Sakina Mohamed is an editor at BERNAMA, the Malaysian National News Agency. BERNAMA was founded in 1968, and provides reliable information to subscribers across Malaysia and the rest of the world. In 2019, the BERNAMA team participated in a Google News Initiative supported training program in Malaysia.As of 2019, one in five Malaysian children suffer from “stunting,” as revealed in the National Health and Morbidity Survey. According to the World Health Organization, “stunting” is a child’s impaired growth stemming from poor nutrition, repeated infections, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation. The impact on Malaysia’s economy is significant as well— a World Bank study by Galasso and Wagstaf states that countries lose ( on average) seven percent of per capita income because of “stunting”.I studied stories about “stunted” children in the Malaysian press, and realized that most were framed in a way that made audiences feel disconnected from the issue. Even in related governmental campaigns, the messaging didn’t make the underlying problems clear. Instead, articles and campaigns made it sound like merely a nutritional issue— not a social or economic one. But for a story to be effective, it had to highlight what’s at stake and how it affected everyone: from the everyday citizen to the policymakers.In 2019, a Press Fellowship gave me the opportunity to explore possible ways of reframing stories on “stunting” in Malaysia. One of them was through data journalism, a form of journalism where reporters use quantitative data to uncover hidden trends, patterns and insights. Two years later, I was thrilled when BERNAMA enrolled in training for data journalism via the Google News Initiative (GNI).
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Friday, November 15, 2024
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