The fourth annual World News Day, a worldwide campaign for global news organizations to draw audience attention to the value of fact-based journalism, will take place on September 28, 2021.
This year, World News Day will highlight the critical importance of journalism in providing trustworthy information about the future of our planet and its people.
World News Day’s organizers, The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) and the World Editors Forum (WEF), hope to unite more than 300 news organizations behind this singular theme to drive home the vital message that credible journalism matters if people are to make informed decisions about our planet’s future.
David Walmsley, founder of World News Day and Editor-in-Chief of The Globe and Mail in Canada, said: “The challenges facing our planet need all of our attention and through your participation we can improve journalism and build a greater sense of urgency and relevance that helps us all.”
Warren Fernandez, President of the World Editors Forum (WEF) and Editor-in-Chief of The Straits Times in Singapore, said: “Journalists have been at the frontlines covering the pandemic, helping communities and audiences stay informed, and safe. We now need to turn attention to the other major challenge our world faces — the climate crisis — and show how journalism can make a difference to save our planet. World News Day is an opportunity to go behind the scenes and show how communities are served when journalists do their jobs.”
Kathy English, Chair of The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) and former public editor of the Toronto Star, said: “No story matters more to the citizens of the world than the climate change crisis. World News Day 2021 focuses on this defining challenge of our times and the important role journalists play in providing vital facts about the future of our planet and its peoples.”
Last September, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, journalists from more than 180 news organizations — including The New York Times, BBC News, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Axios, The Globe and Mail, The Straits Times, and Toronto Star — rallied around World News Day to highlight the value of fact-based journalism in an age of misinformation. Dozens of countries were represented by World News Day’s participating organizations with a global reach of 1.28 billion people. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Maria Ressa, the embattled co-founder and executive editor of the Filipino news site Rappler, were among the newsmakers and journalists featured in last year’s event day programming.
World News Day 2021 is supported by Google News Initiative and Lippo Group.
How news organization can get involved
What is the pressing climate problem in the U.S. and Canada? The Maldives? The UK? South Africa?
World News Day is seeking your support and local leadership to help showcase the value of journalism, particularly in telling the story of the climate emergency. By signing up as a supporter and participant of the campaign, your newsroom will join hundreds of other news organisations in an all-hands-on-deck initiative to highlight these two important issues.
www.wan-ifra.org
