TUESDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2021

In this newsletter you'll learn what our data says about how audiences get their news on climate change. You'll also find a piece about China's media strategy, a link to join our next seminar on press freedom in Nicaragua, and a new episode of our podcast on fostering collaboration, featuring our Visiting Fellow Joshua Ogawa, General Manager at the Nikkei-FT Partnership at Nikkei Europe.

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Explore Digital News Report 2021 here | Check out data from your country | Download a PDF version | Read our methodology

The summit. Scientists, activists and global leaders arrived this week in Glasgow to attend COP26, the annual UN conference on climate change hosted this year by the UK. The summit will be an opportunity to discuss every angle of the climate crisis. However, the key question is whether leaders' words will translate into concrete actions to keep warming limited to 1.5C, as experts recommend.

Our event at COP26. As part of the Resilience Hub, the Reuters Institute is hosting an event at COP26 on how journalism can tackle this global problem. The reception, scheduled for this Friday at 19:00 UK time, will be chaired by Meera Selva and Wolfgang Blau, co-founders of our Oxford Climate Journalism Network. The event won't be live-streamed. But if you happen to be at the summit, please join this conversation on journalism and climate change.  

Our new project. In early October we launched the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, a new initiative to help journalists and editors develop their coverage of climate change. Applications are now open for the first online course of our network, scheduled to start in January 2022. The course is free and participants will be required to participate in two online sessions every month. More information here.

How to apply? You can apply for our first online course by completing this short form. When applying, you must provide a letter of support from your editor. If you are a freelancer, provide a letter from someone you've worked with. Once you have this letter, click on the button below. The deadline to apply is Monday 15 November. 

🌪 69% of the people surveyed for our Digital News Report 2020 say they consider climate change an extremely or very serious problem. Only 9% say they don't see climate change as serious. | 💡 Awareness varies by country, with Chile and Kenya on top (90%) and the Netherlands (41%) at the bottom. | 🐘 Only 18% of right-leaning Americans agree climate change is an extremely or very serious problem. 89% of left-leaning Americans do. |  📺 35% of the people surveyed say television is the news source they pay most attention to when getting their news on climate change. | 🕺🏻 However, 17% of people under 25 say they pay most attention to alternative sources such as blogs and social media. | 📊 Only 19% of the people surveyed think the news media are doing a bad job in providing accurate information about the climate crisis. | More data in this chapter by Simge Andı

The issue. As an assertive China counters the dominance of the West, the news media are becoming a sharper weapon in this propaganda war. Although only a decade old, China’s strategy to expand its presence in global news media is managing to reshape global coverage with deals and media investments in countries as diverse as Italy, Czech Republic and the Philippines. 

The piece. A new piece by our contributor Raksha Kumar looks at this strategy in the light of a new report from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). The report, based on a survey conducted among IFJ's affiliate unions, suggests that China has used the pandemic to boost its image in global media coverage. “We knew this was happening, but we were surprised by the number of countries impacted,” says Jeremy Dear, Deputy General Secretary of IFJ. 

Should governments step in? Most people don’t want the government to step in to help commercial news organisations, according to our Digital News Report 2021. Although support for such a measure differs according to levels of concern for publishers’ finances, even among those who are most worried, there is little support for government intervention as the solution. | Learn more

Explore Digital News Report 2021

🔗 Read the executive summary of the report. | By Nic Newman
✊🏿 How people perceive news coverage. | By Richard Fletcher 
⚖️ What audiences think about impartiality. | By Craig T. Robertson
🏡 How technology has disrupted local news. | By Anne Schulz
💰 Financing commercial news media. | By R. Fletcher and R. Nielsen
🕺🏻 How and why people use social media for news. | By Simge Andı 

📈 Explore data from your country. Figures from 46 markets
🌎 Read the report in Spanish. Explore the report in this global language
📄 Download the PDF version and read it on your tablet 
📊 Check out our interactive. Explore our data and build your own charts
👩‍🔬 Learn about our methodology. How we produce the report

🎙 Listen to our podcast series on the report 
🎥 Watch a video summary. Explore the key findings in 2 minutes
👩🏾‍💻 Explore the report in 192 slides. A presentation to use in your class

"Every successful collaboration begins with finding the right people to work with. Create a map of talent across your organisation and make it accessible. Once connections are made, make sure that people do talk to each other"

Joshua Ogawa
General Manager
Nikkei-FT Partnership at Nikkei Europe
Audio and transcript here

The topic. On Sunday 7 November, Nicaraguans are set to go to the polls to elect their president after a campaign that has included the detention of opposition candidates, the banning of civil society organisations, and continued suppression of the country’s independent press. This piece from the Committee to Protect Journalists gives a good overview of the threats facing journalism in Nicaragua right now. 

The speaker. One of Nicaragua’s most prominent journalists is Carlos F. Chamorro, editor of Confidencial and Esta Semana. He went into exile in 2018 and returned to Nicaragua a year later, only to go back into exile in June this year due to increasing harassment that culminated in a raid on his home. Chamorro will be the speaker at the next event of our global journalism seminar series, where he'll discuss press freedom in Nicaragua and what's at stake at the incoming election. 

🕓 16:00 UK time
📆 Wednesday 3 November

🧐 The entirety of BBC output will be continually assessed for impartiality breaches by independent investigators. | 🕯️ No one has been held to account in 81% of journalist murders in the last 10 years. | 👛 Funders have pledged $3.8 million as part of this year’s NewsMatch, which sees individual donations being matched by institutional donations to local newsrooms in the US. | 🖼️ The Economist raised $422,000 by auctioning an NFT of one of its covers. The magazine has donated the money to a foundation teaching young people to analyse current affairs.

🌎 4 to 11 November. ForoCAP 21 features 26 events including talks, masterclasses, workshops plus a film screening and stand-up comedy. The event will be run in Spanish and will include guests like El Faro's editor Carlos Dada, BBC Mundo's editor Carolina Robina and María Jesús Zevallos, from the Washington Post’s Spanish opinion section. | El Faro

🙋‍♀️ Thursday 11 November, 17:00 (UK time). This conversation looks at impostor syndrome and how to foster work environments where women can succeed. Speakers include Lilah Raptopoulos from the Financial Times, Imaeyen Ibanga from AJ+ and our own Head of Leadership Development Federica Cherubini. | Online News Association

WE ARE READING...

📳 News apps. Should news outlets launch their own mobile app? David Tvrdon looks at what factors to consider before making a decision, from the size of your organisation, to the type of content you publish and the goals you hope to achieve. “Whatever you decide, think about your audience,” he writes. | The Fix

🇪🇸 Press freedom in Spain. A judge has ordered Ignacio Escolar, editor-in-chief of Spanish news site elDiario.es, to reveal the source of a leaked report into the contents of the residence of former dictator Francisco Franco. A representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists said the order “puts him under unnecessary pressure and could have a chilling effect on journalism in Spain.” | CPJ

🤝 Engaged journalism. In an effort to narrow the gap between its public media outlets and the communities they serve, Southern California Public Radio has launched an engaged journalism initiative. Its Chief Content Officer Kristen Muller writes: “Instead of centring the perspective of power brokers, we need to ask people what matters to them. To do that, we have to challenge traditional expectations of what constitutes news, who decides what is objective, even what accuracy means.” | Medium

🌱 An essential right. As COP26 gets under way, journalists are demanding that the right to cover environmental stories "must finally be applied and respected without exception." This right was enshrined at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, but the 'Climate emergency, journalism emergency' appeal, led by Reporters Without Borders, says journalists encounter too many restrictions to access and information when covering the climate. | RSF

🇧🇾 Press freedom in Belarus. Three Belarusian opposition social media channels, including those belonging to NEXTA, have been labelled as "extremist" by the government meaning their users could face prison terms of up to seven years. Meanwhile, Deutsche Welle’s website was also blocked. | Al Jazeera

• Watch our recent event on press freedom in Belarus with legal expert Volha Siakhovich

More information on what we do...

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