Online guide helps to see the world behind news

Better awareness of global development issues encourage journalists and public to challenge their world view and be more critical towards news.

How to see the world behind headlines and separate reality from propaganda?

This is one of the key questions Reporter’s Guide – Covering Development as a Journalist aims to tackle. The bilingual Guide was released online on December 12 in Finnish and in English.

Western world has been facing an enormous change in news reporting and information production during the digital era. Stories are told also outside news rooms, and today, rumours, disinformation and misunderstandings play an important part in the ways we, as citizens and consumers of media, see global development.

To be able to understand reasons and consequences of the world politics, it is vital to understand how news are produced for instance in Finland – one of the leading countries in the World Press Freedom Index – in international news agencies and in the developing countries.

“Media is still the main factor on how we see the world. Therefore, versatile and reliable news that also challenge our existing world view is needed”, says Pirkko Ruuskanen-Parrukoski, the CEO of the Finnish Lifelong Learning Foundation, KVS.

KVS produced the Reporter’s Guide together with the Finnish Foundation for Media and Development (Vikes) and Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences.

The Guide helps journalists to keep news from developing countries versatile, to find sources from the Global South and to avoid stereotypes. It also adds general awareness of global development issues. It can be read in Finnish and English.

The Reporter’s Guide also serves anyone who is interested in development issues and journalism. It completes previously published Media Guide (2016) that offers media literacy education in English and Arabic.

Both Guides can be read online for free in www.mediaguide.fi.

KVS is the main publisher of Elm Magazine.