Alfred Friendly Press Partners produced an online event on Dec. 3 that featured a panel discussion with Fellows from around the world.

 Here is a link to the virtual event posted on our YouTube channel.

We hope you’ll “tune in” at your convenience to watch this fascinating conversation. If you’d like to watch parts of the event that match your interests, here’s a guide:  

The panel discussion with the Fellows begins at the 7:30 mark with Daniela Castro of Colombia. Daniela is a multimedia journalist who works on multinational investigative reports for the Organized Crime and Corruption Project, and she describes how bad the Covid19 virus is in Colombia and other countries in South America. She also talks about her team project to expose corruption involving a company that was paid to provide mobile hospitals in Honduras.

At the 12:50 mark, Bilge Kotan of Turkey answers questions related to her reporting on the Middle East for TRT World, a public broadcaster based in Istanbul. She outlines Turkey’s Covid19 vaccination plan and how armed conflicts make fighting the coronavirus pandemic more difficult. 

Illia Ponomarenko of Ukraine, a reporter for the Kyiv Post who usually covers the war with Russia and security issues, is now contributing to the pandemic reporting. At 17 minutes in, Illia points out the lack of logic in Ukraine’s response to the spreading virus, and says the protests against lockdowns are erupting because the economy is “extremely fragile.”  

Georgia announced strict lockdowns last week as the outbreak reached its worst peak, with more than 4,000 daily Covid19 infections, and Tbilisi-based broadcaster Khatia Shamanauri describes the situation there at the 21:40 mark.   “Georgia is a small country so it’s a huge number for us,” Khatia says. “Hospitals are overwhelmed with patients.” Both Khatia and Illia said their countries don’t trust Russia and so won’t be using a vaccine from there. 

Abhishek Waghmare, a data journalist at  India’s Business Standard newspaper, takes his turn at 24:25. Abhi says the data visualizations he’s produced show India is doing relatively well when comparing the per-capita cases among major economies, but doing poorly when measuring the rate of death from Covid19. 

Ahmad Noorani of Pakistan talks about the recent launch of his investigative news website, FactFocus.com, during his fellowship, at 33:24. Noorani also describe his exposé of a recently retired general that led to his resignation from the prime minister’s cabinet.

Yan Zhang, a reporter from China working in Washington, DC, joins the conversation at 40:25 and describes her new position with The Initium, an independent news outlet based in Hong Kong.

Yan also provides insight on U.S.-China relations, including the trade war and the

tit-for-tat visa restrictions on journalists — Chinese reporters like Yan working in the U.S., and 

American  correspondents working in China.

 

Donations to Alfred Friendly during the online event totaled nearly $4,000, and we hope you’ll also pitch in to our nonprofit organization so we can train premier reporters next year and uplift journalism around the world.