On the Media

ON THE MEDIA | Disrupting Journalism: How Platforms Have Upended the News, Columbia Journalism Review

ON THE MEDIA | Disrupting Journalism: How Platforms Have Upended the News, Columbia Journalism Review

Feb 22, 2023

After decades of shrinking revenues, and an increasing expectation among consumers that journalism should be free, the global media industry has reached a crisis point. As legacy news outlets shut down or lay off staff, misinformation and conspiracy theories run rampant, blurring the line between fantasy and reality. Trust in our institutions of governance continues to decline, fueling an alarming rise in extremism and political violence across previously stable democracies. In the Global South, the impact of journalism’s decline has been even more striking, with the rise of a new generation of autocrats skilled in manipulating the online conversation to suit their consolidation of power.

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ON THE MEDIA | Meet the Next Generation of Mexican Filmmakers, Global Press Journal

ON THE MEDIA | Meet the Next Generation of Mexican Filmmakers, Global Press Journal

Feb 22, 2023

After the 1994 [Zapatista] uprising, a boom in documentary films focused on indigenous themes and communities — but the overwhelming majority, Sojob says, were made by people from outside the state. Her own interest in storytelling began when, using a camera that her father gave her, she recorded an ongoing land conflict between the people of Chenalhó and the neighboring town of Chalchihuitán. Unless there was some sort of testimony, she realized, no one would know what was happening, “that it was us, ourselves, who had to get out everything that was happening within, from our own context, from our community.”

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ON MIGRATION, ON THE MEDIA | In a New Documentary, Refugees Reclaim Their Narrative, from Hyperallergic

ON MIGRATION, ON THE MEDIA | In a New Documentary, Refugees Reclaim Their Narrative, from Hyperallergic

Dec 8, 2022

Refugees of the Moria camp in Lesvos, Greece are behind the camera in the film Nothing About Us Without Us.

One of the pressing complaints about Western journalism is that traveling reporters drop into the scene where a story is unfolding, tell only a fraction of it, and jet off to the next destination chasing another lede. Marginalized people seeking media coverage also sometimes find themselves at the mercy of journalists who lack cultural context in their reporting, resulting in clickbait headlines that reinforce problematic stereotypes.

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ON THE MEDIA | A New Deal for Journalism

ON THE MEDIA | A New Deal for Journalism

Oct 18, 2022

The disruption of the media ecosystem and unfair competition driven in part by the move to a digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment jeopardizes the sustainability of journalism, which represents a major democratic danger.

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