PATRICK LEE PLAISANCE THE NEWS business, like every other, is struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic. The economic crisis has forced more than two dozen small-town newsrooms to shut down and has accelerated media job losses – including hundreds of layoffs at outlets as varied as Condé Nast, BuzzFeed, Vice, The Economist, and virtually every newspaper chain. As a result, publishers have been among those in line to apply for loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, an emergency funding package administered by the federal Small Business Administration. News organizations have received millions in coronavirus stimulus aid. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting…

JULIE REID, Associate professor, University of South Africa “IF journalism is a force of immense influence – and I think it is, and should be – then it surely deserves scrutiny.” These are the words of Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of The Guardian in London. News media sector representatives, journalists and editors often respond to criticism of the press with assertions that the freedom and independence of the news media must be protected at all costs. This is often an almost automatic knee-jerk reaction. For many, the freedom of the press is an infallible sacred cow. This line of argument…

ELIAS BIRYABAREMA UGANDA's security forces are cracking down on authors and journalists who challenge the 34-year-old rule of President Yoweri Museveni ahead of elections next year, a watchdog told Reuters. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it documented the cases of at least 10 journalists and writers assaulted by security personnel, detained, or charged with offences to do with their work this year, compared to four such cases last year. "Police and the military have turned political reporting into a dangerous assignment," said Muthoki Mumo, the committee's representative for sub-Saharan Africa. Calls seeking comment to police spokesman…

LUDEK STAVINOHA, Lecturer in Media and International Development, University of East Anglia AS COVID-19 becomes the most intensely covered virus in history, there are important lessons to be drawn from the media’s reporting of another global pandemic: HIV/Aids. Whose lives the world deems worthy of saving depends, at least partly, on the stories that journalists tell. This was one of the findings of my research into British media coverage of Africa’s Aids pandemic, in which I analysed 1,281 news reports between 1987 and 2008. At the height of that pandemic, journalists helped to expose how intellectual property laws and the…

STAFF REPORTER THE economic impact of the health disaster brought by COVID-19 is being felt at one of Africa’s biggest media houses. South Africa’s Media24, the biggest media owner in that country, has announced that the tough economic times have forced it to consider closing some of its titles and substantially scale down some of its operations. The closure is expected to lead to job losses in an industry decimated by the onset of COVID-19. Media24 CEO Ishmet Davidson said the media group is considering the closure of five magazines and two newspapers, outsourcing and reducing the frequency of its…