With conflicts and crises unfolding around the globe, it can be difficult to stay informed about those not currently in the headlines. A crisis in one territory may dominate the news cycle for weeks, only to disappear from the front pages once the peak of the situation is passed.
How can crisis follow-ups fit into the news cycle and still cut through the noise? What can local journalists do to get their stories picked up by international agencies? What can be done to appeal to audiences’ empathy to make them want to seek updates proactively?
This panel explores new strategies, from local reporting to innovative narrative techniques, that help keep these stories alive and engage international audiences.
Speakers:
• Rafa Renas (Community Manager East Africa at Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT))
• Sami Mahdi (Editor-in-Chief at Amu TV)
• Barkha Dutt (Founder and Editor of Mojo Story)
• Natalia Belikova (Head of International Cooperation at Press Club Belarus)
Moderator: Michaela Küfner (DW)
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It’s time to break barriers and build bridges. Welcome to the DW Global Media Forum 2025. In times of crisis, conflicts, and fake news, free and unbiased information is more important than ever, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to access. Let’s exchange ideas and insights on how to strengthen journalism together. We see the DW Global Media Forum 2025. Hello and welcome for what essentially will be a fireside chat with colleagues about why a lot of crucial crises where people lose their lives, their livelihoods don’t make it into the run order, don’t make it into the production list for the next reel, don’t make it to the users and viewers in the world, and don’t make it into the minds of people who could put pressure on leaders to change what’s happening. Let’s first take a look at what we’ll be debating in just a few moments from now. Some stories make headlines, others disappear. I’ve lost friends and friends and friends through police optimization. Around the world, crises unfold and fade from view. The spotlight moves on. The suffering continues. Local journalists fight to bring light to forgotten places. Innovative storytelling pushes boundaries to keep the truth alive. Can follow-ups break through the noise? Can local voices reach global ears? Breaking barriers, building bridges. Together we see. How do we keep audiences from looking away? Let’s dive into the discussion. Cutting through the noise, forgotten crises in the news cycle. So it takes the global media forum to be able to have a debate uh and a talk with journalists from Afghanistan, from Sudan, from Bellarus to find out what’s happening. And I’m very pleased to have a round of distinguished colleagues here. The acting head of the Bellarus Press Club in exile is with us today. um she had to leave the country is now working from Warsaw in trying to coordinate efforts to keep the press as free and as outspoken as possible. Natalya Bellova, please come and join us. The editor-inchief of AMU TV, a digital news platform in Afghanistan that he founded himself is with us here today. He uh provides independent reporting in Fi and Pashu Sami Makti. So great to have you with us today. Now she’s one of India’s most recognized broadcast journalists and the founder editor of Mojo story a digital first multimedia platform. She’s reported from some of the world’s most volatile regions, Kashmir, Iraq, Israel. She’s seen it all. She’s won more than 50 awards. Bookot, please come and join us on stage. So great to have you with us today. And I can see the screen moving. Oh, great. Fantastic. Rafaenes, can you hear us? Hello, everyone. Yes. Great. She’s an award-winning Sudin regional journalist and a human rights advocate focusing on the Middle East in Africa. She’s also importantly a network builder in the region in and beyond in her role as community manager for East Africa for the media and corporation and transition network. So so great that the line is holding. Rafinas, this is your applause. But in news fashion, I want to start with the newses because we’ve had a development on Afghanistan. Um Sammy, that’s why I want to speak to you first about it. Overnight, um the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution um calling for action on the role of women, particularly in Afghanistan. Um interestingly, the United States voted against that because they reject anything that could involved the financial commitment to assist. Um yeah, you’re already shaking your heads. So this is this an is an overnight event that puts Afghanistan back in the headlines. What would you like to see in those headlines today? Thank you so much and this an honor to be here. Um what I want to see Afghanistan to be as an headline across the world is when freedom is back in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is an exception to the humanity. Now when it comes to basic human rights and freedoms, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls above age 12 are not allowed to uh you know continue their education. It’s the only country in the world where women are not allowed to go to university level education. It’s only country in the world where women have to conceal and cover their faces when they appear on TV and only country in the world where men and women are not allowed to talk to each other on the screen on TVs. It’s just about if you look at uh look into Afghanistan’s situation from human rights and uh women’s rights perspective, you you will see that uh yes, there was this um UN General Assembly uh resolution in Afghanistan. Um, we see that not every country agrees with that and we do not see a significant voice from within Afghanistan or from our diaspora community which is unfortunately now 25% of the population u um in that resolution it is based on the u you know on the preferences of the international community, not our people. That’s um the unfortunate side of it. The fortunate side of it is of course still the world is thinking about Afghanistan and talking about Afghanistan. And I want to get to um an overarching point that every crisis is different, every conflict is different, every society is different. Um but I want us to really focus on what the common denominators are. And I think um the case of Afghanistan particularly with there having been some movement uh on that story to use the jargon um highlights that we are in an attention economy that we need to hack that we need to get through and um Rafa Rees I want to take that straight to you because you are a networker. Um what is your formula to break through and hack that attention economy? Hi everyone. I’m really honored to join you today uh virtually of course. But I want to start with something uh simple but hard. We have to create our own platforms, community and strategies to be seen and heard. And Sudan is going through one of the worst humanitarians crisis in the world right now. But because it’s not trending, because it’s not geopolitically priority, it disappeared from the headlines. The word didn’t stop. It just became more invisible. Uh as a Sudanese journalist, artist and activist, we we are consistently trying to keep the world eyes on a crisis that the world has turned away from. And to do that, we have to get creative. I created the Aflam Sudan film festival as a way to keep Sudan visible through you know cine cinema art and human stories. We screened films in Kenya, Rwanda and in Jetta in Saudi Arabia we hopefully uh beyond that but even with all of that efforts we are still trying to cut through the noise and I think it’s exhausting. Uh we shouldn’t have to do it alone. But yeah, we try to hack the system. And I want to take that to you, Barka, because you’ve been in many conflict regions. um you’ve experienced many different societies but in in the current economy of attention what is the common factor when you are in a conflict or even in India which has seen so many elections you’re trying to break through what is a sense of saturation uh level on certain stories thank you and um thank you to DW for having me here this is such an important forum every year for the last three years we’ve seen some of the things we should be talking about and don’t. That said, let me give you a brief window into the news cycle in India over the last two months. We had a terror attack, it was followed by war and it was followed by an air crash. All three of these headline stories happened back to back with gigantic ramifications. They did not have a problem getting into the headlines, but even these cataclysmic events had a problem staying in the headlines. That is how quickly our attention spans are moving. This is not about India. This is not about Afghanistan. This is not about Belarus. It’s not about Germany. It’s about our profession. It’s about consumption patterns changing. It’s about what we’re competing with. the challenges of technology which is both democratizing as well as creating an information glut in which nothing holds and nothing stays. It’s about for some people challenges from the state for others challenges from revenue and then it’s about challenges from your audience. You know how are you going to compete with I don’t know vloggers and influencers in in an increasingly competitive market. Let me just share one little story with all of you. About four and a half years ago, as the pandemic was hitting the world, one of those rare universal stories, I started my own platform, moving from television to digital video. And I went to a village an hour away from our national capital in Delhi. The village is on one of those glitzy just off one of those glitzy expressways that are a big part of India’s infrastructure achievements. And I’m not taking away from that achievement. It’s a very important achievement. But you hop off that shiny expressway and I reached a village where at that time if you remember we didn’t fully understand that co and the virus was airborne. So in the initial days everybody was telling everybody keep washing your hands. At least in India we had this keep your hands clean, keep washing your hands. So I go into this little village and I it’s surrounded by factories and it’s a big part of India’s industrialization story and I say to everybody why aren’t you washing your hands? You should be washing your hands as I’m talking to them and they take me to the public supply line of the tap water there and the water is yellow. I I did a story on it called the village with the yellow water. the water is yellow. And I say, “Why is the water yellow?” And they say, “Because the chemical sort of ingredients of the surrounding factories have seeped into the underground water supply and they’ve been trying to get this story onto the national news, including myself, for the last many years, but nobody cared and nobody paid attention. And when they washed their hands with that yellow water, their bodies break into rashes.” So here they were in the middle of COVID with everybody telling them wash your hands and they couldn’t actually wash their hands because the water supply was basically chemically contaminated. I shared this story because in any other moment other than co it would not have been glamorous enough, hard-hitting enough to make it to a lead story of any of our mainstream news rooms. Right? And we have to ask ourselves in this conversation and I’ll stop here and come in later with some ideas. Why? Why? Can we blame technology? Can we blame the market? Can we blame Gen Gen Z? Or do we also have to turn a gaze inwards and ask ourselves are we to set in our ways? Have we not learned better storytelling skills? We have only two choices. We can stop being journalists or we can do a better job of telling stories. We have to choose which one it is. Um, yeah, thank thanks for that point. And many of us who work in newsrooms, we know how these debates go. So, I’d like to take that to you, Natalia. Bellarus has used to be a story in itself. It’s just seen as mo its most prominent opposition leader released often mostly actually now reported on in the context of the Ukraine war. Um, how do you try and I mean if you you can’t you can’t beat this tide I guess but how do you try and surf it? Thank you. Thank you for the question. Thank you for having me here. I would like to bring another dimension and another perspective because for us the attention span has two two spheres or two different worlds. One is how independent media that are working from exile are reaching the audiences inside Bellarus and have their attention. Um and the other question is how do we as exiled media community reach out to international audiences and tell our story. So going to the first uh dimension um I think here at the Bellarishian independent exiled media a success story because 5 years after the protest we’re still holding on to our audiences and audiences still trust us and read us and consume us and that despite all the repressions that are still ongoing. Many of you probably don’t know but journalists are still arrested almost every day. You hear there and often that some political prisoners being released but new ones are taken host hostages and also independent media are toxic for people to consume it. They can go to prison. They can be fined for reading just normal uh news that you you are all used to. You know you’re switching your TV. You’re just fed up with this. In Barus people are actually risking their freedoms to read independent media and that uh dimension is actually the independent media have 40% of the audience still consumes that and we think this is a huge achievement. Uh the hardest story is how to tell our story to the rest of the world and here is a huge problem because Bellarus is not on the radars. It’s only considered as a complicity crime with Russia. uh and this image has already stuck and it’s putting together the people of Barus and the authorities in one pot which is not fair because 90% of Barouchians do not support the war and it’s not for a reason that Bellarusians are not actively participating in the war with their own troops. So I think here there is a lot more to explore also and my call to our international partners to come and ask. You will find so many interesting stories how all this happens and many of them would be relevant to you because um in Belarus people live in scarce information and you’re dying from too much information. So I think things may change and our experience may be also useful for some of you. Yeah. Too much information uh how much of it is actually true and then the question how much is relevant? That’s what we are grappling with all day and we’ve had some really great discussions here on that. I want to get you in the audience to ask what you’ve always or wanted to ask um which is more coverage on the crisis um that you feel like you you’re not getting enough information about. So maybe we can just put up that slider question so you can basically just place or let us know um which crisis you’re thinking in the back of in the back of your mind because I I mean I for me it’s almost as a reporter I mainly report on German politics but of course German foreign policy um almost a bad conscience that there are so many millions of people out there whose suffering isn’t documented and when I trained to become a journalist and I will not disclose how long ago that is um I was told the the news is whether journalists are um but and and I’ll take that um question really to to all of you because how has that sentence changed for you Rafa certainly is the news really where the journalists are or is the new kind of usage is social media completely changing the game there I know it’s a rhetorical question, but I’m still curious what your specific answer is. Sorry. Can you just repeat it? Yes, we can hear you. Could you hear the question? I think she’s asking. Oh, yes. Let me just repeat the question. Um, basically I’m asking how you are seeing the equation changed for journalists through social media, particularly when it comes to reporting crisis and cutting through the noise. That’s what this the title of this panel was really alluding to. Cutting through that noise of as Natalia put it of dying of too much information but not being able to get the relevance of the suffering of so many people to the user. So yeah, social media helps. It’s allowed the Sudanese journalists to you know speak directly to the world and uh the independent media that was their way to share and update uh and other like the activist and the group uh like emergency response room they update from the front line inside Sudan and giving the information but uh it doesn’t always help because we have the two parties of were uh they using like Facebook and Tik Tok to uh fill their propaganda and always share the misinformation uh sharing uh uh the the their propaganda and their side of the story. So for for us social media was the only way for independent media to continue working and to tell what’s really going on. But there is a lot of misinformation in there. So it’s always like the two sides of it. Parker, I see you nodding. So I’d be curious to have your response on that as well. I mean I think we have to understand that we live in a very contradictory age. Uh where we call it social media. I don’t think it’s social media anymore. I think it’s new technology which is not even new anymore. I mean it’s you know whether it’s WhatsApp channels or YouTube or Instagram or Tik Tok. In India, Tik Tok is is banned because of China, but Tik Tok elsewhere. Um, these are now very mainstreamed platforms and Reuters Institute’s most recent survey tells you that globally a majority of our our audience is consuming our content on either YouTube or WhatsApp, right? So, we have to acknowledge that this is not social media anymore in the way that you would once put up a post about your holiday to, I don’t know, Venice on Facebook. It is so not that. it is now very mainstream and here is the challenge we are confronted with. The upside is that this is democratized um sort of content so that today me or he can we can run our own platforms because the barriers to entry are much less expensive than they used to be. You don’t need giant satellite vans with you know dishes and all the rest of it. Technology has made it possible to stream live from almost anywhere in the world. Um, and that’s great. The downside is that because it’s now everybody thinks that they are journalists. This is not our exclusive preserve or prerogative anymore. You have a, as she mentioned, a certain degree of disinformation because there’s very little gatekeeping. uh but B you have a polarized media environment like never before and journalists are under enormous pressure to take sides. This is not the journalism that we were you know these were not the tenets that we were shaped by. We were told to follow the facts. uh but today to get clicks to get views there is enormous pressure from the left or the right of your countries to to to to take a side because that’s the nature of the internet loves bias right so how do you create an authentic voice for yourself that doesn’t gravitate to either sides I think is something we should talk about and finally you said it used to be that news was where journalists were and I think we have to have a mia kalpa moments with journalists that there is a lot of naval gazing a lot of journalism that’s done for other journalists um and I and for me this is a personal discovery uh in terms of how reporting covid for 2 years traveling across India really changed me as a journalist and I think news should not be where the journalists are news should be where the fewest journalists are news should be where the people are I mean everybody would agree to it it’s just that the dynamics I understand but I think we’ve all lived a hot because we these type A personalities who are competing and that’s great. I’m all for ambition and good healthy competition but a lot of times we’re doing content to impress our peers. We got it first. We scooped that. We got that interview first and it’s so far removed from where and what people in our audiences actually care about and to feed algorithms. And there was a great debate yesterday which I recommend just checking um that out online again about the impact that AI is having actually to on us to even be able to have ah there it is to to to have a go at doing what is our job which is reporting the fact. So here is the question. Um please um scan the the this the slideo here and let us know because I’m I’m I want us to have a a dive into which conflicts are deliberately on the backs of your mind that you feel you really should have checked in with and you somehow didn’t. And um I I like what you just described but again I’d like to take this to Afghanistan then to Barus really those those two different societies which are a lot more locked in than India for instance. I mean India is an incredibly vibrant um media market. Um, but how much do the power dynamics of traditional media actually still impact for instance Afghanistan? Yeah, I think few years ago we were talking about the global village. That’s true. Internet has made the globe a village. But at the same time it is I think uh wrong of us to think that priorities of people everywhere are the same or people are getting news on the same platforms every everywhere. In our case in Afghanistan that’s not true at least internet is very expensive. Uh access to internet is not everywhere. So therefore the traditional media TV and radio are the first and foremost uh sources of news and information still for Afghanistan. That’s why we established this uh ammo TV which uh through satellite we can penetrate inside Afghanistan and go to every village and um you know uh keep the flow of information for people. That’s one thing. The second thing about the this very interesting uh question which crisis would you like to see more continuous reporting on? Unfortunately we are in a in a era where we are competing who can have more crisis. Mhm. So you have to have crisis to grab attention internationally otherwise for example the plane crashed in India. The day after that we had the war between Israel and Iran. So nobody globally was unfortunately talking about those lives lost in India um or the Gaza war or um so many other other crisis including Sudan and other places. Afghanistan has been forgotten because it looks like a very domestic crisis internationally. you don’t see Afghanistan making any um headlines anymore because if people are suffering how much of that suffering is going to affect other people globally if it’s not going to affect other people impact other people’s lives globally you’re not important that’s the situation unfortunately um coming back to the digital age and um yes we see that more people have access to internet compared to the past in Afghanistan as well. But in Afghanistan case, if you want to be a vlogger or a YouTuber, you have to go to the Taliban government and get permission for that. Without permission from the Taliban, you are not allowed to have YouTube channel. If you criticize the Taliban on Facebook or Twitter or wherever, the second day their you know intelligence will come and arrest you and torture you and nobody is going to listen. Nobody is going to care about that because it’s not a crisis which makes international impact without re revealing your sources. What are your sources of information? Where do you even get reliable information from? The good side of internet is um and digital um you know world is that we still have a lot of sources inside the country. We have you know freelancers in every single province of 34 provinces of Afghanistan where people send us on daily basis uh documents you know videos footage about what’s happening. Uh when I was walking from the hotel to uh the conference this morning, um one person from Balakshan sent me um some information about one of his relatives who was arrested by the Taliban because he used to work for the um exgovernment of Afghanistan. But sources protection is very very important uh for us which is a big challenge. Unfortunately, Taliban have restricted media environment in the country to a level that freedom of expression is completely damaged in Afghanistan. We used to have one of the freest environments in the region maybe with the exception of India in some cases but uh now we are compared to North Korea unfortunately that’s this is the situation Taliban have to u approve every single person who appears on media the analysts should have a card that an ID card by the Taliban issued by the Taliban if you want if they want to appear on TV. Um we are I think we have lost our um you know most valuable uh achievement in the past 20 years which was freedom of expression unfortunately. And Natalya I just want to um also ask you a two-way question about Bellarus because you’re you have to work in exile. Um, we’re just seeing these crises or potential conflicts. Myanmar, there was crackdown in Turkey. Climate was it was a big issue. South Sudan, what horrendous figures of humanitarian suffering there, East Africa, Rwanda here, and let’s just look through. Yeah. Repression in Serbia, Georgia, Barus. Um, do these crises actually feature in Barus? Does what are does does information get there for people of Bellarus to know what global crisis context they actually live in and how do you get information out so a two-way question this is a very good question um to be honest because we are talking about relevance of media right so exiled Belarusian media report what is relevant for people inside Belarus so most of them will not be international stories is because country has been locked in by the international community. You know air planes are not flying. Uh the government has blocked access to internet. So basically people live in super isolation. It’s not as isolated as in Afghanistan or North Korea because internet penetration is extremely high in Bellaris. It’s almost 100%. It’s 99 something% and also we have the access to all the platforms like Tik Tok and YouTube. However, uh the government 100% controls TV, radio and print, all the legacy media sources. So all the other information is on the internet and Tik Tok and YouTube. And we see um that Tik Tok and YouTube are right now on the basically the same level of competition with TV. And I’m sure that you know if it goes on like this in a couple of years it will bypass it. So the other side, the propaganda is also exploiting different options how to get digital and they’re investing so much money into digital as well and producing digital content. But on the other hand, uh when we’re talking about um the attention span and the crisis, people mostly focus on their region. They would know about the war in Ukraine. They would know, you know, who is right and who is wrong. But it would not go beyond that. And this is also a problem of a very closed society when you your information is scarce and you have to choose really carefully where you’re risking your freedom. You know, what types of content you’re consuming, what can get you, you know, in danger. Um, Rafa, I just I want to take this to you as well. I I know that you are a network builder. Um, and I would like to know what you feel would be a good step to empower regional journalists who, as we heard, go where the people are, uh, particularly on those conflicts that are under reportported. Okay. So, uh, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. to uh to empower like re uh the local journalist uh we need to invest in so many things uh more than just visibility we need protection uh in the context of Sudan journalists are working under extreme threats harassment detention and even target violence from both uh sides of uh war ours and saf Uh for me empowering means to make sure they can report safely and independently. Um and it’s it’s like empowering means trusting uh the local journalists to lead and protect them so they can survive while doing it. And I just want to do a quick run through of the crisis that really haven’t appeared in the news much. SA Sudan does top the list with 24 people in need, 14 million displaced and mass atrocities. These are UN figures. Yemen, more than 20 people in need. That’s 80% of the population. When have we last heard about Yemen? Probably in the context of Yemen rebels firing at Israel. Uh Somalia 6 million in me need need 3.8 displaced. There’s drought that’s according to concern worldwide. South Sudan 13.6 million people in need 4.3 million displaced. Ethiopia 10 million in need. Haiti 6 million in need. Bina also almost 6 million in need according to care a care report. Um, and with that’s that’s the rundown of what we don’t get in in the news unless we really make an effort of of searching for it. And I I just want to give you everybody here in the room, fellow journalists, the opportunity to ask a question to this panel before I have to let them go, which I really don’t want to. But um, is there anybody who would like to ask a specific question on these regions or the greater context? Then please speak up now. I can’t see any hand. Oh, there. There we go. Yes. My name is Carrie um Odman and one of the things I’ve always wondered about is providing the extra context for people that are unfamiliar with conflicts. And how problematic is this for you to have to retell the story over and over again to remind people of what’s happening? We see this with with President Zalinsky in Ukraine on a regular basis. I’m sure this happens in Barus and Afghanistan and India of course. Uh do you have a standard answer that you then create and give and and how does this affect you even personally? Is there anyone specific you want to address that to or just Barker? Can I just throw that at you? Um I mean I think from the age of newspaper writing to digital publishing that’s um that’s important, right? So you have your lead. What is new about the story that pulls the audience in and the second graph imagine the second graph converting into the second spoken sentence is always the context. And yes, unfortunately, as mundane as it may sometimes feel for those of us who’ve been following one beat for like 30 years, you have to repeat that context because there is an entire generation or a new audience that you’re hoping to get who doesn’t know anything and who may be looking at that for the very first time. Um, I was just thinking if I may with your permission end on a note of hope because I think we’ve had a lot of this is the problem, this is what’s going wrong, this is what we’re up against. Yes. Uh but what should we take away from this? And I think there is unlearning and learning. Um and unlearning is tougher because it involves letting go of a certain way that you knew how to tell a story. I think we can hold on to our ethics, our core values. But I’ll give you my example. I came really late to Instagram um as a as as a platform because in my mind I was a serious journalist and I was not going to enter this world of reals where everybody was just taking sort of filtered pouty fashion videos. This is how I thought of it. And then I was like that’s really ridiculous of me because a I’m patronizing my audience. B I’m letting go of an entire segment of audience. I don’t have to change into something I’m not. Young people in particular value authenticity. Take yourself as you are, but embrace every platform. And I do think that there’s an opportunity here if we were just willing to kind of get off our high horses, our old ways of doing things. Remember the passion that brought us here. Remember the love for telling a story that brought us here. Never give up as reporters the privilege and the opportunity to go into the field. that distinguishes you from an influencer, from a from a vlogger because you’re actually out there. But let’s find ways to communicate better. It’s a communication challenge and I think we should see it as that and just tell better stories. Thank you for that inspirational note. And that brings us almost to the end of this the time we have today for this but not for the end of the discussion. And I’d just like to finish by asking each of you, and it’s kind of the magic wand question. I’m going to start with you, Rafa. Um, if there’s one obstacle that you could just remove magically, um, what would it be that everybody gets to unlearn, let go of something here, Braha, please? I think I would say treating the local journalist uh as a source not as a fully storyteller or you know editorial voices because in the context of Sudan the just the local journalists are treated as a source only. Great Barker. Um, an inbuilt reliable fact checker. That would be my magic wand because it really doesn’t matter what platform you’re on, what mechanism you’re using. We’re all falling back on Google searches. In my team, in my company, you’re not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source. Uh, because there’s just so much incorrect stuff that can also be there as quick as it is. So AI, we didn’t talk about AI, we briefly touched upon it, but I I hope the good side of AI will actually deliver to us a very quick fact checker which would take us to some verified respectable sources digitally so that we knew that when we’re giving that context that that was mentioned, you know, the first time um Afghanistan was assaulted by an outside country was in the year dot. we’re giving it correctly because somebody’s going to quote our story onwards and so that would be my hope for a magic wand. We could do every panel on AI. It’s such a powerful tool but I’m with you on that. Yeah, Sammy. Um it’s um very difficult but I think uh few years ago, four years ago, we had underground insurgency and terrorism in Afghanistan. Now we have underground journalism. So that’s how u the landscape has changed for us. Um now our journals for their own safety and for their families they have to be underground and you know safe somewhere. Um for me number one thing still is safety of my colleagues and my sources inside the country. And uh the second thing is um how to survive uh when you’re not inside your country when you’re not inside your um you know market financially and also uh from an information point of view how to survive that’s the biggest question and unfortunately I see the global attention shifting towards other things and not giving journalism professional journalism As Burka mentioned, everybody has become a journalist and we welcome that but let’s become professional journalists everyone. So um not every one not every country especially um Europe I think there are a lot of expectations from Europe’s Europe European countries nowadays when it comes to basic human rights and women’s rights values but I don’t see that enough attention and enough sources are given to the people and to the uh outlet who are fighting for these causes, resources. Yeah. Natalia, magic wand. What could you what obstacle can you remove? Magic wand because I was talking about two dimensions. Um I will also have two magic wands for two dimensions for one for one dimension that inside Barus. I would love to see all media in Barus that are now in exile cleared of the designation of terrorists and extremists. This really creates this um image of Bellarus as a terrorist state which is actually getting into pop culture. You know there were already soap operas uh series on TV depicting Bellarus as a terrorist state for training some mercenaries and terrorists which is not true. This is for Bellarus and for um for the world. I think we all need a magic wand to make journalism matter again to prop up professional treatment of information to understand that information is not just a commodity that you can use whichever way you want. You really need a professional treatment of information and that needs to be a great filter for the future. You went for the big ask. Absolutely. Yeah. Um okay. Well, thank you very much um all four of you uh for this fantastic conversation which I’m sure we will continue here and and please have these conversations here on the sidelines of the event. Thanks so much. I’ll I’ll let you take your seats again. So, thanks to our distinguished panel. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. And now I’d like to ask Javier Aguas on stage. my colleague I only please you can you can all take your seats again. Thanks so much. Um have you will be having a conversation in a moment uh about the economic models of news rooms and how to make them sustainable and I understand they have to do a bit of reconstruction here. We can move this way. Exactly. Um, I’m assuming that just like me, you’ve had many conversations along the Google Merform and it always becomes clear that we have to reinvent ourselves as journalists, as media institutions. No matter what panel you’re joining, you’re hearing that because of the transformations that are requiring it. And that of course also applies on how we make our money. Not only in some cases with ambitions of becoming an empire, but sometimes also simply to survive. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about. And are you going to be looking at the role of the big networks again? Is that you know with the question of resources? And I think it’s really interesting that when talking about getting more reporting on forgotten conflicts, it requires resources. Where are they going to come from you sell adverts you you you are on social media um or you have public funding which is you have public funding which is severely under pressure. Correct. That is one of the big questions and of the big challenges. How are you going to rethink your revenue models? How can you uh if you have power, use it to use your resources more more efficiently amongst these challenges? And if you do not, what alternatives do you have? Of course, the pressure is big and there’s pressure from big companies, but we’re going to hear from brilliant minds to address those. Okay, I look forward to that. And thank you very much and congratulations on your panel. All right, I will ask for some silence in the room. So we can listen closely and carefully to what we are going to hear from our guests in our next panel. As stated, the current situation requires us to rethink and requires us to