By Clare BruceMonday 1 May 2023NewsReading Time: 9 minutes
Hope News is one of the news outlets featured in a book about reporting during COVID-19, released today.
Hope Media’s independent Sydney-based news service, Hope News, is enjoying a moment in the spotlight, with an appearance in Pandemedia – a new book from Monash University Publishing.
The book is a collection of essays reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic and how it changed news media, and features a chapter from Hope News director Anita Savage.
The Hope News service had only been newly launched when the COVID crisis hit, and the small team of three journalists was able to provide an ongoing, independent perspective on the unfolding events.
In her essay, titled A Media Newcomer Bringing Hope (read below), Anita speaks of the steep curve her team had to climb to gain traction in an established news environment.
“Hope News was not a priority among the newsmakers,” she writes. “Getting people to return our calls was a massive challenge. When our reporter turned up to a news conference, the media minders would sidle up to him, a fresh face among well-known journalists, and regard him as a curiosity. Who are you? Where are you from? Where?”
By consistently turning up, making contacts, and breaking the daily news, Hope News soon became a more familiar voice in the journalist throng.
“By the time the Omicron wave hit and the second lockdown was declared, we’d had a mic flag made so that ‘Hope News’ was on daily display along with the NSW premier, health minister and a revolving door of health officials,” Anita writes.
“For many, it was a purple-and-white curiosity amidst a sea of imposing, high-profile television and radio station insignias, like a Where’s Wally? scene. While recognising the seriousness of the situation, it was also thrilling for the radio station’s staff and supporters to see that, despite all of the pandemic’s sorrow, stress and anxiety, there was Hope.”
“While recognising the seriousness of the situation, it was also thrilling for the radio station’s staff and supporters to see that, despite all of the pandemic’s sorrow, stress and anxiety, there was Hope,” – Antia Savage, Hope News director
The essay explains that while the Hope News service does not provide “Christian news”, because “news is news”, it was nevertheless set up to provide balance and a wider variety of voices in the news landscape.
Community radio provided a vital information service during the pandemic years, broadcasting ever-changing news of lockdowns, social restrictions and health advice. Anita said that the presence of the Hope News service in that mix, meant that the Christian community was placed firmly on the radar of official information sources.
“It was an opportunity to ask authorities questions that were pertinent to much of our audience, a large proportion of whom are of Christian faith, such as what restrictions and lockdowns meant for corporate worship, meeting together, and communion,” she writes.
Pandemedia’s collection of essays tracks many of the media shifts that took place during the pandemic, such as the rise of user-generated content, the online information wars between opposing voices, the demand for data journalism, and the emergence of the “home-based expert”.
Other contributors to the book include Stan Grant, Michelle Grattan and Dr Norman Swan.
Pandemedia is edited by the ABC News Channel’s Tracey Kirkland and ABC deputy news director Gavin Fang.
Source: mediaarts.org.au
Article supplied with thanks to Christian Media & Arts Australia.
About the Author: Clare Bruce is a journalist with 20-plus years in print, radio, podcast and video media. She is a writer and digital media creator with a passion for projects of depth and purpose.
A Media Newcomer Bringing Hope
Published with permission by Monash University Publishing
When I walked into the radio station in Sydney’s west in the second half of 2019, work was underway—literally hammering and sawing—to build a newsroom, the long-held dream of community radio station 103.2fm. Hope News launched in November that year, just in time to be thrown headlong into covering the fast-moving, deadly Black Summer bushfires, and then seamlessly into reporting on the equally fast-moving, but tracking an unknown path, COVID-19 pandemic.
Our team was few in number: two experienced journalists and a trainee, to be precise, all trying to make inroads into a robust media environment. We were aware knowledge of Hope News’s existence was limited to a loyal audience and a handful of others who might have seen it advertised on the back of Sydney buses. Hope News was not a priority among the newsmakers. Getting people to return our calls was a massive challenge. When our reporter turned up to a news conference, the media minders would sidle up to him, a fresh face among well-known journalists, and regard him as a curiosity. Who are you? Where are you from? Where?
As newcomers, we had to work out how to get traction in an environment dominated by the well supported, traditional media players. It’s no surprise that it came through consistently turning up. Being engaged. Making contacts. Breaking news. By the time the Omicron wave hit and the second lockdown was declared, we’d had a mic flag made so that ‘Hope News’ was on daily display along with the NSW premier, health minister and a revolving door of health officials. For many, it was a purple-and-white curiosity amidst a sea of imposing, high-profile television and radio station insignias, like a Where’s Wally? scene. While recognising the seriousness of the situation, it was also thrilling for the radio station’s staff and supporters to see that, despite all of the pandemic’s sorrow, stress and anxiety, there was Hope.
Those press conferences were a godsend for our cadet reporter’s learning curve. About a decade’s worth of experience was gained in those months of daily reporting. The trajectory was steep, but he rose to the challenge of synthesising a lot of information to meet tight deadlines. It was also an opportunity to ask authorities questions that were pertinent to much of our audience, a large proportion of whom are of Christian faith, such as what restrictions and lockdowns meant for corporate worship, meeting together, and communion.
What is now known as Hope 103.2fm started broadcasting as 2CBA (Christian Broadcasting Association) in Sydney in 1979. However, it wasn’t until forty years later that listeners, keen for reporting they considered trustworthy, banded together to raise the funds to support their own newsroom. While it sits in the framework of a Christian radio station, Hope News is not a Christian news service. News is news. However, it was set up with the aim of providing a wider variety of voices and balance within news coverage.
Community radio stations like ours played a vital role during COVID, transmitting pandemic information to those of different cultures. The government knew it, too, harnessing respected community leaders to take to the airwaves to encourage people to heed the health advice. It was a smart move, with around 360 community radio stations across the country boasting more than five million listeners each week.
As with the broader society, so, too, were the responses to the pandemic from people of faith. Hope News reached out to influential church leaders—Catholic and Protestant—to provide thoughtful, steady words of wisdom, encouraging people to trust the health authorities and government officials, reassuring them that faith wasn’t limited by steeples, stone walls and heavy church doors.
As the virus spread, and restrictions and lockdowns were introduced, all except those on-air were cleared out of the radio station to work from home. I loved the quiet of the corridors, streets and skies—a reprieve from the otherwise non-stop news noise. Like all journalists, I carried a letter from my employer just in case I was stopped by police on my way to or from work, to let them know that I was an ‘essential worker’. That seemed to me a grandiose description, as I certainly didn’t consider myself essential in the way of healthcare workers on the front line, day in and day out fighting the virus and its unknowns, saving lives.
But to our listeners, we were essential. Essential to inform them of what was happening. Essential to provide balance. Essential to present a calm, reassuring voice amid unprecedented uncertainty. Of course, that didn’t stop a passionate and vocal minority of critics who levelled accusations that we were only reporting the government’s line, that we weren’t reporting other sources, accompanied by a plethora of links to research papers on alternative treatments such as Ivermectin, an antiparasitic medication for horses. Conspiracy theories were treated as gospel truth.
‘We report on the facts,’ I respectfully wrote to one complainant.
‘I prefer truth over facts,’ came the reply.
The unknown parameters of the pandemic made decision-making difficult and necessarily fluid. Was it risky sending our reporter out? Yes. But it was a calculated risk, involving masks, hand sanitiser (lots of sanitiser) and careful screening of reporters at NSW Health press conferences. Improvisation became our friend, such as when caught out interviewing people standing in line for COVID testing, realising it might be better next time to put the handheld microphone on a long pole. Or wiping door handles when someone tested positive, realising in retrospect that it probably would have been wise to have worn gloves.
Maintaining a healthy news staff was paramount because without the three of us, there would be no Hope News. We tried as best we could to stock up on by now hard-to-find disinfectant wipes. Not only was it a safety precaution, it was also a respectful way of caring for our colleagues.
Despite all of this, COVID hit our staff, one by one. There were daily roster changes, adaptations. Then came the day when all our journalists were out either with COVID or because they were isolating as a ‘close contact’, or because of family members with the virus. It was inevitable for such a small team. An outsourced backup news had to be run. From the start of the pandemic, contingency plans had been in place. Hope News had been on standby to be the backup network news service should the community stations’ network hub be forced to shut.
The development of vaccines heralded a new hopeful stage of the pandemic, although reporting the panaceas unleashed another round of phone calls and emails to the newsroom from listeners trying to correct our ‘misinformation’. Often, the correspondence would begin, ‘I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but …’ Having faith doesn’t mean letting go of intellect and critical thinking.
We had the added challenge of colleagues and family members who treated COVID-19 and the vaccines with scepticism. There was personal grief and concern amongst my staff about unvaccinated loved ones, about colleagues self-isolating from unvaccinated parents who questioned the information we were reporting in the news. Hope FM had chaplains on call, caring, listening, praying. Their care continues now and will do so into the future.
Our journalists were conscious of not wanting to add to the hysteria and panic in the community. Our aim was to inform, not alarm. Knowing the power of language, every word we wrote and aired was carefully chosen. There was no ‘COVID crisis’. For us, the daily statistics of positive tests, hospitalisations, ICUs and deaths weren’t simply numbers. We made a deliberate choice to never say ‘COVID deaths’ but instead to talk about ‘people with COVID’ who had died. Every statistic was a human being, someone’s loved one, a person with a heart and soul.
Never in my three decades as a journalist, both here and overseas, have I experienced such a non-stop, exhausting news cycle—physically, emotionally and mentally. The risk of burnout was real.
Talk about a baptism of fire! As a newcomer, Hope News’s launch coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, but our processes have been refined and strengthened, and our listeners, critics and competitors have confirmed our credibility as a news source. Perhaps the true reflection of our legitimacy is that the newsmakers are now ringing us or returning our calls for interviews. In addition, while many media organisations are shrinking, we’ve expanded, having recently hired another journalist, hopefully proof of a positive future.
As a journalist, travelling down the bumpy, uncertain, coronavirus-corrugated road, charting the ever-evolving journey in an untested news service, aiming to be balanced and trustworthy, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.
To read the full book, visit publishing.monash.edu.
