Our pledge to our readers on covering the coronavirus

THEY say news is the ‘first rough draft of history’, and there can be no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic will occupy many pages in the history books yet to be written.

And the reporting of the global catastrophe – as it happens, in real time – will be the basis for how future generations come to understand these strange times when, one day, hopefully, coronavirus is only to be found in the history books.

The Covid-19 outbreak has dominated headlines around the world for the last nine months. There is not a local, regional, national or global news site whose pages have not been filled with coronavirus stories daily since the crisis began.

Our titles have been at the forefront of local and regional coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and we’ve made it our goal to make sure sure we bring you all the most up-todate news and information so that we can all stay as forewarned – and forearmed – as possible.

There is not one institution of society upon which coronavirus has not had some impact, and Covid-19 has presented the news media with many and varied challenges.

We have had to adapt like everyone else, whether that’s meant social distancing while out in the field, or having to sacrifice working together in busy newsrooms in order to work covid-safe from home.

We’ve also had to recognise that this is the first incident of its kind – a fast-spreading contagious disease affecting the whole planet – that has happened in the age of social media and digital journalism.

We’ve never been more closely engaged with our readers, in terms of getting feedback from them on the stories we write, so it’s been invaluable for us to learn how people react to certain coronavirus news stories.

And that’s helped us to shape our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

It’s helped us to determine what news about the pandemic people value the most.

And it’s shown us that, while there is always confusion and chaos in such a fast-moving and developing situation, what people value the most is that what we report is accurate.

Even if the news is “the first rough draft of history”, it’s important that it’s an accurate one.

And so in this, Journalism Matters week, we’re able to set out our pledge to you, our readers, as to how we will cover coronavirus.

We will:

Only report data we know to be true: We know readers want to know when figures go up or down, but they don’t want this information in a vacuum.

They want the context that will allow them to understand what those figures mean.

Continue to fight on behalf of our communities: Coronavirus has destroyed many lives and businesses, and we know that not everyone is happy with the way the crisis has been handled.

We will always fight on behalf of our communities to make sure their voices are heard.

Make sure you have the information you need: We know there’s a huge volume of information out there.

But we want to make sure you have exactly what you need, when you need it, whether that’s information about schools closing, the latest lockdown rules, or the rate of infections where you live.

We’ve developed, along with our colleagues at Inyourarea, useful online tools that will give you all the information you need, at postcode level, exactly when you need it.

Remember that life goes on: It would be easy to assume that all news sites and papers want to report on at the moment is coronavirusrelated.

But that’s really not the case. We want to ensure that we still cover all the things that we’ve always covered as news sites and papers.

So if people have something they think we should know about, they should still get in touch.

We pride ourselves on being the sites and papers of record in our communities, and we will continue to cover everything that makes them such diverse and interesting places to live and work.