The COVID-19 pandemic, already highly complex, is made even more difficult to report by the proliferation of misinformation about drugs, cures, death rates and more. In this webinar, Reporting COVID-19 Disinformation, two veteran journalists will share their tips and strategies for dealing with the flood of bad information.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with AP’s Martha Mendoza, who has won Pulitzer prizes for her investigations on slavery in the fishing industry, and on a civilian massacre during the Korean War. She described some of the tools and methods she uses to investigate supply chains, including those that have led to shortages in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The global pandemic is producing a tsunami of data, and getting a grip on all the numbers is essential. Data journalism can not only fill out an incomplete story but also reveal hidden issues, and it’s critical to be able to analyze published data, find new data sources and understand how to work with the numbers. GIJN’s latest webinar, Digging into the Data, part of our series Investigating the Pandemic, offers cutting-edge tips from two leading data journalism experts.
The death of African American George Floyd in police custody has resulted in a major uproar against structural racism in the United States. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from June 1 to 7 finds The New York Times examining police use of force in Minneapolis, the city in which Floyd died after being pinned down by a police officer. The Washington Post also dug into data of every fatal shooting in the US by police officers since 2015.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the way journalists work, not least because many authorities have cited the contagion as a reason to crack down on the news media. Certain dangers will subside with time but some of the measures put into place that restrict press freedom – whether intended or not — could continue well into the future.
It’s still hard to fathom the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on journalism, even two months into most countries’ lockdowns. On the one hand, sustained and unprecedented demand from audiences for trustworthy information presents an incredible opportunity for independent media; a chance to showcase the value of good journalism and hopefully build lasting relationships with millions of new viewers, listeners and readers.
GIJN has created a multi-part guide on where to obtain data about the spread of COVID-19 and its consequences. The document links to official and unofficial international sources on health and economic data, links to information on government policy responses, and more than a dozen sites working on pandemic projection modelling.
Geospatial technologies and data can be used to contain and respond to the spread of a disease, but can also help in pre-empting and preventing them. Looking at outbreaks of malaria, SARS, H1N1 and Zika, among other viruses, Avneep Dhingra explores how maps and geospatial technology have helped during different outbreaks.
Which communities are most economically affected by the coronavirus pandemic? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 25 to 31 finds the Toronto Star looking at the effects of Canada’s lockdown on different communities in the country, ProPublica sharing a tool that lets you explore United States federal government contracts related to the coronavirus, the Financial Times analyzing excess mortality in 19 countries, and the Knight Center for the Journalism in the Americas offering a free online course on ethics in data journalism.
How to investigate government spending related to the COVID-19 pandemic is the subject of a new resource from GIJN. Our guide describes how to understand and probe the procurement process and identifies the red flags that may signal fraud and corruption.
