By LSE MsC student Diska Putri Pamungkas on a Polis talk from Liz Mermin, Director of Visual at the Thomson Reuters Foundation In the world full of infotainment and politainment with fact-checking in crisis, in-depth and inspiring journalism is more valuable than ever

Pamungkas, Diska Putri

LSE Research Online

2016-12-2Global stories for a global audience?blogs.lse.ac.uk /polis/2016/12/02/global-stories-for-a-global-audience/By LSE MsC student Diska Putri Pamungkas on a Polis talk from Liz Mermin, Director of Visual atthe Thomson Reuters FoundationIn the world full of infotainment and politainment with fact-checking in crisis, in-depth and inspiring journalism ismore valuable than ever.As a director of Visual at the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), Liz Mermin oversees a team making creativedocumentaries telling under-reported humanitarian stories. The aim of the work is to create journalistic work that hasan impact to raise global awareness towards some of the most the most urgent humanitarian issues: “We’re tryingput message that the far away is not so far away,” said Mermin.Along with a small group of experienced and skilled people in the field, Mermin created a number of creativedocumentary videos working with local fixers to gain close access to individuals from a range of countries. Focusingon how to make work with real impact, Mermin said that the crucial part is to treat the medium differently from print,with an emphasis on the personality and connection with the ‘characters’ in the film: “The key is emotionalconnection.”But the work does not stop at making good documentary, the next challenge is to attract an audience: “With moredocumentary channels and film-makers in the game than ever, it may be a golden age for consumers, but not forfilmmakers who make documentary about humanitarian topic” said Mermin. To attract a global audience, filmmakersmust go to where the audience is already exists. TRF establishes partnership with media companies around theworld such at The Guardian and Take Part.From the story of refugee to ‘hidden connection’ of child marriage in Bangladesh with climate change, ThomsonReuters Foundation have created a number of documentaries aiming to raise audience’s awareness on1/2humanitarian issue.  Mermin said that the goal of these documentaries is to encourage advocacy to solve thesealarming issues, which can hopefully also lead to policy and system changes.By Diska Putri PamungkasLiz Mermin: Global stories for global audiences? from Polis Video on Vimeo.Copyright © 2014 London School of Economics and Political Science2/2

Global stories for a global audience?

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