The Pandemic and Public Interest Journalism: Crisis, Survival—and Rebirth?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought challenge and opportunity for public interest journalism. It has exposed and exacerbated long-standing structural weaknesses while also generating wider understanding of the important roles of public interest journalism, including as an upstream determinant of health. The case studies outlined in this chapter, raising concerns about racial, social, and economic injustice and the violation of human rights during the pandemic, illustrate an urgent need for measures to ensure a strong, sustainable public interest journalism sector. Practitioners and advocates now have a unique opportunity to reimagine journalism as part of a wider reconfiguring of society in response to a convergence of global crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Both crises demand transformative, whole-of-government and whole-of-society responses. Supporting innovation and development in the non-profit journalism sector has significant potential to help ensure communities’ rights to information and participation in democratic processes. It is a time for public interest journalism to innovate and develop new collaborations and partnerships, and creative new ways of working. Lessons can be drawn from the successes of the Aboriginal community–controlled sector in Australia in responding to COVID-19, including the importance of being embedded in and accountable to communities.