Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

How Europe's Public Service Broadcasters came together to cover the pandemic

29/10/2020

Liz Corbin, EBU deputy media director and head of news discusses how the organisation has helped broadcasters deliver reliable, trusted news to audiences during the pandemic.

By Contributor

Published: October 29, 2020

Liz Corbin, EBU deputy media director and head of news discusses how the organisation has helped broadcasters deliver reliable, trusted news to audiences during the pandemic.

target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin> Liz Corbin, EBU deputy media director and head of news discusses how the organisation has helped broadcasters deliver reliable, trusted news to audiences during the pandemic.

https://www.tvbeurope.com/production-post/how-europes-public-service-broadcasters-have-come-together-to-cover-the-pandemic title=Share via Email class=share-email>

During this extraordinary time, the absolute basics of broadcast journalism are being tested. TV journalism is teamwork. People working physically close to each other, on the road, in the studio. Every part of it has to be reimagined.

Here at the European Broadcasting Union, we have a dual role to play make sure we can continue running our own news operation and help our Public Service Media members deliver reliable, trusted news to their audiences, even in the most testing of circumstances.

The challenge was clear to us from the outset. A colleague in our own organisation was the fourth person in Switzerland to test positive for the virus. We quickly began the transition towards remote working - ensuring we could carry on with business as usual, although there was very little that was usual about it.

Across Europe, we've also seen how public service media responded with remarkable speed to the pandemic. By the end of January, we had already put together an international newsroom taskforce, dedicated to coverage of Covid-19. Our members are working together to support each other and ensure citizens across the continent feel supported by them.

We've seen the very real damage done by the spread of misinformation and disinformation online about this virus which has made the need for objective, trusted news and information even more important.

There has never been a story like COVID-19 and we learned - are still learning - a lot.

Although every country had a different experience, newsrooms had remarkably similar experiences. This virus with no borders attacked us in very similar ways. As the wave spread across Europe those who experienced it first could provide an uncannily accurate forecast for those it attacked later.

The EBU provides a support network, an early warning system and a place to share ideas. When some members felt they were criticised internally for overreacting' they just had to look at what their counterparts were doing to know that in a short time their actions would look appropriate and well-prepared.

Our News Exchange is also busier than ever - with travel severely limited, we provide a more important, or sometimes the only, source of foreign news for members. At its peak, we were sharing over 130 Covid-19 news items between our Members every single day.

The pandemic has also shown us the critical need for relevant specialisms in news. Science has always been essential to news output but having the expertise to understand complex health and science issues as well as a strong network of expert contacts is now vital.

Data journalism has come into its own during this period as well and directly influenced the way the story has been reported, the assumptions that have been made and the language used.

Much of the reporting has political and social dimensions as well as purely scientific so enabling better understanding and demonstrating exactly how developments in these areas affect real lives has remained central to the public service remit.

In recent months, we've seen an alarming rise in intimidation and attacks on journalists. NOS in the Netherlands were forced to remove all branding from their OB vans as they were encountering threats and intimidation. Members like RT in Ireland have had anti-mask protestors blocking staff from entering or leaving their offices. And many have been subject to online smears and abuse, not only by members of the public but, in the case of Slovenia's RTVSlo, by other media outlets and senior politicians.

It is the role of PSM to report independently and objectively on current events. We must continue to find ways to hold governments and authorities to account. To step back and see what we are missing.

Serving all audiences on all platforms with clear, accurate and independent information in a variety of formats is crucial to countering fake news and keep people safe in these challenging times. The news needs to provide the answer the public is searching for and to outshine the disinformation which seeks to fill the void.

You can read more on how public service media have handled the Covid crisis across Europe and the lessons learnt in the EBU's Covid-19 report.

SubscribeFor more stories like this, and to keep up to date with all our market leading news, features and analysis, sign up to our newsletter here.
LINK: https://www.tvbeurope.com/production-post/how-europes-public-service-b...
See more stories from tvb

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

22/06/2026

Behind the Mic: SportsCenters Lisa Cohn to Retire This June From ESPN as Longest-Tenured Anchor

Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...

22/06/2026

Cosm Appoints David Ho as Chief Legal Officer

Cosm has announced the appointment of David Ho as Chief Legal Officer, a newly created executive role reporting to President and CEO Jeb Terry. Ho will oversee ...

22/06/2026

Warner Bros. Discovery and AWS Announce AI-Powered Advertising Technology Platform

Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the developm...

22/06/2026

Daktronics Completes Audio Control System Upgrade at Petco Park for San Diego Padres

Daktronics has completed an audio control system upgrade at Petco Park in San Di...

22/06/2026

Accelerate Media Names John Willi President, Launches Accelerate Sports Network

Accelerate Media has named John Willi as President and announced the launch of the Accelerate Sports Network (ASN), a prep sports media and streaming platform c...

22/06/2026

AWSN to Air 3XBA Womens Basketball Tournament Live June 26-27

All Women's Sports Network (AWSN) and 3XBA (3 3 Basketball Association) have announced live television coverage of the annual 3XBA tournament on Friday, Jun...

22/06/2026

OWL AI Appoints Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer

OWL AI has announced the appointment of Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors. Prasad succeeds Josh Gwyther, who has served...

22/06/2026

CP Communications Provides RF Support for Inside the NBA at 2026 NBA Finals

CP Communications delivered RF video and audio support for TNT's Inside the NBA at the 2026 NBA Finals, providing main show coverage in San Antonio and ea...

22/06/2026

Polymarket and GRID Partner to Integrate Esports Data and Streaming into Trading Platform

Polymarket has announced a partnership with GRID, an official esports data platf...

22/06/2026

SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Metinteractive's Rachel Mele, Ken Cyr on Building Technology Backbones for Sports Venues

As sports venues continue to evolve into more video-centric, fan-engagement-driv...

22/06/2026

SVG All-Stars: Corbin Perkins, Chief Engineer, Victory+

As the regional sports production scene shifts toward streaming, this Texan helps lead the engineering behind Victory+'s growing live platform...

22/06/2026

Meet the 2026 Sundance Institute Documentary Edit Intensive Fellows

By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs the memories of your elders [are] a scaffolding for you to build your identity on - and t...

22/06/2026

Blade joins CEDAR Audio Icons line-up

New hyper-resolution analyser EQ revealed CEDAR Audio's all-new Icons plug-in series has just gained its newest member, Blade. Described by the compan...

22/06/2026

Sampleson release Aeronaut

Turn any live input into a cinematic soundscape Designed for use in the studio and on stage, Sampleson's latest creation is capable of taking any audio ...

22/06/2026

ADDAC System's new Four Strings Series

Adds guitar strings to Eurorack rigs ADDAC System are renowned for their weird and wonderful synth designs, and their line-up includes plenty of gear that&#...

22/06/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in to SBS coverage

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in ...

22/06/2026

NAGRA Venturi - Turning Piracy Intelligence into Measurable Business Impact

In our latest blog, Tim Pearson explores NAGRA Venturi, the new streaming security solution for the AI era from NAGRAVISION. Designed to aggregate and analyze ...

22/06/2026

Xumo Expands Contextual Targeting Capabilities Through Gracenote and IRIS.TV Integrations

Expanded integrations give advertisers access to distinct contextual signals acr...

22/06/2026

Greg Garmon Joins Imagine as Senior VP, Americas Video Sales

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Kaleidescape Breaks the 8K and 4:4:4 Barriers

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Xilica introduces Dynamic Voice Lift in new Designer

Xilica today announced the release of Dynamic Voice Lift, a new feature in Xilica Designer v4.12 that brings adaptive speech reinforcement to large meeting spac...

22/06/2026

Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, coming to Sky and NOW on 8 July

Monday 22 June 2026 Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide,...

22/06/2026

Eco Wave Power Turns Waves Into Watts With NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Digital Twins

The next era of AI will not be defined by compute alone. Its growth will be dete...

22/06/2026

NVIDIA Vera CPU Opens the Way for Agentic Scientific AI at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Mission, Vision and Veritas - new Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supercom...

22/06/2026

From Materials Simulation to Experimental Astronomy, New NVIDIA AI Software Unlocks Scientific Discoveries

At the ISC conference running in Hamburg this week, NVIDIA is introducing new so...

22/06/2026

NAIRR Science Program Reshapes Scientific Research, Powered by NVIDIA AI Infrastructure

For the past two years, the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Arti...

22/06/2026

At ISC, JUPITER Shows What Exascale Science Looks Like

JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer at Germany's Forschungszentrum J lich, runs on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 Inf...

21/06/2026

FIFAs Oscar Sanchez on World Cup Effort: Were Feeling Good and Where We Want to Be

To call the 2026 FIFA World Cup a big undertaking would be a big understatement....

21/06/2026

John Walden's Cubase Video Tutorials

New series now live on Udemy Regular SOS contributor and Cubase workshop columnist John Walden has just released a new Cubase video course that is now avail...

21/06/2026

Hotter Than a Hot Tub: The 45C Breakthrough to Cool AI's Biggest Machines

Hot tubs sit at about 38 to 40 degrees Celsius, warm enough that most people can only soak for about 15 minutes. NVIDIA's newest AI servers can run their co...

21/06/2026

Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame

Sunday 21 June 2026 Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame The Wargame first looks ZIP (2MB) Sky today confirms the commission of The Wargam...

20/06/2026

IK Multimedia introduce ReSing Doubling

New add-on creates doubles & vocal stacks IK Multimedia's latest ReSing add-on kits the innovative software out with the ability to automatically genera...

20/06/2026

What's Next for Apogee? Start Here.

What exactly is Apogee Control V3? Control V3 is a new mixer application that controls Apogee interfaces. The new hit feature is that V3 finally allows for...

19/06/2026

NBC Sports U.S. Open Coverage Fires Up 92 Cameras, Bunker cams

Split compound eases operational challenges at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club...

19/06/2026

ESPN's Men's College World Series Production Adds Onsite Studio, POVORA CapCams, Expanded Drone Coverage for Finale in Omaha

North Carolina, Oklahoma meet in the best-of-three Finals as ESPN leans into spe...

19/06/2026

Ninja AB from The Him DSP

Company launch comprehensive mix-comparison tool The Him DSP are a plug-in company founded by The Him, an EDM DJ and producer who has amassed over half a bi...

19/06/2026

Bitwig Studio 6.1 enters beta testing

Major Sampler upgrades introduced The latest version of Bitwig's DAW software has just entered public beta testing, and is available now for all users w...

19/06/2026

Akai Pro's MPC One & MPC Key 37 get G2 upgrade

Four times the power of their predecessors Akai Pro have just introduced upgraded versions of two of their popular standalone MPC systems, kitting them out ...

19/06/2026

Eurovision secures top four position as content distributor rankings hold steady in Poland

Data from May shows seasonal outdoor trends triggers lower viewing Warsaw, Pola...

19/06/2026

Bitfocus Buttons wins another top industry award

Buttons is best control system in the rAVe Best of Infocomm Awards 2026...

19/06/2026

Mavis Studio Makes iPad Production More Powerful

Mavis Studio Makes iPad Production More Powerful Brie Clayton June 19, 2026 0 Comments InfoComm update brings new NDI Preview, PTZ control, USB audio ...

19/06/2026

Immersive Studio Metaverse Stage Tackles Post with Blackmagic Design

Immersive Studio Metaverse Stage Tackles Post with Blackmagic Design Brie Clayton June 19, 2026 0 Comments New narrative projects rely on DaVinci Reso...

19/06/2026

How to Run the Original 1993 After Effects

How to Run the Original 1993 After Effects Graham Quince June 19, 2026 0 Comments How to the original After Effects v1 in an emulator, and you don'...

19/06/2026

IBC Show to Increase Focus on Networking, Startups

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

19/06/2026

Irdeto Taps Axel Gallant as CEO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

19/06/2026

SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible - Opening St...

SMPTE , the home of media professionals, technologists and engineers, has announced that its entire Standards catalog is now freely available to the global medi...