The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is different everywhere. Yet what unites communities worldwide is an unrelenting need for accurate information.People rely on local media to understand and decipher science, separate fact from rumor, and deliver real-time, localized information on health care and vaccine access.To help journalists cover health effectively in their communities, we’ve built a repository of resources, including new free online courses, Let’s Talk Vaccines and Let’s Talk COVID-19, and the Internews Health Journalism Network, designed to create connections for health reporters across borders.The need for high-quality health reporting will only increase. In the midst of responding to the current pandemic, journalists need to be prepared for the next. Read on to learn how we’re expanding health journalism worldwide.
Let’s Talk Vaccines
To better support and equip journalists to report on vaccines now and in the future, Internews developed Let’s Talk Vaccines, an interactive e-learning course.
The course provides journalists with helpful information on navigating vaccine terminology, tips on managing looming deadlines and fast-tracking research, and exercises to improve skills.
A second free course, Let’s Talk COVID-19, focuses on reporting on the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. More than 400 journalists from dozens of countries have enrolled for the courses in the past month.
“The vaccine story is with us for a long time still to come,” says Ida Jooste, Internews’ Senior Health Media Advisor. “Journalists have a role to play that is just as critical as that of scientists and researchers.”
Learn more and register:
Join the Internews Health Journalism Network
The Internews Health Journalism Network (HJN) is a community of health media professionals with access to specialized training and resources, global health experts, experienced media colleagues, and grant opportunities.
Membership is free. Events, resources, webinars and more are added weekly!
What We’re Reading
A New Deal for Journalism, a report from the Forum on Information & Democracy’s working group on the sustainability of journalism, outlines a vision to safeguard the social function and value of journalism.
With practical recommendations, including a target for governments invested in public-service journalism to commit 1% of official development assistance to support for independent media, we welcome the report’s call for “rebuilding journalism, not as a ‘media sector’, but as an essential element of freedom of opinion and expression, predicated on the right to information.”
One More Thing
Internews is a Founding Member of The Trinity Challenge – a coalition of more than 40 organizations united by the common aim of using data and advanced analytics to develop insights and actions to contribute to a world better protected from health emergencies. The first winners of The Trinity Challenge will be announced on June 25.
“Preparing for the next pandemic means preparing for the next ‘infodemic’ that will surely accompany it,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Internews Europe. “I’m encouraged that many of the Trinity Challenge finalists proposed innovative solutions to addressing misinformation and de-mystifying data, so that government officials and journalists can effectively communicate lifesaving information to the public.”