Over 800 news publishers from across the world are today marking the 2024 World News Day.

The World News Day is a global awareness campaign to amplify the value of fact-based journalism.

Established in 2018, the day is promoted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF), WAN-IFRA’s World Editors Forum, and Project Kontinuum present Choose Truth, a global campaign at the heart of World News Day 2024. Every year, members of the news industry and supporters of fact-based journalism are invited to share the campaign with their audiences.

Timeline.ng is one of the publishers that have joined this year’s campaign.

“World News Day is a global initiative to draw public attention to the role that journalists play in providing trustworthy news and information that serves citizens and democracy. World News Day takes place annually on September 28”, David Walmsle, Founder, World News Day, Immediate Past Chair, The Canadian Journalism Foundation & Editor-in-Chief, The Globe and Mail said.

“I created World News Day because I was determined to change the relationship between the news industry and the audience.

“Journalists are considered in too many parts of the world to be trouble makers. I want audience members to meet their reporters and hear the effort they put in to getting the story right”, he added.

“Across the world, the growing disconnect between audiences and producers of fact-based news is widening, with many other forms of content filling the space. This is creating challenges mainly due to the fact that bias, untruths, destructive agendas and propaganda thrive in such unsupervised spaces. A key role of the professional media is mediation between institutions of state and citizenry and when this is subtracted from the equation, both the people and the society lose”, Hassan Abdul, publisher of Timeline.ng, said in a statement to mark the day.

“The day is a critical reminder for us all. The news industry globally must make concerted efforts to restore the awareness of its value and place in the minds of people. This is not on the audience. It is up to the industry to re-asset itself for the good of all. In the process, campaigns that refer audiences to what they can do on their own part to support the industry in this mission have a place and we hope the audience will take up their own part of the challenge”, Abdul added.

https://worldnewsday.org/about-participating-newsrooms/