Since the beginning of the crisis, audiences ran straight towards their national public broadcasters for reliable and trustworthy informations. PSM were recently falling into a crisis in audience numbers with sliding trust ratings, when something happened that no one could have foreseen: "It took the combination of an unpredictable and highly infectious disease, a pandemic, governments swimming in uncertainty, loss of personal freedoms and above all, a growing need for the truth to bring back those people we thought we might have lost forever", says Liz Corbin, Debuty Media Director of the EBU.

The last weeks have been quite challenging and demanded the creativity of the journalists: "It has been an extraordinary time for all of us. … This crisis has really been showing public service journalism at its best." Many of the journalists are working from home, key staff has been split up into groups so they won't meet each other and there have been strict hygiene procedures. "TV journalism is team work. People working physically close to each other, on the road, in the edit suite, in the control room, in the studio. Every part of it has had to be reimagined" says Liz Corbin.
"One of the most successful things we've done was to create a WhatsApp group for journalists involved in COVID-19 reporting. This quickly became a virtual room in which to share breaking news, interesting articles and exclusive coverage. Today we have more than 170 participants from more than 25 members and other public service media organizations across the world." Additionally the EBU is hosting a virtual meeting for Editors-in-Chief every week, where Top-Level editors can share their experiences and concerns.

The EBU also responded to the fast rise of fake news: With the Flashlight initiative, a Telegram group, fact-checking teams and the EBU's own Social Newswire can share the stories they've been working on. As a part of the Trusted News Initiative the EBU members are also part of a large group of global news companies which fight fake news.
Liz Corbin says: "Because we want to support all of our Members, including some who are facing financial crisis, we have been able to give temporary access to the News Exchange to organizations under financial sanctions. These are times to be generous, to support each other and it has been a delight to see the impact this has had."

Read the whole article: https://www.ebu.ch/news/2020/05/challenges-and-opportunities-for-the-ebu-and-psm-can-coronavirus-give-us-back-our-audiences