metajournalistic discourse explore the ways journalists use their public discourse to protect their own autonomy and jockey for cultural legitimacy. For many journalists, defending yourself is just part of the job.
That’s why Moon’s study of Rwandan journalists is so remarkable. In interviews with 40 Rwandan journalists as part of an ethnography of the country’s newsrooms, Moon found that their professional identity is dominated by a metanarrative in which they are untrustworthy, too powerful, and need to be reined in by other social institutions. This narrative stems from Rwandan journalists’ deeply rooted sense of complicity and guilt in helping foment the genocide of the 1990s. As a result, they’re treated extremely skeptically by audiences, sources, and policymakers, and in their eyes, they deserve it. It’s a haunting and fascinating picture of the power of negative discourse to shape professional identity in post-conflict journalism, fueled by collective guilt.
3. Top-down misinformation about COVID-19 has punched above its weight
Misinformation from politicians, celebrities, and other prominent public figures made up just 20% of the claims in our sample of COVID-19 claims but accounted for 69% of total social media engagement. While the majority of misinformation on social media came from ordinary people, most of these posts seemed to generate far less engagement. |
4. Most of the publishers we surveyed expected a substantial fall in revenues in 2020
36% of the news organisations we surveyed said they expected severe drops of 30% and more in their revenue. Only 14% said they expected stable or even growing revenues. If these figures are indicative of the situation in the global news industry, newspapers alone may be looking at a decline of 30 billion dollars in 2020. |