The News Media Coalition (NMC) has launched a new project to recognise the effort, time, and resources behind professional news gathering.
The NMC is aware that it is not always fully understood how much journalistic endeavour, skill, investment, occasional good fortune, and company resources are required to identify potential news, gather news, check the facts within news, produce news reports to suit the needs of news consumers, and to do so across all modern information formats and platforms.
This applies to the newsgathering activities of the written press, news photographers, and video news journalists.
The NMC Secretariat is compiling a rolling digest of the best of journalism – identifying agenda-setting newsgathering efforts and explaining the background to how the news material was created.
This digest, What It Takes, is featured on the News Media Coalition website and will be updated periodically. The feature draws upon outstanding journalism as featured in reputable awards schemes around the world.
“Every minute of every day, experienced news reporters are operating in every corner of the globe, supported by newsroom colleagues including dedicated fact-checkers. News content doesn’t come easily. It requires professional training, high levels of organisation, resources and expertise in order to meet pressing deadlines,” said Andrew Moger, NMC CEO and Company Director.
“Journalists and newsrooms take very seriously their role in providing factual news including witness-based primary source journalism. This is not easy, and distinguishing facts from fiction, truth from disinformation, balanced accounts from propaganda has always been a challenge. In this age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and informational disruption, it is evidently professional journalism that is increasingly being recognised once again as being the bedrock of informing citizens, communities and societies about what is really happening in the world,” Moger added.
