Reporting Global While Being Local: Local Sources of News for Distant Audiences

Mitra, Saumava; Paterson, Chris

doi:10.1080/1461670x.2019.1639540

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Proximity is then deemed the source of locals’ authority to take part in the news story but also what is held against them since they are deemed too attached to their countries and causes. This tension has been exacerbated by the ways that social media and smart phones changed the news cycle, whether in regards to the expectation of an ‘aesthetic of authenticity’ in news reports (Andén-Papadopoulos, 2013), the political economy of foreign reporting, or the safety culture that sees less foreign correspondents in war zones (Mitra and Paterson, 2019). It placed Syrian media practitioners in the particular position of being construed as less than journalists, but more than witnesses – sought after to project authenticity and intensity to news narratives, and dismissed when they relay inaccurate or biased information.…”

Section: Affective Proximity In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Forced to report’: Affective proximity and the perils of local reporting on Syria

Al-Ghazzi

2021

Journalism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Based on interviews with Syrian media practitioners, this article uses the notion of affective proximity to make sense of local media practitioners’ reporting and witnessing of suffering in their country and community. I argue that the life-risking, and sometimes deadly, media practices of local reporters and witnesses, as well as their emotional labour, often do not feature in understandings of journalism when it is conceived as a purely professional discursive pursuit. I explain affective proximity in terms of an imagined space (or the lack thereof) between a media practitioner, on the one hand, and the event they are representing and participating in, on the other. In relation to Syria, I use it to analyse the word ‘revolution’ and what it mediates, the shifting boundaries between activism and journalism, and experiences of, and in, violence. I make the case that the study of affect and emotion in global news should be contextualized within the unequal power relations that give shape to journalistic roles and modes of representaiton.

show abstract

Section: Affective Proximity In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Forced to report’: Affective proximity and the perils of local reporting on Syria

Al-Ghazzi

2021

Journalism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In 2019, Journalism Studies published a special issue Reporting global while being local: Local sources of news for distant audiences (Mitra & Paterson, 2019). Multiple studies in this special issue probed the premise of local-global news production and reproduced a theme that could be found common in earlier studies: local media workers (fixers) are indispensable part of the team of international journalists.…”

Section: The Local News Workers or Children Of Lesser Godmentioning

confidence: 91%

The fixer on the Pak-Afghan frontier: A de-skilled local labour in the global media

Ashraf

2021

Lib. Arts Soc. Sci. Int. J.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study examines power misuse in global news production by focusing on the role of “fixer.” Fixer is a local journalist who reports for global media on conflict-riddled areas or crisis situations. By interviewing forty fixers in Pakistan’s war-hit Pashtun Belt along the Afghanistan border, I examine the challenges they face in working with the global media’s visiting journalists before the start of the war on terror. Using Marx’s concept of proletarianization which is a process in which capital transforms a great mass of society into daily wage workers, I reveal how the local journalist, who works as fixer, is not only de-professionalized, but his precarity, due to living in a war zone, also forces him to misuse his local news traditions in working for the global media. I argue that fixers are far more than just assistants to global media outlets. Not only are they all practicing journalists in their own right, but, as locals, they also are geographically better placed to use their experience than those journalists who are coming from outside the conflict zone. Yet, this subsidiary role automatically erases this distinction leading to the real fixers’ de-skilling with consequences for the entire region.

show abstract

“…Originally a fairly dismissive, even derogatory term, there is evidence that the status and recognition of the role has risen since it first began attracting scholarly and journalistic attention (Murrell 2010). There is also a growing body of work drawing on interviews with (people who self-identify as) fixers to examine long-standing assumptions about the role and agency of local news workers in news production and 'to start making sense of their work largely from their own perspectives and perceptions' (Mitra andPaterson 2019, 1674-75). Even as tensions, discrepancies and inequalities between local and distant journalistic practices persist (Plaut and Klein Peter 2019;Jukes 2019), the potential for those very differences to contribute to more dialogic, mutually collaborative and ethical global newsmaking practices is beginning to be recognised and advocated (Mitra and Paterson 2019).…”

Section: Research Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

The “contrôleuse”: recognising the role of the “fixer” in academic and media NGO development partnerships

Heywood

Harding²

2021

Development in Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Successful NGO development and academic partnerships have, at their core, effective intercultural and multilingual communication and translation practices and processes, including critical recognition of the role of 'fixers', who act as the 'interface' between local participants and academic NGO impact-assessment researchers. Examining what we call the 'contrôleuse' in development research projects in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, we show the need, as in journalism, to critically interrogate this intermediary role. Identifying and incorporating the role into research funding and design can be a simple and practical contribution towards challenging inequalities, including contrôleuse perspectives and increasing participatory impact-assessment and development practices.

show abstract

Reporting Global While Being Local: Local Sources of News for Distant Audiences

Cited by 8 publications

References 47 publications

‘Forced to report’: Affective proximity and the perils of local reporting on Syria

‘Forced to report’: Affective proximity and the perils of local reporting on Syria

The fixer on the Pak-Afghan frontier: A de-skilled local labour in the global media

The “contrôleuse”: recognising the role of the “fixer” in academic and media NGO development partnerships

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About