My role as a reporter can sometimes feel detached from the reality of the people I write about, and along with that comes a whole host of emotions and thoughts, including a sense of powerlessness.
Every so often, however, I’m reminded of the impact journalism can have.
Last week, a prominent women’s rights campaigner got in touch to thank me for covering the case of Hawa Hunt, who was arrested on 22 December on live television in Sierra Leone for insulting the president and the first lady in comments on social media. After I covered her plight, other international publications followed. Three weeks later, the first lady went online to say Hunt should be released. All charges were dropped and Hunt was freed later that day. The campaigner told me she “strongly believed” that Hunt’s release was prompted by my article.
I’ve been covering the impact of discarded secondhand clothes and the excesses of the fast fashion industry for a couple of years. In Ghana, I saw tangled webs of garments choking the shoreline and cows grazing on top of a huge pile of clothes mixed in with other rubbish at an unsanctioned dump. Amid the devastation, however, people are collecting the waste and using it to make incredible new clothes.
I featured a few organisations around the world transforming waste, including The Revival in Ghana. When I visited it in Accra earlier this year, the founder, Yayra Agbofah, told me that FibreLab, a textile recycling hub in London, had seen the coverage and got in touch to do a collaboration.
Agbofah also used the article in his application for the Redesign Everything Challenge, and was selected as the only African out of 10 winners worldwide. He won a €5,000 (£4,256) grant and a course on how to accelerate a business. He said: “It has been so long for Ghana and countries in west Africa to be recognised like this. It’s good to have people like us in decision making processes.” After seeing media coverage of his work, a leading fashion brand recently gave him a grant to expand his organisation.
In another story about the consequences of fast fashion, I wrote about a catwalk show staged in the Atacama desert last year, where mountains of clothes lie discarded. One of the people behind the event told me the impact was “massive”. “It was unbelievable to us, because it pushed [our campaign] to a lot of places in the world. We made the news in Greece, Hungary, China, Uzbekistan.”
In an era of relentlessly grim headlines, it’s important to pause and remind ourselves that our journalism can have a direct impact. Saturday is World Press Freedom day. As observers warn of the erosion of press freedoms in an increasingly authoritarian world, it’s also important to celebrate the wins, whether they change the course of history or make one person’s life better.
Sarah Johnson, reporter, Global development |
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