doing our job. I understand it is not easy. This is not a profession for people who want to be silent. There is also a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, but that’s what we do and if we cannot handle this, then we shouldn’t be doing reporting in the time of Trump, we shouldn’t be doing reporting in the time of the war in Ukraine, we shouldn’t be doing reporting in a time when everything is so polarized,” he said.

Journalists in the United States and other countries with freedom of speech should keep the intensity in reporting on countries that are under dictatorships or authoritarian regimes and give voice to people who are silenced in those countries, Ramos said.

Echevarría added that big outlets should also be generous and give some space in their platforms for journalists reporting on those countries to help them evade censorship and amplify their work. Both journalists highlighted the fact that El País and Univision have given space to Nicaraguan journalists in exile who report on President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian regime.

“Censorship is not the same as it was a few decades ago. In the case of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba, we are talking about dictatorships. And thanks to technology, they [people in those countries] are getting their information in different ways.”

Another threat to democracy comes when journalists can’t perform their work freely due to the fear of being attacked or killed. Ramos and Echevarría talked about the danger media professionals experience in Mexico, where eight journalists have been killed since January.

While Ramos said those murders have not been committed by the government, he believes Mexican authorities are partially responsible by not taking effective measures to protect journalists. In addition, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has created an atmosphere of hostility towards the press that has made the country a very difficult place to be an independent journalist.

“Lopez Obrador is very sensitive, very thin-skinned when it comes to criticism, and whenever he doesn’t like something, he talks about conspiracies and [about] journalists being part of an effort to attack his government, which is not true,” Ramos said.

Echavarría and Ramos agreed that more and more journalists are taking a stand when it comes to reporting on authoritarian or populist politicians, especially in recent years when those types of leaders have increased in almost every region of the world. That, Ramos said, could be against what journalists learn at school, but it is part of reporting reality as it is.

“If I am a ‘contrapoder’ with Trump, with Maduro, with López Obrador, with Biden, with Obama, I think that’s fine. That’s precisely our role. I agree that I have seen an evolution in which I and some journalists feel more comfortable taking a position and taking a stand when democracy and when the freedom of expression is at stake.”

About those who have called him an “activist” for confronting several leaders and taking a stand on the facts, Ramos said the reality is that he is only doing his job.

“My response is very simple: I am simply a journalist who asks questions. That’s precisely our role.”

A ‘dinosaur’ in the process of reinvention

With the merger this year of Univision and Televisa (the biggest Spanish-language media company in Latin America) came ViX, a new video streaming service that was launched on March 31, created specifically for the Spanish-speaking world.

Ramos said  he and his colleagues in the news division of Univision are in a process of denial with the changes that the new platform is creating, just as years ago print media journalists feared that the digital world was going to make newspapers and magazines disappear.

Those changes have forced Ramos to undertake a reinvention process to adapt to the new platforms, after 35 years as news anchor in traditional media.

“Traditional media somehow is disappearing or becoming very, very small and then everyone else is just getting their information and their news somewhere else,” Ramos said. “When I go to schools and universities, I tell them ‘Look at me, I am a dinosaur’. Who is getting their news at 6:30 p.m. nowadays? Very few people. So what I am trying to do nowadays is to reinvent myself.”

Ramos started a new show on the ViX platform called “Algo Personal” (Something Personal), that will feature one-hour interviews with relevant figures of the Spanish-speaking world. In parallel, the journalist will continue presenting the daily “Noticiero Univision” newscast and the “Al Punto” political show on Sundays, in addition to writing a weekly column that he writes for several newspapers in the continent.

“The streaming service is giving me the possibility of staying alive and not being a dinosaur,” Ramos told the Austin crowd.

The organization noted a “decline across the board” in terms of press freedom in Latin America, while Asia-Pacific was hit with censorship and disinformation.

Journalists from these two regions will explore online journalism and press freedom in these environments during a special lightning session at the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ).

“Online journalism and press freedom in Asia and Latin America” will take place on April 2. Registration for the conference is still open, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to hear from these speakers.

In addition to being journalists from their respective regions, most speakers from this lightning session are also 2022 fellows with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Curator for the foundation, Ann Marie Lipinski, will chair the conversation.

Speakers for the first round on Asia include:

• Bao Choy, independent journalist, Hong Kong
• Fu Ting, correspondent, Associated Press, Thailand
• Pranav Dixit, technology reporter, BuzzFeed News, India

And speakers for the second round on Latin America include:

• Jorge Caraballo Cordovez, journalist, Colombia
• Patricia Laya, bureau chief, Bloomberg News, Venezuela
• José Luis Sanz, correspondent, El Faro, El Salvador
• Natalia Viana, cofounder and executive director, Agência Pública, Brazil

While press freedom is suffering in many countries across the world, these journalists will explain how the work of journalists is continuing online in their respective countries.

The program for the 23rd ISOJ is finalized and registration is underway and filling up. This year’s symposium, which will be online and in-person, is a chance to get together and learn from a diverse group of journalists and scholars working all over the world. Don’t miss your chance to join them. Register today!

ISOJ, which began in 1999, brings together journalists, media executives, scholars and students to discuss the impact of technology on journalism today and in the future. It is an innovative conference that bridges the gap between the news industry and academia. View video and coverage of past ISOJ conferences at isoj.org.

For updates and additional information pertaining to ISOJ 2022, you can head over to ISOJ’s website, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you have any questions, please contact us at isoj@austin.utexas.edu.

The digital fact-checking startup quickly set out to combat that with a new tool, Radar Aos Fatos. The tool uses algorithms to root out key trends in disinformation being spread online, track how its spread and then fact check the information in real time.

The digital tool doesn’t simply track the false messages or information being spread, but rather, it follows social media trends that are often indicators of false information: offensive or alarmist terms, use of all caps or misspellings, calls to action to spread the information and virality of a post.

“This is a very common technology we have used to gather information because letters are sometimes inside gifs, inside videos and inside images, so they are not likely to be traceable by text language patterns,” Nalon said.

Nalon was part of a workshop on Monday, April 26, at the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ),where journalists across the globe answered the question: How has innovation helped newsrooms in the Global South? 

ISOJ, a program by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at The University of Texas, brings together journalists from around the world digitally to tackle some of the biggest questions in the media today. The conference runs until April 30.

“Innovation is all about implementation of the idea,” explained Ludovic Blecher, head of Google’s Digital News Initiative and moderator of the panel.

Other newsrooms, like Africa Uncensored, developed radically different tools to address a radically different problem.

The Kenya-based organization was faced with the challenge of how to connect with communities out of reach of the internet or their digital tools, said John-Allan Namu, co-founder of Africa Uncensored.

“One of the challenges we noticed was something that I think is perhaps noticed in many other parts of Africa, it’s that the majority of our audiences, and the majority of the public, are not frequently online,” Namu said.

“And they’re not online for very specific reasons: they’re not online for the cost of data, the cost of bundles to be able to get online, to be able to share information, to be able to be a part of that online conversation.”

Similar to Nalon’s Aos Fatos in Brazil, the independent investigative organization sought simple solutions to complex problems: using SMS messages to connect to communities they would normally struggle to reach.

The initiative, called Piga Firimbi, or “blow the whistle” in English, would send out messages and build out a subscription base not just to disseminate information, but also to send questions to the public about their communities and create direct conversations with their readers.

In one case, they asked about health issues in informal settlements, learning that many faced pneumonia and other illnesses likely caused by poor housing and infrastructure.

They would use things like radio, still the most-used resource for news in the region, to report out the information.

“(Our solution) was to take a step back and use a technology that would create the least amount of friction with the largest amount of public who we are interested in speaking to and interested in sharing insights with,” Namu said.

Other journalists, like Styli Charalambous, of South Africa’s Daily Maverick, Maria Li, of Singapore’s Tech in Asia, and Innbal Menashri, of Israel’s Haaretz, developed tools geared toward catering news to users on their sites, increasing engagement and site retention.

Charalambous’ organization used data from its sites and platforms, as well as browsing data, to generate new tools like newsletter and Slack alerts to boost web presence and further disseminate stories.

Li’s Tech in Asia uses the app Tableau to create editorial dashboards to curate content for its start-up’s audience and developed a more refined idea of what content readers are willing to pay for.

Innbal’s Haaretz has sought to boost retention rates by creating an article recommendation tool that not only caters content to readers’ interest, but also offers editor picks to ensure that algorithms don’t just recommend similar content.

Each initiative focused on how to adapt in a changing news environment and deepen their organizations connections with their individual readerships.

Nalon, of Brazil’s Aos Fatos, said such projects can have a larger effect, not just on their audience, but on their entire country.

“Disinformation, at scale, in Brazil, is used in government policy. So, we see lots of politicians, high-ranking politicians, using these kinds of posts in order to engage its supporters.” she said.

“In the newsrooms, those insights are helpful to decide what topics are trending and what to cover.”

Watch video of this panel in English and Spanish on YouTube, and join us for the rest of #ISOJ2021 at isoj.org.

Camarena, director general de investigación periodística en la organización Mexicanos contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI), y Moreno, director editorial del sitio de noticias Animal Político, ahondaron en esta idea durante el 12º Coloquio Iberoamericano de Periodismo Digital, el 14 de abril en la Universidad de Texas en Austin.

Camarena y Moreno lideraron la charla “Los retos y las realidades del periodismo mexicano”, en la que los periodistas explicaron el panorama actual de la prensa crítica en México ante la llegada al poder de López Obrador, el 1 de diciembre de 2018. La charla fue moderada por Gabriela Polit, profesora asociada del Departamento de Español y Portugués de la Universidad de Texas en Austin.

El Mandatario, quien goza de una aprobación superior al 70 por ciento según encuestas, ha hecho del embate contra los medios una de sus narrativas predilectas, dijo Camarena. Un ejemplo es el término “prensa fifí”, que López Obrador acuñó para referirse a los medios que en su opinión son conservadores y -por tanto- corruptos, explicó el periodista.

“Estos denuestos nos llevan a una polarización mayor en donde él tiene muchísimo dinero, muchísimos canales de comunicación, tiene mayoría en los dos congresos -la Cámara de Diputados y la Cámara de Senadores- y además tiene a todo un gobierno movilizado en esto, en denigrar a periodistas”, expresó Camarena.

López Obrador ofrece conferencias de prensa de lunes a viernes a las 7:00 de la mañana de cerca de una hora y media, las cuales se transmiten por televisión abierta, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter y son montadas en Spotify. Sin embargo, su estrategia de comunicación dista mucho de ofrecer transparencia y rendición de cuentas, en opinión de Moreno.

“Si alguien hace una pregunta crítica, periodistas que están en la conferencia de prensa le chiflan al periodista porque ‘cómo se atreve a preguntarle semejante cosas’”, dijo Moreno.

“Dar una conferencia de prensa donde los periodistas te chiflan si preguntas algo ‘mal’ no es rendición de cuentas”, agregó.

Cuando periodistas refutan las afirmaciones de López Obrador con datos, el Presidente los descalifica e insiste en que sus datos son los que valen, dijo Moreno. Como en la rueda de prensa del viernes 12 de abril, cuando el periodista de Univisión Jorge Ramos lo cuestionó sobre la tasa de homicidios en México. El comunicador recibió miles de ataques en redes sociales con la etiqueta #JorgeRamosProvocador.

En lunes siguiente, el Presidente se refirió al hecho diciendo que si los periodistas “se pasan, ya saben lo que sucede”.

Moreno mostró ejemplos de YouTubers que se dedican a denostar abiertamente a periodistas que cuestionan al Presidente a través de videos que superan el millón de vistas, frente a los medios de comunicación que, dijo, tienen un nivel de credibilidad de menos del 50 por ciento.

“Si de algo podemos acusar a los medios, es que la prensa [tradicional] mexicana históricamente ha olvidado el servicio a los lectores. Se ha dedicado básicamente a vivir del poder y ha tenido la capacidad de adaptarse. ¿Qué vemos hoy? Una nueva prensa oficialista”, dijo.

Si bien cubrir al presidente de México en la capital del país implica dificultades, estas no se comparan con lo que viven los periodistas del interior de la república, quienes además tienen que sortear el peligro de sufrir violencia física por cubrir a las autoridades locales.

“Nuestros compañeros de los estados viven un infierno”, dijo Camarena. “Es más difícil criticar al alcalde que al Presidente de la República. Yo no quisiera vivir en una ciudad media de México y criticar al alcalde, porque en eso sí te va la vida, literal”.

Ante este panorama, la opción para los ciudadanos es la prensa crítica que les ofrezca información sin tendencias, fuera de la polarización que prevalece en los medios tradicionales.

“Sí hay ciudadanos que no quieren quedar atrapados en esta dicotomía, en este maniqueísmo”, dijo Camarena. “Quieren información puntual sin ningún tipo de tendencia, ni a favor ni en contra, la que sea correcta para tomar decisiones correctas”.