PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Pandemic conditions enhanced authoritarian tendencies, as the control of disease heightened the paramount role of state power in managing disease. Governments attacked mainstream media, and used extensive propaganda to make people believe journalists were paid purveyors of “disinformation.” The pandemic had legitimized the heightened securitization, surveillance, and other restrictive measures to control people’s activities and to criminalize legitimate criticism. 

PANDEMIC YEAR 2

COVER STORY:
MEDIA IN THE TIME OF COVID

Unfortunately,  the media too  have been failing  for decades because of (1)  the system of private ownership in which conflicting political and economic interests are in such constant contention they hinder the making of a community of shared values; (2) the vast differences in training, and even the absence of it, among practitioners that results in professional and ethical lapses;  (3) the corruption and patron-client relations between some practitioners and their sources that  prevent  their fulfilling the fundamental  responsibility of truth-telling; and (4) the continuing killing and harassment of journalists.