By: KURNIAWAN Trista VaniaEdited by: KURNIAWAN Trista Vania

The “News Creator” theme emerged as one of the largest draws at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia this April. It represents a movement of independent journalists who create and distribute content through social media about news and current affairs, often drawing on influencer techniques to build audience. In a panel of news creators, Sophia Smith Galer, Dave Jorgenson and Tara Palmeri discussed the challenges and strategies to succeed in the industry, ultimately saying it comes down to distinctiveness. “Do you have a distinctive offering, or are you making an identical news explainer that every other newsroom is doing? Are you creating additional value around the news story? If you're not, you’ve got to rethink the strategy,” Galer said. Galer pioneered the UK’s TikTok journalism and began producing short-form videos for the BBC’s coverage of religion, technology and health. Jorgenson,  a panellist who previously worked with The Washington Post before running his media outlet, Local News International, added that distinctiveness is what makes one stop scrolling. “It has to be distinctly different from what everyone else is offering. Not necessarily how you shoot it, but like what you as a personality bring to it,” he said.When asked how Galer makes herself distinctive after years in the industry, she said she creates fewer videos each year but each with higher production value. “The time load is now going into ensuring distinction, and for me, that has meant higher quality, more and more original reporting to make sure it's distinctive,” Galer said. In 2025, Galer launched an app called Sophiana to help journalists create engaging scripts for vertical video formats. “We’re seeing short-form vertical video everywhere. It’s not just about the shape; there is a grammar to how these videos are made, it’s how they begin, how they are structured,” Galer said …

The BBC screened a documentary that follows the lives of paedophile hunters on the dark web at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. “The Darkest Web” revolves around US undercover agent Greg Squire and a team of agents who spend every day tracking abusers in encrypted forums who are sharing millions of child abuse materials online. The documentary reveals unsettling cases Squire and his team investigated, which took director Sam Piranty and his team seven years to document and film. When asked how he persevered through such a long-term project, Piranty said it was Squire. “He was a force of nature. It was a real surprise to ever film someone so committed. I believed in him and the amazingness of his stories. When you have conversations with those people, you will realise that it’s worth it,” he said. It all started with months of back-and-forth emails before Squire even wanted to speak anonymously, Piranty said. “At some point, he wanted to go on camera because he wanted to talk about the more difficult things he faced. He spoke to his colleagues, who were scared to talk about their feelings. And he wanted to change that,” Piranty said. Ultimately, Piranty and his team decided to centre the story around Squire’s psychological struggles and personal journey, as every saved child took Squire hundreds of hours of viewing abusive materials of children. Piranty added that he wanted people to “get a sense of the scale and gravity of the issue” and know there is hope, that “these Gregs, these amazing men and women who are willing to do things.” Piranty said the BBC screened the movie at the festival to reach as many people as possible. “There’s a group of people who would be interested in it, but sensitive to the darker side …

  Artificial intelligence has drastically escalated online gender-based violence, silencing women journalists and activists worldwide, a group of women journalists said on a panel at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. The discussion spotlighted how AI tools have turned targeted harassment into a realistic threat. Once text-based abuse and crude memes have evolved into AI-generated sexualized deepfakes to push women out of public life. Nobel Peace Prize laurate Maria Ressa, the co-founder and CEO of Rappler in the Philippines, said in the talk that she received thousands of hate messages, malicious memes and AI deepfakes. “These are not personal attacks, they are information operations to silence women,” Ressa said.  “Platforms fail to act because they label public figures as targeted persons, while AI makes abuse faster and more harmful.” A 2025 UN Women survey found that 42% of women journalists have suffered offline harm linked to online violence, up from 20% in UNESCO’s 2020 The Chilling report, marking a 22% increase in five years. Julie Posetti, director of the Information Integrity Initiative, a digital forensics lab set up by Ressa, said online violence is nothing virtual. It’s an act of violence that's part of a cycle of escalating harm. “We have found that 41% of the women surveyed had experienced offline attacks, abuse or harassment that they believed had been received through online attacks,” she said. Kalliopi Mingeirou, the Chief at the Ending Violence Against Women section of UN-Women, said in the talk that global backlash against gender equality exacerbates the crisis. “Over 50% of countries lack strong legal protections for women, and fewer than 40% cover digital gender violence,” she said. “Funding cuts for women’s rights groups and algorithmic amplification of misogynistic content create a ‘toxic cycle’ linking online abuse to radicalization and offline harm.” “It is necessary to …

A Ukrainian war reporter said she doesn't believe in neutral journalism, speaking at the 20th International News Festival in Perugia, Italy on April 17. In a panel discussion on Ukrainian war reporting, Mariya Frey, member of the managing board of Ukraine’s national public broadcasting company Suspilne Ukraine, showed a photo of female journalist Oleksandra Novosel wearing a blue protective jacket, carrying a camera and recording equipment while shuttling through the "kill zone" only 20 kilometers away from the front line. “Her base was bombed twice, and Russia was only trying to drive away the journalists,” Frey said. The environment the speakers depict is suffocating, with about 40% of Ukrainian media institutions suffering heavy damage and requiring 500 million euros for recovery, one said, adding that the financial stress is even greater after the United States Agency for International Development cut funding to Ukraine. The new equipment requirement in the Ukrainian work package for journalists is a washing machine, Freya added. When the artillery fire cuts off water and electricity, Ukrainian journalists have to take a shower and wash clothes in the office. “Due to power outages, the journalist team even built shower rooms and bought washing machines in the office, which is our safe house,” she added. Despite the challenges, Freya said independent media in Ukraine has won unprecedented trust, with Suspiline Ukraine's audience trust reaching 79%. “People search for information like they search for food,” said panel speaker Ola Myrovych, CEO of Lviv Media Forum, an NGO supporting media development. “The media has become a critical infrastructure.” Panel speaker Olha Syrotiuk, who coordinates a Ukraine programme at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom said, “We have already won because we have preserved the news industry in the midst of gunfire. What is needed now is to invest …

“I have to leave.” The phrase echoed through a panel on women journalists in exile at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. For three women journalists from Nicaragua, Myanmar and Russia, departure was not a professional repositioning. It was the result of political violence, escalating threats and the erosion of space for independent reporting. Gender often determines how repression is experienced and survived,  the journalists on the all-women panel said on April 16. The conversation unfolded against a global media environment that has grown increasingly hostile. UNESCO’s World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Report 2022–2025 documents a 10% global decline in freedom of expression since 2012. It also reported that self‑censorship among journalists increased by 63 percent. In 2025, a record number of 130 journalists and media workers were killed on the job, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. For many others, violence ended in exile. Abigail Hernandez, a Nicaraguan journalist and founder and director of La Sala – mujeres en la redacción in Costa Rica, which brings together women-led Central American media outlets in a shared workspace, said exile for her began before she crossed the border. Hernandez spent six months in constant internal displacement, moving between safe houses while being followed and intimidated by men in civilian clothes. “It’s not the police, it’s not the— but we know it’s the police and they are military,” she said. Hernandez described how repression was gendered. Threats targeted her body and appearance, turning political intimidation into something deeply personal. “The message is that in prison your face, your body, your supposed beauty will be destroyed,” she said. She left Nicaragua after receiving a warning that made clear her arrest, or worse, was imminent. Harassment, abuse and online attacks are routine risks for women journalists. Last year, 75 …

Former Washington Post journalist Dave Jorgenson told a workshop that serious journalism can attract young audiences through humour and personality in short social media videos, as the journalism industry searches for new ways to build trust. Speaking on April 17 at the 20th International Journalism Festival, Jorgenson, who started the paper’s Tik Tok channel, shared several videos he made to demonstrate how he transformed dry topics into engaging content using sketches, visual gags and automatic video looping. “I try to put myself in the shoes of the audience,” he said. “Not do it in a way that feels condescending.” One video, a 30-second sketch depicting a fictional phone call between Egypt, Ukraine and Russia, summarised a lengthy Washington Post article and attracted 47 million views. Another was a two-minute fact check of a Donald Trump speech, which involved rapid corrections and visual gags, including holding up a gingerbread house to illustrate the housing crisis. “Pulling back the curtain on your own understanding of a story is a way to make the process of journalism more relatable,” he added. At the beginning of the speech, Aled John, group strategy director at the Financial Times, outlined challenges facing traditional newsrooms, including a deepening sense of disconnection among audiences and what he called the “dogma” that serious stories must always be delivered in a serious tone and language, leading to a significant decline in readership. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025, traditional news media are “struggling to connect with much of the public, with declining engagement, low trust and stagnating digital subscriptions”. Overall trust in news remains at 40%. Globally, social video consumption for news has risen from 52% in 2020 to 65% in 2025. Held in Perugia, Italy, the festival is the largest annual media gathering, drawing journalists, media …