Children in the News: Journalism and the Rights of the Child
FJA Series of webinars “Winning Stories”
September 5th, 2024
Moderator:
Aidan White
Speakers:
Hannah Dreier
Hadeel Arja
Bhavya Dore
Cherian George
Nadezda Azhgikhina
Full transcript
Aidan White:
Welcome everybody to this latest installment of winning stories, the Fetisov Journalism Awards program of workshops and webinars looking at some of the prize-winning high-quality journalism that we have celebrated this year.
We set up the winning stories webinar series in order not just to promote the winners and their wonderful pieces of journalism, which deserve as much circulation as possible but also to help journalists examine some of the challenges that they face in gathering these stories together, by using these stories as case studies which will teach us you know how we can do better in the work that we're producing.
My name is Aidan White. I'm an international advisor for the Fetisov Journalism Awards. And I'm really pleased to be able to welcome a really wonderful and inspirational group of speakers to join us today, to talk about the question of children in the news: journalism and the rights of the child.
We felt that this was a tremendously important topic and area for journalists to work on not only because it's an area where there are many good stories being told and that need to be told, but also because it's a subject area that focuses on some of the greatest difficulties, challenges and risks, that journalists face in trying to tell these stories. Children are part of a vulnerable group in society. So whenever we're doing stories where they're involved we have to make sure that we are respectful, we take care, we recognize their vulnerability, we safeguard them, and we ensure that the work that we do is not only as ethical as we would like it to be, but it is on the side of protection for the child is the subject of the story.
The rights of the child actually are quite a recent subject for international standard setting. Indeed, in the postwar settlement of Human Rights development and so on it was only very much later on in 1989 at the international UN convention on the Rights of the Child was actually first established. This convention gives children for the first-time agency, recognizes their standing and calls upon governments to protect their interest, to guarantee them a right to an education, to ensure that they're not exploited, either through early forms of work and child labor, that they're not victims of child soldiering, and that they are given every opportunity that life has to offer. Because it's been so late in coming to international attention, I think journalism has not kept up the pace with understanding how important it is in the work that we do to protect children and to protect their rights. It's only very recently that we've had guidelines on journalists and how they should report children. Journalism educators are only in, recently again, making this a really important subject for the training of in journalism schools and in university departments.
So, I'm very pleased for us to be able to talk today with my group of experts on who are going to sort of deal with these subjects from their own perspective.
We're calling in from around the world. From New York we've got Hannah Dreier who's joining us. From Turkey we've got Hadeel Arja, who is with us. From India we've got Bhavya Dore. And from Hong Kong - Cherian George. And also is my good friend and colleague on the management committee of the Fetisov Journalism Awards, Nadezda Azhgikhina.
So welcome to you all and, well, let's get started.
First of all, I'd like to introduce Hannah Dreier. Hannah, thanks very much for getting up early to join us. It's great to have you here. Hannah's story “Alone and Exploited. Migrant children who work on brutal jobs across the United States” is a groundbreaking piece of journalism and has won awards, extensive awards. Not only did Hannah win the Fetisov Journalism Awards this year, she also got a Pulitzer Prize for this work and has also had the work recognized by the One World Media Awards in London. It's a tremendous piece of work, and it gets to the heart of one of the most critical areas of child rights: it’s protecting the rights of children when they are migrants. And in the United States this is particularly an area of controversy and so on. So, Hannah, thanks very much for joining us, please, the floor is yours. We'd like to hear from you. Tell us a bit about your story.
Hannah Dreier:
Thank you for that really generous introduction and for this amazing honor.
I have spent the past two years reporting, like you say, on migrant child labor. I've been going to factory parking lots across the US and looking at midnight shift changes, showing up at day labor sites at dawn, and finding young young children working these jobs. I found children mostly from Central America as young as 11-12-13 years old, who are living far away from their parents and working dangerous adult jobs all over the US, making products for some of the biggest brands. We're talking about Fruit of the Loom socks, Gerber baby food, Cheerios. Some of these children were really catastrophically injured and some of them have died doing this work. It's been really intense, sometimes horrifying stuff to see, but this experience has also really reaffirmed my belief in the power of journalism in a lot of ways.
In response to this reporting, the US Department of Labor has totally changed the way it takes on child labor in this country. Companies have gotten in huge trouble and are changing their own policies and finally taking real steps to get children out of their supply chains in the US. And the government has also allocated an extra billion dollars to provide services to these immigrant children who are living in this country on their own. I wonder if we could play our first video now.
Those are some of the faces of migrant child labor here. You see these are really young kids and they're doing work that is truly the most dangerous work in this country.
I want to talk a little bit about how I got started covering this story. The fact that there were migrant children coming to the US in record numbers and working adult jobs was kind of an open secret in the immigration world. I knew that there were more migrant children coming across the border without their parents than ever before. We're talking about 100,000 kids a year, sometimes more. And I knew that a lot of the children I reported on here were on the hook for paying rent and paying their expenses. But I had no idea before I started this reporting that they were doing this kind of work, the most dangerous jobs, and that they were working by the thousands in the supply chains of these huge corporations. I was imagining maybe they're doing some agricultural work, or maybe they're washing dishes. It turned out to be a completely different story.
My first step in reporting the story was to call the big advocacy and legal groups that work with migrant kids, but this turned out to be worse than a dead end. Advocates told me that there was actually no child labour issue here, and that even if there was, I actually shouldn't write about t. They were worried that these stories might make it look like children were coming to the United States for economic reasons, not because they were refugees fleeing violence. So I would call advocates they would yell at me, then they would sometimes have their bosses get on the phone to yell at me also, and now I was in the position of trying to write about something that maybe wasn't even news to anyone, and also nobody wanted me to write about.
And this is where I want to talk about the importance of good editors. My editor realised from the outside that this was a story. When I would come around full of doubt, saying everyone already knows these kids are here, they know that migrant kids work dangerous jobs, she would remind me that no this is actually news. This is an outrage. When I told her that no one would connect me with these children over the phone she told me to just start flying around the country and looking for them. Once I was out there canvasing people at Spanish speaking churches and pleading with school principles to let me hang out in their middle schools, she was the one who said that if it took 10 days before I found anything interesting, that was fine. And so, that is how I first started to make some inroads just by going out and sort of flying blind, going to communities where I knew there were a lot of migrant children and just sort of staying on the ground trying to get to know them and what might be happening there.
My editor was not some kind of softy though, she sometimes set the bar really high. She told me I basically could only do the story if I could find a few things: children working at major brands that readers would immediately recognize, kids whose parents back home would let us publish their full names and faces in the paper, and kids who were really young like middle schoolers, not high schoolers.
And I saw the logic there. It's so hard to pull readers into these kinds of stories. There's so much fatigue with immigration reporting in the US right now, but if we could find something so specific and so visceral that people couldn't help but empathize, maybe this story would break through.
And so that's what we did. We told readers about children like Carolina Yoc, who walked across the border when she was 14, and then got a job packing Cheerios every night at midnight in Michigan. We wrote about Marcos Cux, a boy who started working at a Perdue slaughterhouse in Virginia when he was 13 years old, and nearly had his arm ripped off by a depoding machine. When I met him, he still couldn't use his right arm.
We wrote about other children who died by falling from roofs, like the kids who you just saw, or getting crushed by earth movers, or hit by cars while they were delivering food right where I live in New York.
And this was really where I learned my first lesson that I learned doing this reporting: I had wanted to tell all of these stories as these sort of deep narrative features. And my editor wanted a bigger more sort of sweeping story that showed the scale of this. This was a huge nationwide phenomenon. And we're talking about hundreds of thousands of kids. They were working in every single US state. I initially really fought against that idea. I wanted to do this like one very specific story, not that big sweeping piece, and I actually wrote a whole draft in that first style, with just a few paragraphs of context, all about one kid. And I got totally overruled. And when the story ran, it turned out my editor was totally right.
I had been so used to stories running and hearing from readers maybe saying they were moved, saying they were sad. But this story, this time, the story ran, and President Biden actually read it the next day in print. And two days later the White House held a press conference announcing a series of real government initiatives responding pretty much one by one to all of our findings, correcting the problems that we had just exposed, you know, a few days earlier. It was totally irreal for me, it was a new experience and it showed me the power of stories that have depth and also sweep.
The second thing that I learned doing this kind of reporting is that it requires a lot of on the ground work and that is okay. I don't think I've ever really gotten a good idea while sitting at my desk. For me the strategy of cruising around looking for something interesting is sort of the best move I had. I spent a lot of time that did not feel that productive, reporting was very slow, these were kids who didn't want to be found, their employers really did not want them found, and as I said, community leaders also often didn't want them found, and sometimes these children were really scared, they were living with people who were essentially trafficking them, and so it took a lot of time to build trust with them.
I got really comfortable having a whole day sucked up by shuttling from one school administrator to another, to try to talk my way into a classroom, sitting outside of factories during snowstorms, trying to psych myself up to go and approach just one more young looking person who was walking out of the factory on that late night shift change. And I basically convinced myself that doing that kind of grinding unproductive reporting is normal and actually the only way sometimes to do this work, especially when it involves young kids.
And I want to encourage everybody who's listening to this not to despair if you find yourself spending a whole day just doing one task or convincing one person to talk. I think that's sort of the only way this work ever happens.
The last thing I want to talk about is what I learned about reporting with empathy from this project. When I finally did find these clusters of working children it was hard to know how to report on such a vulnerable group. Not only were they here, in a place where they couldn't speak the language, they were also far from everyone they knew and under huge pressure to earn money. This was another place where my editor really had the right answer. She reminded me that we were human beings first and tough guy investigative reporters second. And that was really important when we had to make hard decisions like whether to leave children out of the story if we thought that exposing the companies where they were working might leave them out of a job with no way to support themselves.
I talked to hundreds of migrant children who were working illegal jobs for this story, and in the end, we only actually quoted about a dozen. And we put even fewer than that in the paper with their photographs and that was in part to try to protect the majority of kids who participated.
And it was important in other ways too. One thing that I wanted to have shined through in this reporting was that even as they were in these awful situations these kids weren't living these horrible Dickensian lives of unremitting weakness. There was a kid who got his back really badly hurt on a dairy farm working for a company that supplies McDonald's, but he also felt really proud to be able to help his family. These kids were proud of the time that they managed to spend in church and in school, despite all the time that they were also spending at these jobs and so we put that in there too. We photographed them in church, we photographed them in school. And I think that's something that everybody who reports on children can do. Even if you don't have the kind of budget that the New York Times has that lets you go and hang out in small towns for weeks at a time, you don't have to canvas every single state to get that kind of sweep for your story. And you can also really listen to the sources that you're writing about and try to portray them as the complex people that they are.
The impact of this reporting has been really incredible and has continued. I just want to come back to it one last time. The Department of Labor is now going out and proactively looking for migrant child labor at some of the biggest companies in the country. They're sending people into the night shifts that before were sort of flying under the radar. They've also started imposing huge fines on companies, that before would say oh maybe a kid came into our factory but they came in through a staffing agency or through a contractor. That has now changed. The administration is not allowing huge companies to sort of deflect blame like that. The companies themselves have started sending their own inspectors in to the night shifts and to places like slaughter houses to try to find these children because. I think they've seen that you can end up on the front page of the paper if you let these kids or let a hiring manager let these kids slip through the cracks and they end up getting hurt. And the country has also really changed the way that it's supporting these children. A lot of these children come in and they could actually get work permits and work legal much safer jobs if they had lawyers. And the US government is now actually allocating more funding to get these children free immigration lawyers. So that they can come and work maybe at a grocery store or a restaurant, somewhere where they are not likely to get terribly injured. It's been such a privilege to spend time with these working children for so many months, and I've been really inspired by their bravery and sharing their stories. Thank you so much for letting me talk a little about this experience.
Aidan White:
Thank you very much indeed, Hannah! It's very clear from the story you've told that journalism like this really does make a difference, and it makes a difference even in countries which like to pride themselves on their respect for human rights and in the in the sort of sense that they have of themselves. Although the United States is oddly enough one of the only countries in the world that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is the most ratified International Convention in history, but sadly the US has not signed up to it. And I think that the story you have told shows that when there isn't a national commitment and obligation under treaty to ensure that this area is looked at and that the state is doing what it can to keep an eye on the rights of children, that without journalism holding the state to account, then terrible things can happen. So, congratulations again, an absolutely tremendous piece of work! Hannah, thank you very much indeed, it's just it was just great and congratulations on your so many awards, well deserved!
I want to move on now if I can to Hadeel.
Hadeel, you're a Syrian journalist, but based now in Istanbul and Turkey. You've got a tremendous record, you know, and particularly your journalism in this area is absolutely extraordinary. You set up Tiny Hand, a very sort of special website which is looking at stories of children in conflict zones, and you've already won many awards for the work that you've done.
You were tackling a story, which is really one of the most tricky stories, about how you defend the rights of children when they're caught in what you might call a cultural context, a historical context, in which they are expected to behave in a certain way because of the family, because of the traditions, because of where they are, and because very often for with a religious background as well. And that are the challenges that are facing young women, young girls who are encouraged to become young women quickly, and how often that can actually impact upon and even destroy young vulnerable lives.
Hadeel, please tell us your story.
Hadeel Arja:
Thank you so much, Aidan, for this introduction. First of all, thank you so much for having me here today to talk about this very important topic, Children in the News.
As you mentioned I'm a journalist with 18 years of experience, I have been covering the war and conflict zone for 13 years, but the last five years I specialized more in children issues through Tiny Hand. Because as you mentioned, Aidan and Hannah, the children are the world’s most vulnerable, and the profound impact of conflict on their young lives reveals the true phase of the war, and that's why we need more of this kind of journalism specializing in children issues. Because as Hannah also mentioned, this kind of stories need time to be achieved. We cannot do this report in one or two days, or one or two months, it really needs time.
So, the story that I'm going to talk about today is The Shocking Practice of Forced Puberty in Northern Syria’s Refugee Camps. The story is about young girls who have not yet reached puberty. They were forced to take hormonal drugs to speed up menstruation in order to be married off. Taking these pills may have disastrous long-term health effects. So, the practice of a drug induced for puberty in Syria is linked to misplace parental pressure to and child marriage. In a two-year assignment involving interviews and research this report exposed this shocking practice in a country that has been ravaged by war over 13 years. While we have previously actually worked on stories like forced marriage and forced disappearances, but forced puberty was something shocking and something new, needed so much research and to get to victims and witnesses.
So, to expose these practices I talked to many social workers. Actually, it all started in 2020 when a humanitarian worker uncovered this practice after learning about a 12-year-old girl. She was being forced to take these pills. And this social worker there, her findings revealed a shocking number of similar cases. For instance, also Samar*, she was also forced to take these pills. Her father actually forced her to take these pills to induce menstruation. She was married off shortly after and suffered a miscarriage before being divorced. And through working in this report also I seek to answer a very important question: how parents managed to obtain these pills so easily? Knowing that it shouldn't be sold without prescription. But it was very easy to get these pills.
I have faced so many challenges while working on these reports. As I mentioned it took me two years to know the whole process, what is happening, where are the witnesses, the victims. I talked to many social workers. Encouraging these witnesses to share their stories was so hard, because this story is related to taboo subjects and in sensitive issues. But at the same time, I have so many safety concerns regarding them, because reporting on these sensitive issues pose risks to the source who was providing this information.
And the most important thing, and it really took time to handle the emotional impact on those little girls. Because we are talking about distressing stories and experience they have been through. It required me to manage this by giving time to each story and the attention for each story. I should also give consideration for the ethical part, regarding particularly those young girls.
Those are some challenges that I have faced during the work on this report but actually there are a lot of challenges came after this story was published. For example, resistance from authorities. I faced push back from local authorities, Islamic militias and other groups for many reasons, and the most important reason was the culture sensitivities related to this taboo topic. Actually they wanted me to delete the report because they don't want to bring it to the light, but at the same time there was impact and responses regarding this story. First of all, and this is very important, it opened a discussion on the health risks associated with forced puberty including the long-term effects of hormonal drugs and physical abuse. Many NGOs began taking this issue seriously and they are working on it, trying to raise awareness and to find solution for this. And also I received calls from professors and doctors, they are conducting in-depth research on forced puberty to raise awareness. There's something I was really shocked by because I this story is in refugee camps in Northern Syria, but the calls that I received later on, they were from different countries, it's not only in Syria. And, as Aidan mentioned, it's related to tradition or culture, but this is something very needed to be exposed, and we need to find a solution for it. And the most important impact is to bring these stories to light and to give these girls a voice to be heard, their stories should be heard, so we can solve it later on.
So, how can we approach this kind of stories?
The most important thing is that we need to step out of our comfort zone. When start working on these stories we need to know that it requires fully immersing ourselves in the journey, understanding that the stories often hold deeper layers than what first appears. And we need to specialize more in children issues, which demands dedication and patience and a deep understanding while working on these stories. And we need to work on them with care and responsibility.
There's something also very important I would like to mention. While working on sensitive stories from conflict zones we need to take extra measure to protect the identities of our sources. Especially I'm talking about children now, for example stories like recruiting children, or children being harassed, raped. Because we don't want to put them at risk of societal stigma or security danger, if we reveal their names. So, this is very important and sensitive.
Also, there are some very important tips while working on this, and I have faced them myself: avoid re-traumatizing those kids, especially those young girls.
To do that I talked to people whom they really trust. Sometimes they were the social worker who she's following, the caregiver, sometimes the teacher, to find the best language how to talk with them, what to ask, what not to ask , maybe sometimes it's about one word: if we change this word we can get the best answer for these questions.
But at the same time we need to balance between sensitivity and objectivity, and that can be done by sticking to verified facts and represent all sides of a story.
Also it's very important in the case of conflict zones to collaborate with experts, but we need to know what experts to collaborate, because for example there are some social workers, they have been in the field for more than 10 years, 20 years.. They really understand what is happening there, it's better than social workers who just started their work. So we need to know who to collaborate with. This is very important because sometimes there's some information we can get, but through them we can get very important information to support our stories, to support our ideas that we are working on.
The thing that I believe and which happened with me since I specialize actually in children's stories, that it will not stop in one investigative report. When we complete a strong investigative report, we will find ourselves working on the second one, because I'm talking about a place filled with corruption, where there is no system, no laws, no accountability, where there's poverty and hunger. And the children are the victims of all these circumstances, and there are a lot of stories need to be told and we need to work on. So, once we specialized in this we will never stop, we will find ourselves moving from a story to a story, and, as I wrote here, story begets a story and this is very true.
The last thing that I would like to share also since we are talking about telling children stories without violating their rights. This is a guideline I had worked on. It was a collaboration between Tiny Hand and ICFJ. It provides advice and tips on how to tell their stories without violating their rights, and also in the visual part, what to show what not to show, especially in cases like massacres and big events, explosions and so on.
We need to keep telling these stories but without violating [children’s rights]. We don't want to make their life harder because it's already very hard being part of these conflicts and war zones.
Aidan White:
Hadeel, thank you very much indeed, that was terrific. The fact is, you know, you like Hannah have focused on really some of the most important questions that are involved in getting these stories, particularly the question of sources of information, about getting sources that that are trustworthy. One of the problems about telling the stories of children is that there are so many adults around who are prepared to speak for children, and on behalf of children. Very often they're very well-meaning as very many of the advocacy groups are, or the social worker groups. They provide important elements of care. But what they mustn't do is get in the way of the authentic voice of children being heard. And journalists having access to stories that do need to be told. And then very often and it's not just the authorities that will want to intervene to stop a journalist telling a story because it might embarrass them or highlight an aspect of their policy which is not going down well. It's others who have their own interests to serve. And sometimes that does get in the way of good journalism. So, sources of information are really very important and you've highlighted how one needs to really get involved in that. And also the question of safeguarding children that actually the priority in any story that you're doing is. Of course, the story is important. And Hannah's talked about how the editors are really helpful in getting you on the right track, but in the end it's the safeguarding of the children. Hadeel, you're absolutely right about no re-traumatizing, getting children the retelling the ordeal that they’ve suffered and in so doing get them to suffer again. That’s not our role and it’s not something that we have to do. So, thank you very much indeed for highlighting those subthemes that we put out for the discussion. That’s great.
Now I would like to bring in Bhavya Dore. It's great to have you coming from India! We are really traveling around the world, so I'm really pleased that we've reached India. Bhavya is a really distinguished journalist who has written for international media on many stories which are touching on the rights of children. With a sort of particular interest on the question of juvenile crime and the rights of children when they are caught up in the whole area of crime and sort of this question of providing justice for children who are caught up in the system is really very important.
Bhavya, your story was part of a team story which actually highlighted particularly the problem of child labor which in South Asia, as you well know, is a massive problem. So perhaps you can explain to us how you went about it and the challenges that you faced in delivering that story.
Bhavya Dore:
Sure. Hey everyone! Thanks for having me here. […] Thanks for that introduction. I started about 15 years ago as a beat reporter covering education. So, that job really involved speaking to children a lot. Now these are obviously middle-class children, affluent children, and the perspective was more from the point of view of covering schools and education, but that's how my engagement with reporting with children started. And then it kind of developed into reporting on juvenile justice issues and children in conflict with the law.
The project I'm here to talk about today was a cross-border effort actually between a German journalist and three Indian journalists including myself. It ran for about a year – a year and a half, it involved field visits in both the North and the South Southern parts of India.
All of us were freelancers at the time, so there were additional challenges of kind of putting this together without the constant backing of a newsroom, or specific editors in a newsroom, so there was a little fragility in terms of that point of view, as freelancers.
The work we did was published in Der Spiegel in Germany and also in Caravan magazine in India. Essentially it was looking at child labor in two industries. It started with my German colleague [Petra Sorge] who came across these claims in Germany, where she was based, that products being sold in Germany were being marketed as child labor free. These were products coming out of quarries and mines, so like kitchen ware and gravestones and other things that you would use in house construction. And they were being marketed as child labor free, and the other industry that was doing this in Germany to German consumers was the carpet industry. So carpets and rugs coming out of India were being marketed as 100% child labor free.
These reports were produced by the Indian child rights body, which is supposed to be an independent commission that looks into the rights of children. They claimed that they had the backing of UNICEF. And these reports essentially stated that both the carpet and mining industries had zero child labor. This was a very big claim to make and I'm not sure on what basis they made it, but they had done these studies in both North and South India. And that's what they were kind of advertising to consumers abroad. And that's kind of where our research started. We wanted to investigate whether these reports were indeed, whether they stood up to scrutiny. These were the reports that came out, you can see the UNICEF stamp on them, which kind of gives it or tries to give it an essence of authenticity.
So. we went to the places that these researchers had allegedly gone to investigate if indeed children were not working in these industries. Of course, we found that they were. The law is a little bit complicated on this, in the sense that it says children can work in industries if they are above the age of 15, but not in hazardous industries. And these were the quarries and the mines we visited in the Southern part of India, in a state called Telengana, and we found these teenagers that work there.
You can see there's not much protective equipment and they're kind of just employed here. They're usually migrants from other parts of the country. This was this is a little bit about the carpet industry that we looked at. Children are not supposed to be working here either, but a recent change to the law says that if children are working in homebased outfits, and if they're just, quote unquote, helping their families, then it's essentially allowed.
So, if you have a police raid or authorities inspecting factories or other workplaces, you're not going to find children, because the work has kind of been taken out of those locations and taken inside the home which is then harder to surveil. So, we saw children very young, 6-8-9-10, and most of them were not in school. Many had dropped out of school. The school situation was itself shambolic. Many government schools in the area had shocked. So there was very little option for the children. Families that we spoke to said that they were helpless because if they didn't get the assistance of children how they feed them, how they feed themselves. So it was more of a question of “we don't know what to do, help us, tell us what we can do” rather than just taking our children away and putting them in schools.
These were some of the images from the reporting. I think the final images that we used kind of obscured the faces of the children or didn't use them inside profile, or like the one on the top right behind the power loom, behind the weaving looms in the carpet sector. You can see these are really young girls and most of them have left school even though the Indian government says it provides free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14.
What were the challenges involved both Hannah and Hadeel have kind of touched on some of these? We faced some of the same ones, how do we find these children to begin with? Much of our reporting was not about the children themselves. It was also related to the industry bodies who were covering up the labour retailers, manufacturers of the goods of the industries we were looking at, as well as government officials who were stonewalling or producing fudged reports, as also international bodies like the UNICEF. We spoke to people there as well.
It was activists who helped us connect with the children, people who had been working in those communities and knew the families and the children involved. So that's how we approached the children.
With a story like child labor especially, you really have to figure out are they indeed as old as they claim, or are they below the age. And this is not only a problem related to reporting on children, but in general in India in a lot of places record-keeping is not very good, especially in smaller towns and villages, and especially among the older generation, so that was another issue: people don't always have birth certificates or school leaving certificates.
So, are we even talking to the right people? If someone says he's 18, is he actually 18? Is he 14-15? So, those were some of the ambiguities that we had to deal with. Are children reliable narrators? Are they being forced to say something because of the adults in the room? This was also touched upon earlier. I mean I guess only after speaking to many children over time, or repeatedly going back to the same children and speaking to them, you would be able to figure out if they are saying something they believe in, or they are just parroting something they've heard.
And the last question. We know these things are happening, that child labor is being used even though it's not supposed to be. So, when you come across a situation like that, what are you supposed to do? Because when we confronted the officials who claimed there was no child labor, saying that we have photos and videos and we have seen these children at work, then they would say: “Okay, so what are you doing? You should be reporting it to the police”. And I don't know that that's the answer, because then immediately you take livelihood away, or these people have spoken to you assuming that you're taking their safety into consideration, and then suddenly the police will land up at their doorstep, so where does that lead them? So, that's another question that came up during the course of the reporting.
Finally, I'll just say that a general challenge of reporting in India nowadays is that the government has not been especially conducive or tolerant of journalists, and especially international journalists who come in for a brief period and report and then leave, and neither to Indian journalists. So, we found a lot of stonewalling and that's I guess normal in a way, but also seems to have increased a lot more in the current regime. There was a lot in a sense of “Okay, you are spoiling the country's name by reporting this kind of stuff because industry exports get affected and India's image abroad is damaged”, and a lot of push back was around that.
Last one thing. Because of some of these concerns we also took to communicating with each other. Maybe this is very obvious now, but we took to communicating with each other on Signal and tried to avoid using WhatsApp. Small things like that while working on this. Thank you.
Aidan White:
Thank you very much. Bhavya, that story which you won an award for in 2020, was actually touching on really the gravest sort of issues that are facing journalists reporting children, particularly those who are victims of child labor. And particularly when you're up against the reality that the economics of home life may be such that children very often have to play a role in the economic life of a family, in order for a family to exist, and that's a terrible reality. And so, then when you point to the fact that India changed the law to allow children below the age of 14 to work up to 18 hours a week, providing they go to school, as a progressive act, it certainly is. Because the problem has been in the past, that the possibility of going to school and getting an education has been impossible for many children, for millions in parts of South Asia in particular.
Thank you very much indeed and thank you also for being very practical in the questions that you asked, in the questions that you put, because it seems to me that these are the challenges that journalists themselves will face when they're dealing with the story. I think that was most helpful.
I would like to move on and bring in Nadia Azhgikhina. Nadia is my good friend and is with me on the Steering Committee of the Fetisov Journalism Awards, and we are comrades in arms and have been for many years. Nadia on her own part is one of the most distinguished international journalists working in Russia. She's been fighting on these issues and particularly ethics of journalism for 20 years as long as I know, and for a lot longer as well. Nadia, I know you have a particular interest in this theme of journalism. Tell us what your reflections on the stories are so far.
Nadezda Azhgikhina:
Thank you very much, Aidan. Thank you, my dear colleagues and speakers. I'm really moved and touched, and seriously impressed. All of you are heroes, and I am talking not only on behalf of the Steering committee of the Fetisov Journalism Awards, but on behalf of many colleagues working on the similar issues.
As advisor and consultant, I was involved in many projects devoted to protection of girls and children's rights under the Umbrella of UNICEF, UNESCO and other international organizations as well as International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)… It's a very serious issue and it is underdiscussed. It's so fantastic that we have this webinar. And it's very important not only to listen to all the award-winning stories, not only listen to the awardees, but to see how important is to appreciate professionalism, as well as work methods, positioning and professional approaches in investigative work, and about the difficulties and value of ethical choice that we face every day.
Hannah Dreier said that first of all we should be human beings, and it's very important. Hadeel Arja said about the dramatic choice and dramatic dilemma and conflict sometimes between sensitivity and objectivity. And we were talking about role of adults in all those dramas. I think it would be very important to have all our speeches to be heard and all our presentations to be looked by all journalist departments and professional organizations and our colleagues all over the world.
As I was preparing for this meeting, I remembered a wonderful publication in Time Magazine from June 2017, on International Children's Day. It was an amazing selection of 30 photographs from Life Magazine archive that ran for 37 years from 1936 until 1972 and reflected the globe from China to Los Angeles. Many of those photos have been taken by famous photographers, many photos took a cult status and received prestigious awards. They showed moments of happiness and grief, boys and girls from stage performers to refugees awaiting humanitarian aid to victims of discrimination, to the indigenous people of the north. They shared the variety of images of peace and childhood was incredible. The authors of the publication reminded the readers how important is to respect the world of children in all its uniqueness, and to protect the right of children to self-actualize in the future, just like it's noted in official documents. It was written in many documents. Unfortunately, it is still on paper.
We know that children's images and children's stories told by mass media are the most powerful instrument of everything, including propaganda. And, of course, when we remember tragedies of 20th and 21st century we cannot forget images of children. When we talk about the Holocaust it's impossible not to think about the photo of a young boy from Warsaw Ghetto [“Warsaw Ghetto boy”]. When thinking of the Vietnam War it's the photo of young naked girl running away from burning napalm [“Napalm Girl” by Nick Ut]. Bloody conflicts in Africa, children soldiers, and that crow ready to pluck out the eyes of a child dying of starvation ["The Vulture and The Little Girl" by Kevin Carter]. In my country such images included victims of ‘pogroms’ in the Volga region, executed young partisans during the Nazi occupation, marching pioneers and the little girls on Stalin's lap.
Images of children have also been used by propaganda machines of all kinds. During the siege of Kosovo, Bosnian mass media talked about Serbs who fed Bosnian children to lions in the zoo, and the exact opposite was also reported. Such apocryphal reporting has become a typical part of every world conflict. And we could face it now in reporting about Middle East, or Ukraine, or Africa, or any other conflict zone. But behind each of those photographs, as well as behind of each propaganda story, there are stories of its creation, the work of journalists and not journalists. And it's not a very simple story. Working with original sources has always demanded and continues to demand particular care and sensitivity from our colleagues, especially while we are talking about victims of violence, conflict or discrimination. International organizations, from agencies to professional unions and editorial companies, have spoken on this for many years. New recommendations of how to deal with these difficult topics are released on a regular basis.
Hadeel told us about this Children First initiative. It's very important. The recommendations how to report on childhood and children are very important. In materials Aidan White prepared for this webinar we have recommendations from 1998, these are materials by IFJ, UNICEF and United Nations, they're very important, they're very useful. Unfortunately, the publications and companies do not use those recommendations, and we can count it on fingers of one hand those who follow those recommendations. The interests of editorial houses, and sometimes of journalists and the principle of so-called public interest.. Public interest is very important but public interest is currently in conflict in the basic principle of not to do harm, and ethical reasoning is often treated as meaningless in the companies in competition battle for information field.
Can a journalist be judged for bringing to light human right violations, bringing attention to a serious problem? Perhaps his publication will help solve the problem. But what if he or she showed the name of the victim, even indirectly but included details, which easily identify who the victim was? Even though without those special details and colors the publication would not have made as much public noise as it did this is not a theoretical question but a practical dilemma which many journalists face every day.
Press councils have stories like that regularly, but the seas of tears unseen by the world remain outside the closed doors of such commissions and ethical groups of unions and other organizations. Published materials have a dramatic effect on the facts of the people written about. Should a journalist writing about child prostitution think about how his or her work would affect those being sex-trafficked? How a victim of violence will be treated in her village or by her family after the materials are published? Those issues are the most serious for the discussion among professionals. I think we have a great advisory research on the topic, and we have professional organizations, which could pay more attention to those issues.
It's very important also to involve lawyers, because in many countries we have rather strict regulations on presenting or using children's images or children's names but it also contradicts professional practices very often.
And another question can a journalist be judged for not helping children in need?
Hannah Dreier said that first of all we should be human beings, and I totally agree. Journalist anyway is not a social worker, his or her job is to report the facts. A lot has been said on this topic in recent years. There are known cases of journalists reporting on tragic events who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and so on and so forth. And there are other cases when journalists took it upon themselves to go beyond the call to other to their professional duties, and got involved in their subjects’ lives directly. For example, it could be life of a boy soldier from Congo, from Uganda, or a girl from Chechnya, or children from other conflict areas. And usually, women journalists do that. It's a very interesting topic. Probably it's a topic for some future discussion.
Another topic is how to make the children's voices heard? Some countries have a well-established system of children's mass media but such media are quietly often censored. Here's talking about the creation of some sort of international children's resource, a topic that can be discussed in the future. Probably we can take it into account.
And finally, the topic of media literacy for children and adult is also important. In other words, the dialogue that started during our webinar needs to be continued. I hope that our speakers’ experience and knowledge and practical stuff would be used by other professionals. And I would also suggest that we think about a new nomination for the Fetisov Journalism Awards, a special nomination for children's right protection. I think it's time to think about it, and probably we can discuss it with UNICEF and other organizations. And I again congratulate all our participants. I wish all the best to fantastic journalists, real heroes, pioneers of our profession. And I do believe as an optimist that we could make a difference. Thank you very much.
Aidan White:
Thank you, Nadia. I think you made a very powerful intervention and inspiring again confidence in the value of journalism, public interest journalism, in defense of humanity but also ensuring that the rights, all of our rights are protected, particularly those of children.
We will come on after we had all of the speakers to see if they have got any ways in which we can develop further ideas. So, I take very much your point about perhaps we should have a special prize in this sort of particular area. But I'm very grateful for you highlighting at the towards the end there about the importance of giving voice to children, and how we need to ensure that the authentic voice of children is heard, that we ensure, that we provide an opportunity for them to speak.
I'm really grateful on that note to introduce Cherian George. Cherian is an old friend of mine and he has been a campaigner on these issues for many many years. Most importantly his contribution to this work is as an academic and a teacher, and an educator. I can't think of an area of journalism which requires more helpful instruction and encouragement from teachers and educators then on the question of child rights and child reporting. Cherian is a very distinguished academic and teacher but also a writer who has himself unfortunately come up against power in his homeland of Singapore, where he has unfortunately run into what can be loosely described as typical opposition from the authorities over his wish to defend media freedom, his wish to defend media independence.
So, I'm really pleased that you are able to join us, Cherian, from Hong Kong, you're the furthest out from where I am in Italy today, and I know it's the middle of the night, and I'm very grateful that you've taken the time out to come and join us. So please, the floor is yours.
Cherian George:
Thank you, Aidan. It is completely my pleasure and privilege to join this amazing panel. I want to just echo Nadia and Aidan as well in acknowledging the expertise, the passion, the inspiration that our journalists, winners provide today.
Nadia at the end of her presentation pointed out that maybe in future we could be discussing resources for children. So far, we've been talking about telling stories about children for adults. But what about telling stories about the adult world for children?
I'm glad to tell Nadia that the future is now, because that's exactly what I'm going to talk about. The rights of the child, I think it's important for us to understand, include the rights of children to have access to information. This includes the right to receive and seek information from a diversity of sources.
So, my story begins in Singapore back on in 2003, where my sister and I were talking about children's needs for news. My sister Mary has a doctorate in Family and Child Development and works as a teacher educator. I myself, as Aidan has mentioned, have been practicing journalism, and now I am a journalism researcher and educator. And what Mary pointed out in that discussion more than 20 years ago is that kids in middle childhood, you know, around the ages of 9 to 12, are caught in a limbo. They are old enough to be conscious of and perhaps curious about the grown-up world but are not able to follow grown-up news media.
So, Mary and I talked about it and wondered could we pull our specializations, hers in child development and mine in journalism, to create a newspaper just for them. So, that's when 21 years ago What’s Up was born. This is a more recent copy. Since 2023 we’ve been publishing journalism for kids. It is an independent monthly newspaper for children, Thirty thousand subscribers right now mostly age 9 to 12. Partner schools, mostly primary schools, adopt What’s Up as a supplementary text for English and social studies. We practice what we call values-driven journalism and here you can see the commitments that we started with on day one and continue to guide our work. We know that the content of grown-up mass media often undermines the efforts of teachers and parents at inculcating positive values. We do not believe in completely insulating children from the grown-up world but we want children to be able to find out about adult things in ways that are psychologically healthy and developmentally appropriate. So, for us current affairs, even bad news, is a source of interesting stories that can be used to communicate positive values subtly and creatively.
And, of course, as every writer knows, writing simply is very hard. It's not just a matter of translating jargon and explaining difficult concepts, whether it's inflation, or corruption, or elections. It's also about I think finding the heart of the matter, what's the moral center of the story once you strip away all the details?
We try to cultivate readers who are socially and globally conscious, so when doing stories on stuff that kids may already find interesting like sports, music or space exploration in this case, can we tell these stories in ways that expand their minds. So for example, a story about the race to the moon could be used to introduce them to the history of colonialism.
While we report on big news we do not jump on media bandwagons. We decide independently based on the best expert assessments what's important for a young person to know about the world. So for example, most of the world's media ignored the UN's Fourth International Conference on small island developing states, which was held in May this year, a conference of immense significance to the very survival of many of these nations. We put it on page one. Another case: instead of Simone Biles or Katie Ledecky, we put the refugee team on the cover of the Olympics in a recent issue.
Refugee stories, I think, are given more prominence in What’s Up than in most mainstream outlets. Resisting the media bandwagon also meant, for example, that when we reported Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we used a picture of children in Yemen, and our story talked about forgotten wars in that country, as well as in Syria and […], and to develop our readers media literacy the story explained how wars in the global South tend to get less media attention.
Our readers in Singapore, of course, are growing up in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, virtually free from the atrocities and abuses that kids elsewhere suffer, and that our panel of journalists have so bravely investigated. But one right that is especially relevant to Singapore as a multi-racial country is the right to be free from racial discrimination. So, that's why a few years ago we did this series and poster to explain ICERD, the International Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Now a lot of news is frightening for kids, so we avoid graphic details of violence, for example, we have never written about sexual violence as a weapon of war, and would probably never do so but that does not mean that we sanitize all our news. If, for example, there is a politician who has proven to have told even more on truths than most politicians do, we say it plainly. If a world leader has a record of dangerous conduct we will say it. Once in a blue moon, our plain speaking might upset a parent who might write in complain that we are being too opinionated. And that's usually when our report disagrees with their own view of the world, but you know we've been doing this a long time, 21 years to be precise, so I think overall educators in Singapore trust our judgment that we always put the child's interest over any ideological or political agenda. And the main reason we built this reputation is the way we operate.
I mentioned that What’s Up is a partnership between me, a journalist by training, and my sister, a child development specialist. We own the paper 50/50. But although I take the lead in selecting stories to cover, Mary has absolute final say in deciding whether any proposed content is in danger of violating our commitments. So, the principle “First Do No Harm” is to us non-negotiable. I'll give you a recent example how did we select photos to illustrate our stories on the war on Gaza. There is obviously blood and gore out, and that excludes most of the pictures coming out of Gaza in the last several months. So by applying my own training as a photo editor (I served in that role at a daily newspaper in Singapore), I at first felt that this image was a powerful but not too graphic photo. Mary disagreed, she felt that the expressions of the mother and child were still too distressing for a 9-year-old. This was not a debate. I trust her judgment implicitly. So we went instead with this image: this is a picture of a family that fled their home in the northern Gaza Strip to the South. The mother heavily pregnant in a shelter, she gives birth to quintuplets. So, this is a story of hope amid chaos. As for the text, we try to provide our readers with the words that they can think with. We explain key ideas they can use to make sense of the world.
We try to be fair without aiming for false balance. So, for example when we explain self-defense, we point out that of course countries need to be able to defend themselves, but we also explain the principle of proportionality and point out the obvious that Israel's retaliation, perhaps, we should call it retribution, was disproportionate according to the United Nations and any credible observer. Ultimately, we wanted to promote empathy, so we emphasized that whatever the rights and wrongs of the war [are] all human beings feel pain. And that it is never right to think of others as an enemy to be eliminated. So, this has been just a brief introduction to how What’s Up tries to fulfill children's right to be informed.
I should finally say that you know we don't do any original reporting, we depend entirely on the efforts, well, on the work of communication specialists in international NGOs, in Civil Society organizations and especially in journalists like those represented here who work for grown-up media and share our values. So, for that reason I especially want to join Aidan and the Fetisov Awards in paying tribute to the work of our award-winning journalists. Thank you for having me.
Aidan White:
Thank you very much indeed, Cherian. I think the example you've given of a child centered medium newspaper, magazine, whatever you would call it, which explains the world in a context that puts the child at the center of what's going on, is incredibly useful. And I think is it's very interesting to see how you as a journalist are absolutely prepared to give way to your sister on the basis of her expertise as well as the fact that she is your sister. But that’s another matter.
I mean, what you've done is I think really sort of shown that this is a story that can be told in different ways. It can be told in a way, in which we give children, young people agency, we treat them seriously, we give them the opportunity to have their voice heard, but also, we help to try to interpret the world in a context in which they can better understand it. And that is really one of the most important things.
Number of questions have arisen in listening to these wonderful presentations.
I was particularly taken with the how the issues came up around the question of sources of information, about how we interview children, about how we deal with safeguarding to ensure that children are protected, and that last question about giving voice. Can we trust children to speak for themselves? For example, very often when one's carrying out interviews, a journalist will be very challenging. They will have questions that they want to pose, and they will be used to having people on the other side of the table who are not interested in answering questions but are very much interested in getting a specific message across.
When one is interviewing children very often you might find that they are prepared to say almost anything. So how do you protect children against themselves? How do you protect them that they don't say things that actually put themselves at risk? And that's a particular sort of question regarding interviewing skills. Interviewing children requires something other than just the ability to pose a hard question. It requires understanding the context, in which the interview is being given. The potential damage that can flow from it as well.
So, I'm interested if any of you in your experience about talking to children, dealing with children, what in particular did you do to safeguard the children, to create an environment, which was safe for them to talk in, in which they felt secure and they were able to talk freely and that did not potentially put them at risk. What sort of steps did you take? Who would like to answer that?
Hadeel Arja:
I can start first because…I have this question, which I really admire, and every time I ask myself: would I want my children or myself when I was young to be portrayed in such a way? Finding an answer to this question really helps. Three years ago I was working on a very sensitive issue also about little boys. They were raped, they were forced to work. People in refugee camps think they are protecting the girls if they keep them in the refugee tents. So, they sent their boys to work and they faced different challenges and different very difficult situations like being raped… So, when I was working on this very sensitive topic, every time I asked myself this question. And it really helps when working on this.
Besides there are a lot of techniques we can use. Sometimes it's about what word, specific word to use. We need to practice. Interviewing a child is the same when we are planning to interview a president or some political figure. It's the same. We need to be well prepared, to know all the sensitives, all the words, sometimes it's about little words, sometimes about small techniques. “Do you want to see my camera?” “Do you want to see my mobile?” “Let me show you my little cat”. This little technique really helps because after all they are so innocent, they are the most amazing creatures in the world, but their chance is very bad, which put them in these places. Of course, there a lot of techniques but that’s about it in general.
Hannah Dreier:
I love what said about connecting with children on a level that they can understand, and that is not scary to them. I feel like children naturally are often nervous talking to adults and to strangers. And then one thing that I would add that I try to do when you do get to a place with a child, where they feel comfortable, you’ve connected over like the little cat or you know the game that they were playing. I find that children really can't decide for themselves what is going to put them in danger. It's like asking a child to think about a context that they just can't understand. So, one thing that we did was look for other adults to try to consent that, and so that sort of looked like acting as if our whole conversation with children was off the record, even though it wasn't. You know, like putting it in a special category, and then going to their parents or a church leader, their teachers, the adults that they were living with, and sort of triangulating around them, to make sure that multiple adults were also consenting, not just the child, if that does that make sense.
Aidan White:
Absolutely. The question is: is it always possible to ensure that a responsible trustworthy adult is present when you're asking the questions? Is that always advisable?
Hannah Dreier:
I mean, in our case it often was not possible. There was no […] adult with these children who were working in dangerous jobs […], but we didn't put their names and faces in the newspaper because we just didn't feel like we really could get a consent there. Even if a child was willing and excited to be in the newspaper.
Aidan White:
Anyone else wants to join our chat?... If not… Thanks for that. I think the question of interviewing children is a supreme test of interviewing skills. I agree very much with Hadeel about the need to prepare for an interview. The need to think very clearly about the circumstances, the context in which questions are going to be asked, and, above all, the need to provide a sort of secure environment, in which a child is able to sort of speak freely. I think that's very helpful.
Another issue that came up in our discussion, which I'm very interested in, is this question of sources of information and the problems that we have in identifying sources of information that are really reliable. Because very often advocacy groups, or governmental groups, or state groups, or whatever have their own interests at stake, and so consequently they will very often want to intervene to speak on behalf of the children in any story but actually will see it only in the context of their own interests.
How do you guard against that? How do you ensure that you're getting sources of information that are trustworthy, reliable, truthful and with the interest of, at the heart of the story, the child, uppermost in their minds? How do we go about that? Hannah, I'm particularly interested because you mentioned that advocacy groups were hostile, and I think, Hadeel, you had a degree of hostility as well, which you face as a journalist. Because we have different roles to play – advocacy groups and NGOs have different roles to play, they're important, equally important, but a journalist has public purpose in what they do, and they therefore have to ensure that they're not drawn into the sort of protective enclosure that actually advocacy groups have around their own interests, and so on. So, how does one guard against that?
Hannah Dreier:
I think that what you're saying about advocacy groups is absolutely right. They are so important. In the US these groups do really crucial work with migrant children. They're sort of the only safety net that's there for these kid a lot of time. And they're very protective of these kids, protective to the point where they will sometimes say they don't know anybody in a given situation, even though they do. Or they'll say you know, “I did have a client, this happened to them, but we would never ever connect you with them under any circumstances”. And so what's worked for me is to go and do this reporting on my own and then to come back to these groups much much later in the proce[…], and that's where I can say, “Hey, here are these 20 […]”. …they are much more open because they're not furnishing information that could be the basis of a story, the story is already going to happen. And then I find that they sometimes are more open to be , you know, sources, because they're not the ones that are deciding whether or not I'm going to have access to these children. I already know the children and they're providing contacts.
Aidan White:
Thank you very much. And, Hadeel, we’ve just a few minutes left. I’ll give the last word to you on this question.
Hadeel Arja:
The thing in my case because, as I mentioned, I have been covering the war for like 13 years especially in these places, so it's like a puzzle: collecting the pieces to each other. If you heard this advice or tip from this part, you need to listen from the other parts and you know then you collect everything, and you can find and you will know who is correct, or who is giving you some lies only to publish something that is not correct. So, this comes actually after specializing in these places and knowing the context, knowing who's really working in the field. And, after all, as a journalist, you sense, you can know who's telling you the truth or not, and double check - fact checking is very important. But creating this strong network really helps and it really comes with time, and following all of this happening in the field.
Aidan White:
Thank you very much. I have to say, you've rounded off very well with excellent tips. I think one of the one of the precious elements of this particular webinar has been that we have been full of good ideas, practical tips, hints that journalists need to be able to tell this story, and also some very good ideas for future work that we need to embrace. And I think that's really very helpful. The issues of sources of information, interviewing skills, safeguarding children and the whole question of giving voice to children - these should go without saying but, of course, we do need to say them, of course we do need to sort of say how does it work in practice and that is something that we need to do.
I want to thank you all very much indeed. This has been the most inspiring of the webinars that we've had so far. I've always been a campaigner and a journalist in support of reporting that really gets to the heart of stories that are touching humanity. And stories about children are exactly that. Because they bring out the need for empathy and also the need for trustworthiness in the way that we do our work and so on. So, thank you all very very much for that.
I do want to stress that this is being produced by the Fetisov Journalism Awards. We are in our sixth year of activity and it's been tremendous. One of the great things about being involved with the Fetisov Journalism Awards is that we just are constantly in touch with some of the best journalists that are working in our profession today. And I'm really pleased to have so many some of you on our screen today.
The closing date for the next entries is September 15th, so that's just something for you to know and for you to tell everybody else. Every year the number of entries for the Fetisov Journalism Awards goes up and up. We have become really very well established. We are recognized now by the world's major media. The journalists that are coming in are all getting the support that they need.
So I want to thank all of you for your wonderful contributions. I want to thank N. and G. who have done all the technical work behind the webinar. And thank you all: Hadeel, Cherian, Bavya and Hannah. It’s been such a pleasure to listen to you. And I really look forward to seeing you in the future.
Q&A:
How do we get the issue taken up in mainstream media when media is under so much pressure these days? How do we go about it in our own societies, how do we get this issue taken up when media are in an existential struggle for survival themselves?
Aidan White:
That's a really tricky question. It's the one that would start another webinar for another hour and a half. But does anyone immediately have a sort of basic answer to that question how do we get the issue taken up by media at a time when media are so much under the hammer in terms of their business and in terms of the role they play in society these days? … I understand why it’s a bit difficult. Hannah…
Hannah Dreier:
I mean if the question is how media is in such a tricky position right now, there's so many threats to media freedom, and […] resonates even with people who are maybe suspicious of like fake news which is something that we hear a lot in this country. So, I would say that choosing this kind of target, the abuse of children, is something that is helpful and is going to, at least in the US, continue to attract readers’ attention and continue to resonate and cut through some of the noise, even as we're in this really difficult moment.
Cherian George:
I think one interesting point that our audience member brought up is the hostility of advocacy groups which was referred. What you do when advocacy groups stonewall you [and] because of the reputation of media. But my sense is that it always is possible, maybe getting harder for journalists to convince good faith organizations that they can be trusted. It may no longer be possible just to wave your name card, or flash your press pass, or mention even your brand name news organization and expect doors to open because rightly or wrongly media around the world have a bad rap, partly because of anti-media populism, partly because the media deserve a bad rap, even the best media deserve a bad rap. But I think our winners here today and other outstanding journalists show that it can be done despite the distrust of media as a big institution. The individual journalist by showing up day after day, week after week, month after month, and may even take more than a year, can convince people with important stories to share that they can be trusted, that there is not just about the ratings, it is not just about circulation. These are stories that the journalists are passionate about, and are grossly underpaid for, it's just not worth it. Journalists are able to get that point across and can be trusted. So, I wouldn't be as pessimistic as the question implies.
Aidan White:
Thanks very much for that. I mean, I think that's absolutely right. We have a job to do to convince advocacy groups that trusted independent journalism will help them do their job more effectively and better than ever. And we are not the enemy, we actually are their friends, and it's a question about how we go about that. But we have to live with the world as it is. And at the moment there's an [awful] lot of education that needs to be done and […] more dialogue between journalist groups and advocacy groups to have reached a more common understanding of the benefits to society. I think that the role… and it has been suggested here that which is actually very good that having platforms and networks which will pass on stories which are difficult to be told at home so they can be told elsewhere is actually one thing that can be done. And I think that this webinar and similar initiatives will be able to ensure that even stories that don't go down very well at home, and you know, Cherian, better than anyone, the problems that you have getting some stories told when there's hostility on home ground, that actually having a place to go to where that story can be published and discussed is actually very important. So, I think that is something to bear in mind.
Okay everybody, thank you very much indeed. I have to say it's been wonderful, it's been full and it’s been very useful and I've learned a lot, which is really helpful. I hope you have too. Hadeel, Cherian, Nadia, Bhavya and Hannah, thank you very much indeed. It's been a wonderful time and I look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks very much, take care!
AI-generated transcript
Additional materials:
Hadeel Arja's presentation
Bhavya Dore's presentation: