“The truth of what’s happening” How Tibetan exile media develop and maintain journalistic authority

Tibet is one of the most restrictive places in the world for press freedom, with information online and offline tightly controlled and censored by the Chinese government. Foreign correspondents are restricted from travelling to and reporting in Tibetan areas, while Tibetans who act as sources are often persecuted. Despite this level of repression, Tibetans still find ways to tell the rest of the world what is happening in Tibet. This paper explores how it is possible to authoritatively report on events in one of the world’s most restrictive places for press freedom. Instead of relying on a single individual or news organisation, we find that reporting is conducted through journalistic networks consisting of sources in Tibet, Tibetan exile journalists, and source intermediaries called ‘communicators’. Based on fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with Tibetan journalists and communicators we explore how they develop and maintain journalistic authority, while being in exile and having to deal with severe constraints to press freedom.

6 PTSD and war photo journalists

War journalism is becoming increasingly dangerous. Journalists who define their careers by longevity in war zones have a lifetime prevalence of PTSD similar to frontline combat veterans. Local journalists can also confront grave danger, but unlike foreign correspondents, they work and live in dangerous places. They too have rates of PTSD and depression that well exceed that seen in the general population. Local journalists whose families are targeted are particularly vulnerable in this regard. Journalists who chose these dangerous career paths differ cognitively from their colleagues who have chosen less adventurous careers, most notably when it comes to decisions that entail risk. The ability to manage anxiety and fear in extreme situations may to a degree be modulated by epigenetic factors.

Controlling Critical Messengers

This chapter focuses on how Chinese authorities attempt to control the image of China that the world sees. It first sets the stage by describing China’s domestic media sphere. It then draws on semi-structured interviews with current and former foreign correspondents for European and North American outlets in China. The interviews reveal the techniques that the government uses to try to inhibit negative news about China from reaching global audiences. These include direct persuasion, restricting sites and/or persons from being investigated, surveillance, intimidation, and the specter of visa non-renewal. Ultimately, if these techniques fail, the government sometimes attempts to refute the story that results and/or to impugn the reputation of the journalist. Examining how foreign correspondents are “managed” in China is important because they help shape public opinion about China abroad and thus provide the backdrop to China’s other efforts at image management.

Informação, Publicidade, Propaganda: Correspondentes estrangeiros, agências noticiosas e a “Grande Guerra de palavras” da primeira metade do século XX

The essay takes as a starting point Goebbels’ speech delivered at the closing session of the Continental Advertising Congress, held in Vienna in June 1938, and explores the transformations that the communicational public space of the first half of the twentieth century underwent following the two world conflicts that erupted then. In the first part, the essay addresses the progressive hybridisation of public discourse at the time, the increasing blurring of information, advertising and propaganda, and the rapid acceleration of the international circulation of communication during the period. In this context, special attention is paid to actors who, though not new to the international political scene – such as foreign correspondents and news agencies –, gained a new and decisive importance throughout the period in question. The second part analyses two case studies involving these actors and their power on the international political scene during World War II. Geographically, the two case studies are centred around an axis that is usually considered peripheral to the war – neutral Portugal – but which appears central and, in a way, paradigmatic to the “Great War of Words” that was also being fought in the international public space.

Believe Me, Do not Believe Me: Jhumpa Lahiri and the Royal Family of Oudh

In Interpreter of Maladies (1999) Jhumpa Lahiri gives voice to Boori Ma, a durwan (doorkeeper) who chronicles about the easier times she enjoyed before deportation to Kolkata (previously known as Calcutta, India) after Partition of 1947. Lahiri plays with the word real implying that Boori Ma’s stories could be deciphered as real or not. Boori Ma’s fictitious life resembles the one of the Royal Family of Oudh, which Lahiri seems to be inspired by. Foreign correspondents (Kaufman, 1981; Miles, 1985; Barry, 2019) did not question the veracity of this family’s life story. In the present article, the two stories are compared: a literary and a real one. It is our intention to prove that traumatic experiences, such as Partition, cause subjects to imagine an alternative life; strategy which is unconsciously activated to heal trauma (LaCapra, 1999; Mookerjea-Leonard, 2017). The latter is what western journalists and readers failed to acknowledge

Aktywność polskich korespondentów zagranicznych na Twitterze

Activity of Polish Foreign Correspondents on Twitter Social media have been transforming the realm of journalism, audiences, as well as news consumption. Twitter, which is one of the top three social networking sites in the world (Broersma, Graham 2013; Neuberger et al. 2019; Nordheim et al. 2018; Swert, Wouters 2011) has become one of the main social networking tools used by the news media industry, too. There is little research on how foreign correspondents use Twitter as a reporting tool. This research aims to investigate how foreign correspondents of the largest Polish radio and TV stations use Twitter. The analysis focuses on the correspondents in the Washington and Brussels sites. The research period covered 2016–2019, when the new management of the public media decided to replace most of the correspondents. The author looks for similarities and differences between journalists from public and commercial media. He tries to find out whether their activities on Twitter are used to transmit messages, promote their work, build the image of the editorial office, or communicate with recipients. The analysis of over 20,000 tweets confirms the influence of political changes on the work and activity of journalists in the public sphere. Most public media correspondents reported in line with the ruling party’s agenda focused on domestic affairs and used Twitter for self-promotion. Commercial media representatives mainly covered international topics, using a wider range of sources in their tweets. Significant differences were related to the way of interacting with the audience. The majority of shares on Twitter and the most intense discussions concerned the content of public media correspondents. The highest rates were achieved by tweets that focused on the actions of the leading politicians of the right-wing parties, national issues, and criticism of the actions of European bodies. The disputes and discussions on Twitter between the correspondents and the public as well as among the correspondents themselves show the crisis in public space, lack of trust, and difficulty to change this state in a short time. STRESZCZENIE Artykuł analizuje, w jaki sposób wykorzystują Twittera korespondenci zagraniczni największych polskich stacji radiowych i telewizyjnych na przykładzie placówek w Waszyngtonie i Brukseli. Okres badawczy obejmuje lata 2016–2019, kiedy nowe kierownictwo mediów publicznych w Polsce podjęło decyzję o wymianie większości korespondentów. Celem analizy jest identyfikacja podobieństw i różnic między relacjami dziennikarzy mediów publicznych i komercyjnych, jak również ustalenie, czy aktywność podejmowana na Twitterze służy do przekazywania wiadomości, promowania własnej pracy, budowania wizerunku redakcji czy też komunikowania się z odbiorcami. Wyniki analizy, która objęła ponad 20 tys. tweetów, potwierdzają wpływ zmian politycznych na pracę i aktywność dziennikarzy w sferze publicznej. Większość polskich korespondentów mediów publicznych relacjonowała wydarzenia zgodnie z linią programową partii rządzącej, koncentrowała się na sprawach krajowych i wykorzystywała Twittera do autopromocji. Dziennikarze mediów komercyjnych relacjonowali natomiast głównie tematykę międzynarodową, korzystając z szerszego spektrum źródeł w tweetach. Istotne różnice widoczne były także w sposobie interakcji z publicznością. Najwięcej udostępnień na Twitterze i najintensywniejsze dyskusje dotyczyły treści korespondentów mediów publicznych. Najwięcej uwagi uzyskały tweety na temat działań głównych polityków partii prawicowych, kwestii krajowych i krytyki działań organów europejskich. Wyniki badań dowodzą istnienia głębokiego kryzysu debaty publicznej, braku wzajemnego zaufania i możliwości zmiany tego stanu rzeczy w bliskiej perspektywie.

Bounded or Boundless: A Case Study of Foreign Correspondents’ Use of Twitter During the 2019 Hong Kong Protests

This study advances the understanding of journalists’ social media practices by examining the Twitter feeds of foreign correspondents working for Western legacy media during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protests in Hong Kong. We found that these correspondents were more likely to use Twitter to report facts than to express their opinions and that they tended to interact with each other on Twitter far more frequently than with those outside their professional circle. Furthermore, the expression of personal opinions by the correspondents on Twitter appeared to encourage audience engagement. Finally, these personal opinions tended to be sympathetic to the protesters and critical of the handling of the protests by the authorities, especially the police. We argue that news media outlets have a moral obligation to free their journalists from constraints on the exercise of free speech on social media because doing so protects the freedom of the press on both the institutional and individual levels.