WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2020

In this newsletter you'll find details about our next seminars and a short summary of our latest piece of research. You will also learn more about our new colleague, find a job vacancy, and get links to webinars, courses and reads we think are worth your time. 

🕒 This newsletter is 1,324 words, a ten-minute read. Let's get started.

Polarised attitudes towards COVID-19 news coverage

The topic. Our UK COVID-19 News and Information Project has revealed a polarisation of attitudes towards news coverage of the pandemic in the UK. Those on the left are more likely to say the news media has not been critical enough, while those on the right say news coverage has been too critical of the UK government.

Our research. The project is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and will initially run for eight months. The findings of each wave will be made publicly available. The final conclusions will be published in several public reports. We have published two factsheets so far as part of the project: 

• The first one was published on 28 April on a survey fielded on 10-14 April. Read it in this link. 
• The second one was published on 5 May on a survey fielded on 24-28 April. Read it in this link.  

The speaker. Richard Fletcher, Senior Research Fellow, will delve into the findings from the first two factsheets of the project on Thursday 14 May at 13:30 UK time. Sign up for the webinar in the link below.

A job vacancy. We have an opening on our research team. Here you can learn about the benefits of working at the University of Oxford. You can find the current members of our research team in this link. Here are the details of the job we are offering right now:

📌 Senior Research Fellow. We are seeking to appoint a Senior Research Fellow to help develop and lead the institute's comparative research on the drivers of trust in news and identify actionable, evidence-based recommendations:

• The ideal candidate is someone with a proven track record of independent, internationally oriented, high-quality research. 
• This post is offered on a full-time basis from 1 September 2020 (or as soon as possible thereafter) until 31 August 2023.

Deadline for applications is Wednesday 27 May at noon, UK time. If you are interested, find more information and apply in this link. 

The factsheet. Are news outlets viewed in the same way by experts and by the public? This is the question at the heart of a new factsheet authored by Anne Schulz, Richard Fletcher and Marina Popescu. The factsheet focuses on 226 news outlets across 23 European countries and uses data from the 2017 European Media Systems Survey (EMSS) and our 2018 Digital News Report (DNR). Read about our methodology here. 

💡 Our key findings. When comparing expert evaluations of accuracy from the 2017 EMSS with audience brand trust scores from our 2018 DNR, the authors find that both are strongly aligned. In other words, outlets with higher accuracy ratings from experts tend to have higher trust ratings from the public and vice versa. 

📺 News outlets. On average, both experts and the public rate news from public service media outlets as the most accurate and trustworthy, respectively. News from digital-born brands is on average rated lower by both. Commercial TV and newspapers sit between the two. Experts rate newspapers higher than commercial TV news for accuracy, and both equally when it comes to public trust. 

• 📱 Read the factsheet in this link.
• 📄 Download a PDF version here. 
• 🧶 You can find a short thread on the report here.

A short profile. Dorothy Byrne is joining the Reuters Institute as a Visiting Fellow for the next few months. Dorothy has recently stepped down as the Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4, where she will remain as Editor at Large. She blasted several leading politicians in her MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival last year. 

An event. Dorothy Byrne will be one of the speakers of our weekly series on the business and practice of journalism, chaired by Meera Selva. Her talk is scheduled for 17 June and will focus on the role of public service broadcasting during this crisis. You can sign up in this link.  

• 📱 Read the transcript of Dorothy's talk in October on why our newsrooms should be more diverse.  
• 📽 Watch the video of that talk here. 
• 🎙 Listen to the talk as a podcast here. 

Webinars and courses
Wednesday 13 May. 18:00 UK time. Apoorva Mandavilli, Health and Science Writer at the New York Times, and Dr Michael Osterholm, a leading infectious disease epidemiologist, discuss the state of testing in the USA and how reporters can cover the issue. | Center for Health Journalism

Thursday 14 May. 14:00 UK time. Dayo Aiyetan, Executive Director of the International Center for Investigative Reporting in Nigeria, Mia Malan, the founding editor of the Bhekisisa Center of Health in South Africa and others discuss COVID-19's threat to Africa. | Global Investigative Journalism Network

Machine learning for journalists. The LSE Journalism and AI project has created an online course explaining different aspect of machine learning to journalists. The course is available in 17 languages on the Training Center of the Google News Initiative. | Journalism AI

Suggested reads
Solutions journalism. Julia Hotz, The Solutions Journalism Network's Community Manager outlines six ways that reporters can provide crucial information to their audiences including by focusing on small slices of a problem, or on "positive deviants", such as examples of cities or communities bucking a negative trend. | Journalism.co.uk

The misinformation pandemic. "At many major news outlets, reporters and editors with no medical or public health training were reassigned to cover the unfolding pandemic," says Christina Pazzanese. Having non-specialists, who rely on traditional journalism values like balance, novelty, and conflict, has helped elevate outlier arguments and misinformation. | The Harvard Gazette

Remembering the fallen. A reporting project in one of the world's most affected cities, New York, is aiming to tell the stories of the 95% of the 20,000 coronavirus victims and counting who haven't had an obituary or a death notice published at a news outlet. | The City

Pandemic journalism. The coronavirus pandemic is putting severe strains on journalism worldwide, but four projects across Brazil, the USA, Europe and China demonstrate innovative ways of bringing vital pandemic information to audiences. | Al Jazeera

Useful resources
A few tools. Many institutions are creating guides and resources to help journalists cover this all-consuming story. Here are links to the best ones we've found: 

• The Committee to Protect Journalists has put together this safety advisory and has translated it into many languages. | CPJ
• The Media Development Investment Fund has put together a useful guide on how to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on your media business. It's available in seven languages here. | MDIF
• The International Press Institute has launched a website to track the attacks on press freedom worldwide in the age of COVID–19. | IPI
• The ICFJ has launched a forum to connect journalists with some of the world’s top health practitioners and newsroom leaders. | ICFJ 
• The European Journalism Observatory is exploring how news brands are covering the pandemic in many different countries. | EJO  

...And one more thing
Today at 14:00 UK time we are hosting the next seminar in our weekly series on the business and practice of journalism, chaired by Meera Selva. The speaker will be our former Journalist Fellow Cherelle Jackson, who will speak on her reporting on two pandemics in the Pacific Islands. 

You can learn more about the speaker in this thread. Register for the seminar in the link below.

More information on what we do...

Today's email was written by Eduardo Suárez and Matthew Leake.