Improving COVID-19 Reporting (ICR)

Donor name: Central European Initiative (CEI)

Overall objective: This project aims at training journalists with skills on debunking disinformation and on Solutions Journalism reporting, addressing some of the challenges faced by the current information space, as well as to raise awareness among university students of such challenges.

Specific objectives:

  1. To educate working journalists in solutions journalism – in-depth, rigorous reporting about what’s working.
  2. To educate working journalists and aspiring fact-checkers so they can debunk disinformation circulating in the information space.
  3. To educate university students (especially from journalism faculties) in both solutions journalism and debunking disinformation related to the pandemic.

Activities: 

  • Two stand-alone webinars per country will be created on the chosen topics, wherever possible in local languages (mainly Russian and Serbian/Croatia/Bosnian). These will give a general introduction for all participants.
  • Two courses will be created on the chosen topics to provide more in-depth instruction for those with the time and interest to dig deeper. The courses will last two weeks, with additional webinars (including from guest speakers), exercises to practice the skills, and mentoring from the instructors. Each course will include local-language translations of handbooks, toolkits, etc. for covering COVID-19 more thoroughly and professionally. If there is interest among the target groups, we will extend the topics to include instruction in building media literacy skills among vulnerable parts of the population, i.e. “Building infodemic resilience among older adults and senior citizens in the times of COVID.”
  • Alumni will have a chance to write solutions-oriented articles for their own media and receive mentoring from project staff (depending on the country, Transitions may also be able to use co-financing to help fund article production).
  • In all of the target countries, Transitions has long-standing partners who can help promote the activities and recruit participants.