Why Global Journalism Matters Amid Anti-Globalist Politics

Abstract

Global journalism covers the complexity of global connections as manifested in countless topics: global water supplies, extractive industries, labor conditions, climate crisis, migration routes and lives, health and disease, humanitarian crisis, conflicts and wars, social inequalities, and the political economy of global commodities (from fast fashion to food). It eschews the national pull that historically tethers journalism to the politics of cultural-geographical spaces. It offers de-centered perspectives that elude customary binary options of west-east, north-south and the rest. By revealing “how the global works,” it refuses to approach the world as fragmented territories. Global journalism is part of the disjointed knowledge institutions that help to “know the global” and interlocking global crises. It exists in a range of news media - mainstream news organizations, citizen journalism, alternative news, specialized news (science, health, environment, humanitarian), and non-profit journalism. It is not tied to breaking news or the tyranny of conventional news values – events, personalities, sensationalism, “the now;” instead, it brings up underlying structural factors, flows, and dynamics. By setting its reporting horizons on global developments, challenges, and risks, it is unmistakable form of advocacy – it is a call to thinking globally. Although it may not make big headlines on a regular basis, global journalism is particularly significant at a time of anti-globalism and turbo-charged nationalism, the persecution of critical and dissident journalism, science denialism, and the crisis of post-war global institutional architecture. Amid the noise of news and information in the attention economy, it stands for the kind of consciousness-raising news that are necessary in a world with and without borders.