Within the framework of extracurricular training activities, high-quality Journalism students of the Institute of Journalism and Communication had a lecture and online professional exchange with foreign journalists from the Sputnik International Radio Station (Russia). The exchange content was about a very topical topic of journalism today: "Working in the context of the Covid 19 pandemic: topics, errors, fake news and verification".
Journalist Oleg Dmitriev has worked for several media outlets in the United States and was a correspondent for CNN's World Report (1992-2001). He was head of the training department for journalists at RT, editor-in-chief of news services, and then global director of broadcasting at the English-language Voice of Russia (now Sputnik). He is the author of numerous research articles and monographs on new media.
The veteran journalist shared with the students of the Institute many professional stories related to the working skills of reporters during the Covid 19 pandemic. He admitted that the Covid 19 outbreak worldwide has not only become a hot topic forcing reporters and news agencies to closely reflect information about it every day, every hour, but also created opportunities for the media, motivating press agencies to change, and at the same time renew the way of doing journalism and communication.
As an international television station, reporting in many different languages, in which the Southeast Asian public market plays a quite important role for Sputnik, reporters of this news agency pursue objectivity, honesty, reflecting multi-dimensional news with many different approaches.
He shared his experience when reporting on the pandemic, which is to pay special attention to data because the public is interested in the speed of spread and scale of the pandemic; then reflect the picture of pandemic prevention by the government and people through stories about individuals, units... But when reporting, journalists need to pay special attention to finding official, reputable and highly accurate sources of information, which can be reputable organizations, medical agencies, medical facilities, information from doctors, people with specialized knowledge about the epidemic.
Journalists reporting on Covid 19 also encountered many difficulties, first of all in the early stages, when the symptoms and information of the epidemic were not clearly identified, causing journalists to be confused when reporting and difficult to verify accurate information. Next, the phenomenon of fake news related to Covid 19 is quite common, such as the problem of the origin of the disease, unverified prevention and treatment methods, the phenomenon of hiding information or giving inaccurate numbers about the epidemic causing confusion... Or the story about the distribution of Covid 19 vaccines also has politically sensitive elements that also require journalists to have an understanding of the general context when reporting. Not to mention, when reporting on Covid, journalists also have difficulty understanding the system of specialized terms about the epidemic, how to explain in-depth information about the mechanism of disease transmission, the penetration and spread of the virus... in an easy-to-understand way for the public. Even press agencies have supported reporters by building a system of specialized terms about Covid 19 for journalists to refer to and use when working.
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The flow of information about Covid 19 is also constantly changing, forcing journalists to constantly be alert and enrich their knowledge to hunt for updated content, from reporting on the number of infections, to content on prevention methods, drugs, vaccines, treatment processes...
Regarding the way of presenting news articles, journalist Oleg believes that with the increasingly strong application of information technology in journalism and the change in the audio-visual trends of viewers, journalists today do not only use text but especially prefer multimedia products, including graphics, charts, images, hyperlinks, infographics to convey articles. Thanks to that, the article will be highly interactive, access multi-dimensional information, both comprehensive and specific, eye-catching and attractive to viewers.
Journalist Oleg also emphasized that a principle of journalism is to tell a story as simply as possible, avoiding too many complicated terms and confusing figures that do not serve the main message of the article. Sputnik always shares its news writing formula with its reporters: understand the context + verify information and sources + write simple news + diverse information.
Listening to the speaker, a famous Sputnik journalist, chatting online for more than an hour in English did not cause any difficulty for the CLC journalism students. With confidence, flexible interaction skills and good foreign language skills, journalism students directly asked the speaker questions about the following issues: The Covid 19 pandemic happened unexpectedly, causing journalists to lack knowledge and practical experience about the pandemic, so what advice do they need? What is the policy to ensure safety for journalists when reporting on Covid-19? What have Russian news agencies done to coordinate with the government and society to prevent the spread of the disease?...
The exchange of journalism experience with Sputnik is one of the activities within the policy of internationalizing high-quality journalism training activities of the Institute of Journalism and Communication, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU. Learners will have access to journalism experience of advanced journalism, have the opportunity to learn and become familiar with modern journalism thinking and methods of the region and the world, equipping themselves with knowledge to become global journalists in a multimedia convergence environment.
