If you are a journalist planning to go to Ukraine to cover the threatening escalation of the war, you might need to work with local producers, fixers, or translators. Here are a few research-based tips for avoiding unintended harm to your local collaborators and yourself and making your reporting more ethical and transparent. These tips […]
Are you a journalist going to Ukraine? Don’t be a jerk Read More »
By Johana Kotišová. Originally published by Revue Prostor (in Czech). From objectivity to the abyss Journalism is in crisis. This mantra has been used for years by media theorists from the so-called Global North to describe anything from the consequences of the post-2008 economic crisis in the media through the precarity of media professionals linked to the rapidly
A war lesson: The reform of journalism will be feminist Read More »
By Johana Kotišová. Originally published by MO* (in Dutch). “I would compare the war to radiation. When you visit the Chornobyl power plant for one week and then go back to a safe location, you get a different dose of radiation than when you live there for months and years,” says Andrii Kolesnyk, a Ukrainian
The review of Syed Irfan Ashraf’sThe Dark Side of News Fixing: The Culture and Political Economy of Global Media in Pakistan and Afghanistan (London: Anthem Press, 2022, 240 pp., ISBN ISBN:9781839981371) was originally published in Mass Communication and Society. This version is the Accepted Manuscript. The work of fixers, local media professionals often hired to
Book Review: The Dark Side of News Fixing Read More »
Global conflicts are increasingly documented and covered by people outside of the journalistic mainstream: locally hired media professionals, remote open-source investigators, local eyewitnesses, activists, and data publics. Together, they create complex and heterogeneous ecosystems. These groups have diverse goals, kinds of proximity to the war, and work with varying sets of values and fact-finding procedures.
The Fixers & Stringers research project – focused on the collaboration among journalists, media organizations, fixers, producers, and stringers – got to its second half and finally has brought some tangible results! I am happy to share these with you in this newsletter, as well as an invitation to a free workshop. What you will
Fixers & Stringers Newsletter 2 Read More »
By Johana Kotišová, available here. This paper investigates the epistemic injustice in conflict reporting, where foreign parachute reporters collaborate with local producers and ‘fixers.’ Drawing from existing research on ‘fixers’ and other media professionals covering conflict zones and the philosophy of emotion and knowledge, I address the following questions: What is the role of local
By Oleksiy Pluzhnyk The truth of the matter is, of course, that we have a certain amount of information about famine conditions in the south of Russia [Ukraine] … We do not want to make it public, however, because the Soviet Government would resent it and our relations with them would be prejudiced… British Foreign
The Dictionary of Fear and Hope: The origin of wartime language in Ukrainian media Read More »
By Natalie Gryvnyak I had never thought of becoming a war journalist or a war producer. Yet, in the last nine years, I have become a person that has experienced direct shootings and killings of people on Institutskaya street during Maidan. I saw “little green men” and the military in Crimea during the “referendum” and
Ukrainian journalists’ new role: collecting evidence of war crimes Read More »
By Johana Kotišová and Mark Deuze, available here. This paper offers a critical review of scholarly research on fixers, the local collaborators of foreign correspondents, in conflict reporting. Based on a thematic analysis of work that addresses news fixing, we summarize what we know about fixers in conflict zones while using postcolonial lens to further
Decolonizing Conflict Journalism Studies: A Critical Review of Research on Fixers Read More »
By Yaroslava Tymoshchuk On a September afternoon in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, I take a selfie. My sunglasses reflect the railway station. I still have a few hours before my train goes to Kyiv, and I want to capture the moment. It was 2021, quite recently — given that Ukrainians perceive the time after February 24
The language of war: Human stories prevent casualties from becoming statistics Read More »
