Join our session "The blame game: What is the media's responsibility in the corona crisis?"

Rumors, lies and misinformation: When it comes to the novel coronavirus, it is hard to tell fact from fiction.

How trustworthy are the news outlets, on which we rely during the corona pandemic? What role do journalists play when it comes to offering accurate information to the public? Are they less or more trustworthy than experts? And how can they combat misinformation and disinformation, which are being constantly abused by populists and demagogues?

Assessing trustworthiness

The main responsibility of a journalist is to inform the public. However, the fast pace of developments pertaining to the corona crisis and the ensuing lack of verification of information related to COVID-19 have left journalists confronted with huge challenges in recent months. 

In this session, we will to explore the role of journalism and media’s responsibility in the corona pandemic with regard to providing accurate information to the public – especially on this topic which directly affects public health.

Corona and populism

The novel coronavirus has disrupted the world as we know it. Scientists are conducting research around the clock in a bid to find solutions to the crisis; but politicians are also working overtime to respond to the global pandemic situation. The difference in reactions among various leaders shows that there are different attitudes towards the pandemic in different parts of the world – with some attracting more criticism than others.

We will especially take a close look at how populists abuse the COVID-19 pandemic to their own ends. Our guests for the session are John-Allan Namu, Maria Esperanza Casullo and Guido Bülow. Jafaar Abdul Karim will moderate the 45 minutes session. 

Our Speakers

John-Allan Namu

John-Allan Namu is an investigative journalist and the CEO of Africa Uncensored, an investigative and in-depth journalism production house in Nairobi, Kenya. Africa Uncensored’s ambition is to be the premier source of unique, important and incisive journalism. Prior to co-founding Africa Uncensored, he was the special projects editor at the Kenya Television Network, heading a team of the country’s best television investigative journalists. John-Allan will be talking about investigating human rights abuses in the middle of a pandemic.

Maria Esperanza Casullo

María Esperanza Casullo is an Associate Professor at the National University of Río Negro in Argentina. She received her PhD from Georgetown University. Her work focuses on populism, democratic theory and Latin American politics, with an emphasis on comparative studies and discourse analysis. Her 2019 book "Why does populism work" is widely read for its comparison of South American left-wing populism and European and American right-wing populism. She will be talking about the difference between the Latin American political approaches to the pandemic.

Guido Bülow

Guido Bülow is Head of News Partnerships Central Europe, Facebook. He joined Facebook in September 2015. As Head of News Partnerships Central Europe, he leads the strategic initiatives and programs to promote quality journalism and an informed society in the EMEA region. These include, in particular, cooperation with independent fact-checkers and Facebook’s accelerator program for local media. In his previous role as Strategic Partnerships Manager, he was responsible for working with media organizations. Before joining Facebook, he was head of social media at public broadcaster SWR (ARD). Guido started his career at bigFM, where he worked in both editorial and marketing.

The session's host Jaafar Abdul Karim is a journalist and the host of Jaafartalk at Deutsche Welle - a socially critical talk show series, with which the German-Arab journalist reaches an audience of millions in the Arab world.

Join the session

Interaction is a vital aspect of the GMF concept, which is why we would like to incorporate comments and/or questions by our users, who will be following the session live. The session is to be distributed here on our website and live on our Facebook channel. To join the session please click on the link below.

Stay tuned and join us on June, 24, 15.00 (UTC +2) in ourFacebook Event.