Summary

In this episode of Executive Connect, host Melissa Aarskaug sits down with top journalists Katy Katopodis, Judy Sandison, and Qaanitah Hunter to unpack the shifting landscape of modern journalism. They dive into the impact of digital media, the rise of AI, and the fight against misinformation. The discussion highlights the importance of ethical reporting, diversity, and the mental health challenges journalists—especially women—face in the industry. As the media world evolves, they explore how responsible journalism remains essential to democracy and why empowering the next generation of storytellers is more critical than ever.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Future of Journalism
05:18 The Evolution of Journalism in the Digital Age
10:58 The Role of Traditional Media in a Digital World
14:30 The Battle for Truth in Journalism
20:22 Facing Backlash: The Reality of Fearless Reporting
26:17 Breaking the Journalist Stereotype
27:29 Empowering Journalists in Crisis
30:19 The Role of Media in Political Safety
32:55 Diversity in Journalism
35:31 Building the Next Generation of Journalists
38:32 Gender Parity and Representation in Newsrooms
42:00 Challenges in Representation and Storytelling
46:22 The Future of Journalism in the Age of AI

Transcript

Melissa Aarskaug (00:01.65)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. Today I’m excited to talk about the future of journalism, some challenges, ethics and innovation. And here with me today is three amazing guests. And I’m going to start off with Katie, can you share a little bit about who you are and what your background is?

Katy Katopodis (00:20.909)
Hi, Melissa. Thanks so much for having us. My name is Katie Katapodis and I am the chairperson of the Journalism, Safety and Wellness Subcommittee of SANEF. And SANEF is the South African National Editors Forum and it’s a really amazing body in South Africa that helps

the editorial or rather helps with journalists and editors in the editorial space. We set agendas for newsrooms and journals and we’re really quite forward looking and forward thinking hopefully and so that’s who I am.

Melissa Aarskaug (00:56.768)
Thanks so much for sharing. Judy, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Judy Sandison (01:02.263)
Sure, thanks Melissa. I’m a former broadcast journalist and editor. I worked for the Public Broadcaster for many years, doing lots of different kinds of stories from politics and boxing to rugby, cetera, but a lot about women because there were big gaps in reporting on women’s issues and women’s rights. And I am a founder editor of the South African National Editors Forum and serve on the various committees, media freedom, diversity and ethics, and as a Quasunetal convener.

Qaanitah Hunter (01:07.184)
I’m not talking about these four guys that are hanging in those. Lots of different kinds of stories, politics and politics and too much of it. But a lot about women because they’re the same sex. And I have a calendar that I just office about the national issues of tomorrow.

Judy Sandison (01:31.888)
I feel passionate about facilitating quality journalism and also connecting with my comrades in arms as it were in the editors forum to defend media freedom and promote transformation and really make sure we deliver a better news product for everyone who listens or reads or watches news or whichever platform they get it on.

Katy Katopodis (01:55.133)
Okay.

Melissa Aarskaug (02:16.65)
I think she’s on her phone, Roth.

Qaanitah Hunter (02:16.711)
You are hearing an echo. I’m on my phone. You want me to put earphones in?

Melissa Aarskaug (02:27.2)
You

Qaanitah Hunter (02:32.942)
Okay, let’s do that. Sorry guys.

Melissa Aarskaug (02:37.952)
Oh, no worries. We can, this is the beautiful thing about Raph does. He’s a wizard. Raph, do think we should go on mute in between?

Qaanitah Hunter (02:39.501)
Thank

Melissa Aarskaug (02:46.794)
Okay.

Katy Katopodis (02:56.004)
Melissa, my introduction of myself was just absolute rubbish.

Melissa Aarskaug (02:58.335)
Yes.

Melissa Aarskaug (03:02.848)
Do want to start over?

Katy Katopodis (03:03.932)
Can I? Judy’s was perfect. I I won’t extend it. I won’t make it too long, but it was just rubbish, actually. Okay. Okay. You can go to Kwanita. You can go to Kwanita. She can have a turn first. Kwanita, you’re not centered. I don’t know if I’m the only one seeing that.

Melissa Aarskaug (03:05.652)
Yeah, we can.

Melissa Aarskaug (03:10.11)
Yeah, we’ll just, I’ll just start with you now. We started with Judy, I’ll go to you and then we’ll do Krinitta. I thought you did great, but we could, we need to. Okay, okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (03:23.597)
Thank you.

Now.

Qaanitah Hunter (03:32.545)
Okay.

Katy Katopodis (03:33.711)
Yeah, better.

Qaanitah Hunter (03:35.117)
Can I go?

Melissa Aarskaug (03:37.705)
Yep. All right.

Qaanitah Hunter (03:37.834)
Is there any feedback?

Qaanitah Hunter (04:00.685)
testing testing.

One, two. Cool.

Melissa Aarskaug (04:07.84)
Perfect.

Melissa Aarskaug (04:12.274)
Is that perfect. All right. Let’s we’re still recording, right?

Melissa Aarskaug (04:22.4)
Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, Judy, for sharing a little bit about you. Katie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Katy Katopodis (04:31.648)
Hi Melissa, thanks for having us here today. I have been a journalist and an editor for over 20 years.

running newsrooms, in broadcasting, radio and television. And I’m also the chairperson of SANEF’s Journalism, Safety and Wellness Committee. SANEF is the South African National Editors Forum, and it’s an amazing body that fights for media freedom, that fights for rights of journalists. And essentially, we have formed this committee as a result of many, many years of, I think, neglecting safety.

and neglecting mental wellness in the space of journalism.

Melissa Aarskaug (05:10.772)
Thank you so much, Katie, for sharing that. Quinnita, can you share a little bit about yourself and your background?

Qaanitah Hunter (05:18.218)
Thank you very much, Melissa. My name is Quinita Hunter. I am a political editor in South Africa. I have been in the space for a while and I became a manager at very young age and I realized the need for mental health support through my own journey as a young journalist but also seeing the experience of my peers. So I participate quite closely with what Sanif does.

And I have just started what is called Debrief the Media, initiative to promote mental wellness among journalists and newsrooms.

Melissa Aarskaug (05:56.778)
Thank you so much for sharing a little bit about yourself. I’m excited to jump in and talk a little bit about journalism. And Katie, I want to get your perspective. Journalism has changed a lot over the last years. The digital age has redefined how we consume news, how we get it, social media platforms. Often I wonder myself what’s real and what’s not in the media today. So I want to get.

a little bit from you about, you’ve led major newsroom transformations. You’ve been the biggest shift in journalism over the past decade. Can you share a little bit about your thoughts on how journalism is changing?

Katy Katopodis (06:38.679)
Well there’s absolutely no doubt that the landscape that we work in has changed dramatically over the past 10, 15 years or so. When I was a Cub and a junior reporter all those years ago, it was very much about what you saw, eyewitness accounts, what you reported on. The reality is today that everybody with a smartphone is a journalist and we’ve got citizen reporters popping up just everywhere. And so our role as journalists is an absolutely

critical one. In fact, I think more critical now than ever. know, know that there’s a whole narrative that’s happening the world over that says, mainstream media, legacy media, they’re losing their gravitas. I don’t believe that at all. I think that well-trained and professional journalists now are far more important than ever before because it helps you wade through what is and what isn’t.

factual. You said it yourself, Melissa, you’re not sure what to believe anymore. So if you’re able to follow and consume news from respected, credible, independent journalists, then I think you’re on the right track. And the reality is, we’re hoping that our audience is also well informed and well read. Don’t put all your trust in one person or one newsroom or organization 100 % of the time. Be discerning. Read.

Qaanitah Hunter (07:40.451)
So.

Qaanitah Hunter (07:50.951)
Bye.

you

Katy Katopodis (08:02.619)
everywhere and so I think that the transformation we’ve seen in journalism is all about that and it is about rebuilding trust to a certain degree because I do think that you know there has been a bit of a breakdown of trust because some of that narrative has been very anti-media and very anti the established media in favor of citizen journalism which has its place and I’m not going to take away from it but is it

Qaanitah Hunter (08:08.678)
you

Qaanitah Hunter (08:20.838)
you

Katy Katopodis (08:31.028)
And that’s the big question that readers and viewers need to ask themselves all the time. Is what I’m reading on social media platforms like X and TikTok and watching on Facebook, is it true and who is saying it? Because if we were to believe all the conspiracy theories and everybody who had something to say, I think it would be a very dangerous place to be.

Melissa Aarskaug (08:57.256)
Yeah, absolutely. think it’s it’s tricky now these days. I appreciate you sharing your insights and Queenita you’ve worked across print digital television. Do you think the rise of online platforms has strengthened or weakened journalism from your perspective?

Qaanitah Hunter (09:09.766)
Yeah.

Qaanitah Hunter (09:17.158)
I think that medium has evolved as long as journalism exists. I back in the day, the way newspapers were printed was stamped on paper. I don’t recall it. I was not alive. But essentially, technology will continue doing what it does, which is evolve. And so journalism, the tenets of journalism remain the same. It’s just adapting to the medium. And I think that what

Katy Katopodis (09:38.098)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (09:44.894)
traditional media has delayed in that transition, particularly because of being, you know, precious about the way that we’re doing things. And so when there’s a disconnect between the medium in which we use, because today it’s smartphones and it’s vertical video and it’s social media platforms, tomorrow it may be, you know,

Katy Katopodis (10:10.07)
you

Qaanitah Hunter (10:13.24)
VR lens on your screen. And so the idea then is to delink the tenets of journalism from the medium that’s currently involved and then to say that how do we adapt to how people consume information.

Melissa Aarskaug (10:34.206)
Yeah, it’s so true. keep thinking, I’m like, maybe one of these days we could just stand in front of our TVs and talk at the TV. And, you we don’t even need to hold our hands in our phones anymore. We’re going to have, you know, be able to feel like we’re in front of people. And so it is interesting what’s going to happen with innovation and technology. Judy, I’m curious from your perspective, broadcast journalism has had significant changes.

Katy Katopodis (10:44.937)
Thank you.

Melissa Aarskaug (10:58.908)
With the dominance of streaming and digital platforms, where does traditional broadcasting fit in now?

Judy Sandison (11:07.296)
Well, I was involved in launching news on multiple platforms for the public broadcaster some years back, and there was resistance from traditional media, the radio and television, my radio and television colleagues initially, until they realized that in fact digital platforms are very complementary. For example, I set up news on cell phones in several countries across Africa, including South Africa, and in different languages, and also news on electronic billboards and at airports. And then you find that

Katy Katopodis (11:07.312)
Okay.

Katy Katopodis (11:25.634)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (11:37.186)
the different platforms can complement each other. And to get back to what Quinnita saying, you know, we get a lot on our smartphones now, an awful lot. But the thing that remains the same is the quality of journalism is so important. newsrooms are so shrunken. You know, the big companies like Google and Facebook have taken away lot of advertising from traditional media outlets. Now, the newspapers, maybe they were bit slow to start off to get digital radio and television. We were a bit faster.

Katy Katopodis (11:55.344)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (12:06.805)
But especially in radio, but there’s no doubt that newsrooms are struggling worldwide, globally. And yes, we will be getting practically all of our news on digital platforms in future. We already are in many ways, but the problem is we’re getting so much other noise as well on social media, on so many different platforms, new ones coming all the time. what Kenita and Katie are saying, so important that

Qaanitah Hunter (12:16.865)
So, that was my first lesson.

Katy Katopodis (12:24.271)
you

Qaanitah Hunter (12:34.88)
I’m

Judy Sandison (12:37.267)
Ordinary citizens around the world know where to get credible news, news they can trust, that they know is true, and news that doesn’t have an agenda. So much of what is on social media has very clear, sometimes hidden but often very clear, political agendas or just commercial agendas, all kinds of agendas. So people get very confused. They get thrown all this information and don’t know where to start, or they then go to just WhatsApp groups.

say in the church or the community and then the cognitive dissonance narrows because now they only believe in a certain section of what’s out there and everything else they distrust. So it’s crucially important for us in the media, but also to get the message across and to make sure that ordinary people understand that good journalism with the eyes and ears for the public so that they get to know things that affect them directly.

Katy Katopodis (13:24.458)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (13:34.047)
and things that can damage their lives or enrich their lives. that we’ve seen, we’ve seen in radio stories I did and TV stories where I did something on the plight of pensioners or went on the streets to interview sex workers, the streets of Durban for a couple of nights and things that can make a difference. That’s what good journalism does. They make a positive difference because they open people’s eyes to what is happening around them and what they can do about it. And it gives them hope too.

Katy Katopodis (13:39.853)
you

Qaanitah Hunter (13:44.188)
Bye.

Qaanitah Hunter (13:50.303)
Thank you.

Judy Sandison (14:02.901)
So back again to how important good journalism is and why an organization like us, the South African Editors Forum is so important to fight for a media freedom, independence, no interference from any agendas, whether it’s big business, labor, or politics, we’ve got to be there for ordinary people because otherwise they’re going to get so much false information, their lives will, democracy will just fall apart.

Melissa Aarskaug (14:30.506)
Well, you really teed up the next thing I wanted to talk about perfectly, just the battle of the truth these days. I feel like I saw somewhere at the end of the last year how much some of these influencers are making a year and they’re not reporting on anything that’s correct. They’re really using what’s happening in the world. you know, specifically, we saw that a lot with the US elections. They’re, you know, talking about things that are not true, which is getting a lot of attention online.

Katy Katopodis (14:31.276)
So, thank you.

Melissa Aarskaug (14:59.456)
which is therefore driving up dollars in their pocket, but it’s really, like you said, confusing the media. So there’s a lot of misinformation, government pressure, corporate interests, like you were saying, that has made journalism very complex. So I wanna get, Katie, your perspective. I feel like ethical reporting is constantly under threat.

Katy Katopodis (15:01.58)
Okay.

Melissa Aarskaug (15:25.224)
Freedom is not guaranteed anywhere of freedom of speech. So I know you struggled. You’ve really been a strong advocate for media freedom. And really, what is the biggest threats that you as an independent journalist see today?

Katy Katopodis (15:30.763)
All right.

So I definitely think that the biggest threat we face as journalists, and I’m speaking about South Africa first and foremost here, is the constant abuse that some of our journalists get. There’s also been a very litigious approach against some journalists in the country, some really well-respected and very, very good journalists who have been reporting on some highly controversial and politicized things.

And so we’ve seen a lot of that litigious approach and there’s one journalist in particular who I think about when I talk about this, who has ended up in court on the other side of a lawsuit against a former president. And that for me is just diabolical because the reality is that ethical journalism requires you to double check and triple check your facts, your sources, your documents. And once you’ve got all of those and you ensure

that you’ve got all of those in check. You can’t try to muzzle a journalist because you don’t like what they’re saying. It’s got to be based on something if you’re going to take a journalist to court. And it can’t just be about censorship and muzzling. So I think that definitely is a threat. know, every time things go wrong and if we think about the political space, the media is to blame. The media quoted me out of context. And I think that is dangerous. The other thing that I think is very dangerous

is actually a lot of what the likes of Elon Musk is saying. He constantly bashes the mainstream media and legacy media saying, no, they’re rubbish and this is why we are, X is the only media source you must believe. I think that that’s dangerous because if you have somebody who’s watching this, who’s consuming this all the time, they almost feel emboldened to attack journalists either.

Katy Katopodis (17:40.699)
verbally, physically, online, and of course everybody can be a so-called hero as a keyboard soldier or warrior. And I think that these are very threatening signs in our society because we’ve got to be able to say not all the mainstream or legacy media is as bad as some people paint us out to be. It’s not the case. We’ve got to be able to be very discerning.

as I said before. So that for me is one of the great dangers because a very strong media, I often say, is very closely aligned to healthy democracies. So you want a strong and vibrant media that is going to challenge authority. You want that to happen. And you can’t feel that every time you challenge authority that you will be muzzled or censored or sued because that has got a chilling and rippling effect across our industry.

Qaanitah Hunter (18:36.952)
you

Melissa Aarskaug (18:39.454)
Yeah, I like what you said too. I think we all have opinions and we all might not agree on each other’s opinions, but respecting those opinions for what they are and just, I disagree and that’s that, but you’re right. Just having a safe place and, and able to have your own voice to speak your truth based on the facts that you find and the people you talk to. Quinta, I love, yeah, please.

Katy Katopodis (19:02.576)
And I do want to add, I’m so sorry, Melissa, I just want to come in and add very quickly to say with freedoms come responsibilities. And of course the onus is on us as editors, running newsrooms, particularly when it comes to training and mentoring younger journalists to ensure that we are responsible and that we do follow the basic tenets of journalism, that we are ethical in our reporting, that we are truthful, that we are unbiased, that we offer things like right of reply.

Qaanitah Hunter (19:24.891)
Thank you.

Katy Katopodis (19:31.107)
So it’s one thing to talk about freedoms and we are great advocates, I think all four of us on this platform for media freedom, but it does come with an enormous amount of responsibility and we’ve got to be even more responsible than ever as journalists in order to ward off any of these verbal attacks.

Melissa Aarskaug (19:52.16)
Yeah, and see other people’s perspective. I love that you said that. I’m glad you added that because I think it’s, you know, I might have a perspective about something and I have it experiences that have brought me to where I am in my life today. And I haven’t been and seen other sides of the globe and I don’t see their perspectives because I’m living in my own kind of knowledge bubble. And so I love that you mentioned it’s a really good point. One of my favorite words is fearless.

And you have received awards for fearless reporting. And I’m curious. I know the word fearless, if you’re fearless, sometimes there’s backlash with being a fearless person and having opinions about things. So I’m curious, have you ever faced any backlash for your work or how, you know, how do journalists balance, you know, truth telling with personal safety to get the point across?

Katy Katopodis (20:26.155)
Thank

Katy Katopodis (20:35.204)
.

Qaanitah Hunter (20:51.829)
Yeah, so years ago, I was part of a cohort of investigative journalists that were basically digging into the former president and his group of lieutenants that were essentially pillaging the state. So these were corrupt business people, these were corrupt politicians, and it was, and in a way to combat the scrutiny, the public scrutiny that they were facing at the time, they had paid a huge multinational

Katy Katopodis (21:00.162)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (21:23.255)
firm to come up with and orchestrate a social media campaign to rubbish the reporting but also to personally attack, to de-de legitimize the journalists. And so that was probably the worst of it because I was very young and to kind of have your face because they realized, a lot of politicians have now realized, people who are on the wrong side of the law in many ways.

Katy Katopodis (21:29.154)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (21:48.926)
that they don’t have to come to your house with a gun to intimidate you. They can intimidate you while you’re in the safety of your home through social media. And so cyber harassment has been something that I’ve faced for the better part of the decade, to the point where at some point I was body shamed, at some point faced threats. My picture was photoshopped on pornography, as was a few other prominent…

Katy Katopodis (21:55.381)
.

Qaanitah Hunter (22:16.631)
female journalists in South Africa who were investigating the former president’s attack. And since then, there has been this persistent approach that every research done over the elections by a media monitoring Africa, which is an NGO, that said that, you know, of the 10 top, the 10 journalists that have been harassed the most in South Africa, most of them are women. You know, I was one of them.

Katy Katopodis (22:20.801)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (22:43.282)
And so it’s like you’re constantly targeted because it almost doesn’t matter what you’re reporting because you are an irritation, you’re deemed to be an irritation because of this constant and persistent search for the truth. And so I’ve become a lot more outspoken. think that has enabled me to kind of use my own experience to help other people, to speak out about Saibumbu Sardony.

Katy Katopodis (22:50.551)
you

Qaanitah Hunter (23:13.083)
but also to understand this new phenomenon because you can’t deal with something if you don’t understand it. And so cyber misogyny is the new form of harassment. That before you would be, know, death threats and envelopes, threatening letters would be sent to your door. Now people can threaten you from bot accounts that can be only linked to some random bot factory in Eastern Europe or wherever it may be. And so…

The idea here is to take personal experience, and that’s essentially what I hope to do, and morph it into something positive that can help our colleagues to say, this is what I’ve experienced, the worst of it, the most extreme of it. What can we do to aid, foolproof the system in many ways, and try to protect journalists from similar abuse, but also to…

Katy Katopodis (23:48.747)
.

Qaanitah Hunter (24:08.048)
to change what we accept as normal.

Katy Katopodis (24:12.063)
So,

Melissa Aarskaug (24:15.23)
Yeah, first of all, thank you for sharing that and thank you for the good work you do as not only being a fearless female, but helping in flipping the narrative and helping others in a way that, you know, you’re teaching them what you’ve gone through and kind of turning and flipping the narrative. So I guess for any of our listeners, I’m kind of a second question for you. Just maybe any quick like tips for women that are in journalism or

Katy Katopodis (24:41.79)
Okay.

Melissa Aarskaug (24:43.336)
speaking when they do have this happen to them, like what are some tips that you want to leave them with?

Qaanitah Hunter (24:51.471)
The most important thing is to understand that it does have a consequence on your mental health and that your mental health eventually impacts media freedom. So if you don’t take care of your mental health, eventually you will self-censor, you will do the job of harassing yourself and you will self-censor or if not, just leave the space entirely. And so the first thing is that acknowledgement of the enormity and the consequence of cyber misogyny, of online harassment.

Katy Katopodis (24:57.7)
you

Katy Katopodis (25:03.005)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (25:21.194)
that we face. The second is to develop good social media hygiene in the sense of how do you interact with people? How do your times, how do you relate to, know, are you spending precious time before you go to bed on Twitter where that provides absolutely no value to it? Have you put in safety mechanisms online where it filters out what you can and you cannot see?

The third thing is to understand mental wellbeing as a wellness endeavor. So just like we as journalists would be prepared in terms of our physical safety. If I was going to a protest, I’ll remember Katie’s voice in my ear and I will know what to do and I’ll be safe. But we don’t have that similar account. So the understanding how wellness

Katy Katopodis (26:01.328)
you

Qaanitah Hunter (26:16.461)
makes you a better journalist. so that orientation that to be a good journalist I need to be operating on two to four hours of sleep, must eat, drink black coffee and smoke 10 cigarettes a day, that stereotype has to be broken in the sense that to do your job, to have the mental fortitude to do what you do and the resilience to do what you need to do, you have to be as healthy as possible. And the only way

Katy Katopodis (26:28.283)
So, thank

Qaanitah Hunter (26:45.62)
that’s possible is to be preemptive about it. so I say mental wellness is, so you say it’s not about waiting until you are tact and trolled on social media, already inculcate good social media habits so that you are galvanized and protected when things happen.

Katy Katopodis (26:57.786)
Okay.

Melissa Aarskaug (27:09.0)
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. agree. Judy, as someone who’s worked in the newsroom, I just want to get your perspective on how can media protect both the press’s freedom as well as ethical standards with reporting.

Judy Sandison (27:28.455)
What I’ve tried to do over the years is empower my journalists, but also try to stop the problem at source almost. And heading back a bit of a way to 1996, I was leading the radio news and current affairs team for KwaZulu-Natal, which was providing news to over six million listeners from the province. But we were in the midst of political violence. We’ve had the successful 1994 first democratic elections.

But then we had the first local government elections and there several political parties that were warring and killing each other in the province. And my journalists were getting in the way. And I was having meetings, individual meetings with different party leaders. And then I also decided to have a group meeting with all the party leaders at once. And I said that this has got to stop. People are trying to bribe my journalists, threaten them, drive through them at rallies, shoot at them, and to put several into a hotel. So I said to them,

Katy Katopodis (27:59.769)
you

Judy Sandison (28:27.702)
I had set up an NGO forum of peace committee people and human rights activists and women’s rights activists and I took this problem to them and we brainstormed and I said to the politicians, we’ve come up with this idea that we need a code, of conduct for not only for the media because the media we will agree to uphold good journalism at all times, professional and ethical. But you, you as politicians, you must agree to a code of conduct to working with the media that you will not arrest them. You will not

Katy Katopodis (28:27.768)
I’m

Judy Sandison (28:56.038)
get them targeted. will not speak their names at rallies and get their supporters to attack reporters. And you know, they actually signed the code of conduct I drafted. It lasted for three months through the elections. And then I thought, wow, we threw a very bad part of our political history. We now got a democracy, things have calmed down. But blow me down and think a little later, we now, I’ve now updated the code, working with the Independent Electoral Commission.

Qaanitah Hunter (29:08.319)
Yes.

Bye.

Judy Sandison (29:23.406)
to bring in all these things, the cyber bullying, the trolling, the, you know, so much. And we did take it, last elections in May last year, we worked with the independent commission and we got a lot of support actually from various leaders and political parties as well. And actually for the first time in many years, we had very few incidents of really horrid harassment of journalists in that week of the elections voting and results in that. But the problem is,

Qaanitah Hunter (29:23.72)
Thanks

Katy Katopodis (29:28.183)
Okay.

Okay.

Judy Sandison (29:52.877)
seems to come in not so much with the national elections, but more with local government where feelings run very high. And we’re putting that in place now for our next local government elections. So what I’m saying is, it’s so important what Cornelia is talking about, the kind of experiences you have as a reporter can be very damaging. And two, we need to help each other with tools and help our reporters with the tools to cope with that and to counter it.

Qaanitah Hunter (30:01.159)
You’re putting us in press.

Katy Katopodis (30:12.298)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (30:19.79)
But also as Sanif as an organization, we’re working to try and reduce the incidents from the other side, if you like. You by liaising directly with the politicians, a lot of them who do that. We also found a lot of taxi owners were threatening community journalists, young women getting threatened that if you do the story on my shooting up this taxi route to get it, shooting my opposition, then we will come to your house, you know, and we’ll attack you and kill your children, et cetera.

Qaanitah Hunter (30:29.671)
I’m not sure many people have been the politicians or the government. I’m sure how many people have been by the I’m I’m I’m not I’m not many been I’m not sure how government. I’m not sure I’m sure how many the I’m not sure been

Katy Katopodis (30:32.565)
you

Judy Sandison (30:49.761)
So it’s very broad, it’s not just political, it’s people who feel free to attack the media. And that’s why we have to get the message across why the media is important to every citizen, every person, and to empower them to make informed choices. And secondly, to try and stop problems that source as best we can. We’ll never stop them, but we can reduce them. So it’s a multi-pronged approach we’re trying to do. Help the safety, to promote the safety and wellness of

of journalists and Katie can talk more about the other strategies we’ve been doing as Sanif and also to try and stop things at source, but also making a lot of us, whenever there’s an attack on a journalist, we put out statements, we do interviews, we cause a big ruckus, even take someone to court if necessary. So we’ve got a multi-pronged attack to really try and defend our journalists and promote their wellbeing.

Katy Katopodis (31:29.524)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (31:45.332)
And that helps with media freedom. When the journalists feel strong, then they’re strong enough to expose corruption to go out and get the stories that need to be told.

Melissa Aarskaug (31:45.342)
Yeah, I think.

Qaanitah Hunter (31:48.005)
Thank

Thanks.

Katy Katopodis (31:52.382)
Okay.

Melissa Aarskaug (31:55.314)
Yeah, that kind of tees up what I was gonna talk about next is I’m a big believer and a big lover in diversity of perspective in all things. So not just gender diversity, but cultural diversity. I know diversity in journalism isn’t just about fairness. It really affects what stories get told, how they’re framed, what perspectives come in. And I feel like

Qaanitah Hunter (32:02.149)
is the water and the perspective and all of them.

Katy Katopodis (32:13.875)
Okay.

Melissa Aarskaug (32:24.52)
For my perspective, women and underrepresented groups and younger voices all play a really important part in shaping media and getting a really well-rounded diverse perspective on a subject. So Katie, wanna get, you’ve entered many, many journalists.

Qaanitah Hunter (32:31.205)
you

Melissa Aarskaug (32:44.274)
I want to get kind of your perspective and if you think the industry is becoming more inclusive or is there barriers that still exist with people’s perspective.

Katy Katopodis (32:55.922)
So I definitely think that barriers will always exist, regrettably. That’s just the world that we live in. And so we’ll always have some barriers. The onus, of course, as editors, is on us.

to ensure that we break those barriers down. So one of the things that I’ve been very, very deliberate about my entire career is ensuring that women in particular and female journalists are promoted to editorial positions, very senior positions in the newsroom, senior reporter positions. And I unashamedly say that it’s been my own personal strategy and it’s also ended up being the strategy

Qaanitah Hunter (33:12.036)
Thank you.

Qaanitah Hunter (33:33.284)
Thank

Katy Katopodis (33:37.27)
of the newsrooms that I’ve run. And dare I say they’ve been so successful. You know, when you’re quite deliberate and purposeful about doing that. So I think barriers will always exist. It’s our own mindsets though that need to change if we want those barriers to be broken down and to really make sure that we are giving opportunities to younger, brighter, more diverse.

Qaanitah Hunter (33:41.831)
And that’s of the video. Thanks for watching.

Qaanitah Hunter (33:57.271)
you

Katy Katopodis (34:05.873)
journalists who are coming up. And you know there comes a time in our careers and as editors where you’ve got to say I’m building the next generation of brilliant reporters in this country because if we don’t build that then what are we doing for the future of journalism? What is our media landscape going to look like? It’s going to weaken the more you know it’s going to weaken essentially if we don’t do it.

Qaanitah Hunter (34:11.658)
you

Katy Katopodis (34:33.4)
And I think by building the next and stronger generation of journalists, we’ve got to take a very holistic approach. You I grew up in a newsroom where I had an editor who threw a computer at somebody and who punched a wall next to somebody else’s face. that for me is nonsense. That’s just not the kind of editorial leadership that we have or need in our newsrooms right now. And, you know, I like to think that I lead in…

a way that encourages the heart, but also encourages people to get the very, very best out of them. And if we’re not going to look at it holistically, particularly when it comes to wellness, then we are doing our teams a disservice and we are letting our whole newsrooms down. Basically, I’ve got a reporter, if I’ve got time for a very, very quick anecdote, who has spent many weeks in an area, Melissa, called Stilfontein. Now this is a story that has just

Qaanitah Hunter (35:15.968)
Thank you.

Katy Katopodis (35:31.875)
gripped South Africa because it is hundreds of illegal miners who’ve occupied a mine, a disused mine in the country illegally. And they’ve been trapped underground in some instances. In other instances, they haven’t wanted to come up. And so it’s been this tug of war with these illegal miners underground and police and government above ground, you know, come up. No, we won’t give us ARVs. So it’s really been a

Qaanitah Hunter (35:52.64)
Katy Katopodis (36:01.496)
very intriguing story. One of the desperately worrying sides of the story is that some of the miners who came up spoke about instances, and wait for this, of cannibalism underground. And in doing a debrief with my reporter, whom I’d assigned there for several weeks, he spoke about the interviews that he was doing.

Qaanitah Hunter (36:10.707)
out.

Melissa Aarskaug (36:18.784)
Hmm.

Katy Katopodis (36:30.357)
and what these miners were telling him about frying and brying human flesh. Now, bry is a term that we use here for barbecue. It’s the equivalent to barbecuing in the States. And I can’t ignore that as an editor. I will be doing him and my entire team a great disservice if I ignore what he said. I’ve got to give him debriefs. I’ve got to get him to a place where he can speak about this.

Melissa Aarskaug (36:38.282)
Mmm.

Katy Katopodis (36:59.324)
And he mentioned that he was unable to eat red meat for a while because of what this person had told him. And so it’s our approach and how we approach our newsrooms and our reporters and how we are going to mentor and guide them into the next 10, 20 years of journalism. When we’ve moved aside, that is what is critical. And that is what editors need to be thinking about.

Qaanitah Hunter (37:17.737)
Thank

Katy Katopodis (37:27.562)
I don’t know that all of them are, I’m sure many of them are, but we really need to, as Sanis, say to our editorial teams, what are you doing to help guide, mentor, and grow in a very holistic way that is strengthening our industry?

Melissa Aarskaug (37:48.872)
Yeah, that’s an interesting story. I appreciate you sharing. I know one of the things that popped into my head was, I know one of the things that was really popular during this US election was women’s reproductive rights. And a lot of times there were male journalists talking about how things should be and who else better to talk about women’s reproductive rights than women, right? And so I want to get

Qaanitah Hunter (37:55.536)
you

Qaanitah Hunter (38:09.725)
Thank

Melissa Aarskaug (38:16.512)
Quinnita, your perspective on diversity and representation and the way political stories are covered, like how does that impact political stories from a woman’s perspective and having a diverse perspective?

Qaanitah Hunter (38:20.033)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (38:31.996)
Yeah, Melissa, the South African experience is phenomenal in that we have this really outstanding gender parity in newsrooms and in editorial. There’s something like 60 % of journalists are female and many of the big newsrooms in South Africa. So we have good representation of females. We don’t have good representation of females on an editor-in-chief level, which is very problematic.

very much a boys club. But we have surpassed many countries in the world, think also America in this regard, when it comes to that parity. And I don’t think it’s, it just happened overnight. I think it’s efforts from people like Joby and people like Katie that have kind of set up this environment where you have this gender parity. you know, without seeming pompous, representation in the newsroom is not our issue at this point.

Katy Katopodis (39:05.29)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (39:29.615)
But that doesn’t mean you don’t have diversity issues. What are the diversity issues? Is why the voices that we quote in general in our stories, right, it’s male dominated news. Secondly, the experience of women, it’s a woman in terms of head count, they may be parity or they may be a bit more, but in terms of benefits, in terms of pay parity, but also in terms of access to

Katy Katopodis (39:34.921)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (39:58.794)
to big stories. That is where the struggle lies. And so it’s a second tier struggle for diversity and for gender empowerment. I think that I really power when I walk into any news from South Africa to see young and old, to see the mix of type of people. It’s not normal for at one desk to have a woman in hijab

Katy Katopodis (40:12.72)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (40:27.711)
you know, a transgender woman and, you know, the most butch white looking white man, you know, bodybuilder sitting and being best of friends. That’s the representation of the South African experience, but also the South African newsroom experience. But that alone, the face of it is not enough. There has to be greater, you know, especially what this is the reason why

Katy Katopodis (40:33.768)
Okay.

.

Qaanitah Hunter (40:56.963)
We are so passionate at Sanif to talk about cyber misogyny because women bear most. I have done stories where I have had bylines with male colleagues, but they have gotten zero abuse with the exact same story that their name led on that particular story. And all the abuse was bottled up and directed to me. And so when it comes to diversity, it’s this tiered approach to say, yes, we may have succeeded on the big picture.

Melissa Aarskaug (41:18.793)
Hmm.

Katy Katopodis (41:23.626)
you

Qaanitah Hunter (41:26.37)
But what happens now on the more everyday challenges that women face now doing the job.

Melissa Aarskaug (41:36.658)
Yeah, I love that you said that. think we’re getting there with full diversity and the US is definitely striving for that. But I would say I would agree we have some work to do on our end. Judy, I want to get kind of your thoughts on what is still missing in the conversation about representation in the newsroom.

Judy Sandison (42:00.83)
Yeah, we still have. We’ve come a long way. I mean, there was a time when I was the only woman editor in meetings out of about 60 editors. And, there, you know, I was, was complained that I talked too much just because I was talking a little bit more sometimes than they expected women to talk, guess. but it’s so great to see so many more women coming up. And the first thing I did was bring a lot more women into my newsroom when I became an editor.

Katy Katopodis (42:01.414)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (42:30.726)
Like we all have, but it’s not only that it’s the attitude we are going to have to keep being vigilant because for example, this is a big skewing of more urban stories than rural. There are so many stories out in rural areas that we just don’t get to the newsrooms don’t have the budget. There’s no time. There are too many breaking stories all the time. And, the stories that affect people’s lives, you know, for example,

And a rural area where children had to cross a raging river to get to school every day and they had drownings. And then when you do a TV story on that and expose it, then a bridge gets built. So that’s where the media can make a difference. And usually it affects the girl child more than anything, because girls are expected to stay home still in some rural households and clean or get married young, et cetera. So we’ve got a long way to go to tell a lot of the stories that are still missing.

Katy Katopodis (43:00.58)
Thank

Judy Sandison (43:27.025)
And the weight of big business and big politics is quite strong because they often breaking stories all around us. So it’s really up to us. And when we do things like Vox pops of the people always, always just say so important to get a wide range of men and women, young and old, and don’t just get those male voices that we used to hear all the time 40 years ago. And even now, if we’re not vigilant,

Katy Katopodis (43:44.259)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (43:53.915)
there’s a tendency to just overload panels, for example, with male voices. So we have to continue to be vigilant. We haven’t got everywhere. There’s still so many stories about violence against women, which is a terrible pandemic around the world and still is in South Africa. And we don’t tell enough stories that help women to get their lives back in a way.

Qaanitah Hunter (44:00.107)
Thank

Katy Katopodis (44:14.242)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (44:21.315)
We don’t have enough rate crisis centers. We don’t have enough in the media about how to change attitudes, maybe, or how the media can help expose, expose these trends and, and looking at, at how the boy child is raised, you know, there’s so much more we can do to really have a more democratic society. Women have the voice that they deserve because a lot of the time,

Women’s voices. I mean we had a focus in our annual general meeting about 15 years ago how to engender the media and it was shocking that only 17 % of the voices quoted across media at that time were women’s voices and you know, we haven’t got a long way ahead past that yet and still you’re going to get we still get we did glass ceiling surveys not that long ago

Qaanitah Hunter (45:07.059)
Thank you.

Judy Sandison (45:16.971)
Women in New Zealand still getting abuse from other colleagues or their bosses. Sexual harassment is still an issue. So these are all things we have to make women aware of, make sure they’re empowered to deal with them and counter them, and have systems in place to help reduce the incidents. So in terms of gender, we still have a way to go, both in reflecting the stories of many women and their struggles and their successes.

Qaanitah Hunter (45:42.205)
presenting the story of the day rolling. think I’m going go send these to the teachers.

Katy Katopodis (45:43.617)
Okay.

Judy Sandison (45:46.443)
and also with the newsrooms themselves to make sure women can really blossom to their full potential.

Melissa Aarskaug (45:54.174)
Yeah, that’s really, that’s really great. I appreciate you sharing that kind of in the last few minutes, I want to get each of your thoughts about maybe quickly the future of journalism. Any, if you have any thoughts how AI and technology is going to reshape journalism. know I often wonder is the AI tool is going to replace some of the journalism myself. And so any final thoughts, Katie, let’s start with you before we close up.

Qaanitah Hunter (45:55.0)
for all of us.

Katy Katopodis (46:22.366)
So my final thoughts, think Melissa follows, you everybody talks about a news cycle and it’s the world over, it’s newsrooms the world over. I refer to it as a news cyclone. And I refer to that particularly in the context of South Africa because the news stories that we have

Qaanitah Hunter (46:23.984)
Thank you.

Qaanitah Hunter (46:30.864)
So thank

Katy Katopodis (46:41.747)
have like the cyclone effect. We really go from one big breaking story to the next and like a cyclone, it just sweeps you up. the reality is that’s not going to end. We now add AI into that mix. And that also becomes a part of the cyclone. There is so much that we are dealing with. So whether it is our very dramatic stories and South Africa has regrettably got very high incidence of

and corruption and we are on a daily basis reporting on that as media houses. And so we’re getting swept up in this news cycle. We add technology and AI into it. So I think the future needs to be about somehow slowing down the eye of the storm. It’s somehow, despite the eye of the storm, slowing it down just a little bit and taking cognizance so we can do

deeper and better stories because if we’re just being swept up in this and moving from story to story to story hour after hour after hour and I work in a radio newsroom at the moment and and you know as the editor in chief of a radio newsroom your deadlines are hourly and so you run the risk of that but being able to say let’s give our stories more depth so that our audience gets proper meaning and understanding

Qaanitah Hunter (47:51.439)
Thank

Katy Katopodis (48:04.764)
And let’s look at what AI is going to do to our industry because it’s a huge thing. You know, in the past 24, 48 hours, DeepSeek has become a huge talking point in South Africa, the world over. So that’s what I hope that we can do going forward, is being able to say, I’m going to get out of the eye of the storm, of this news cyclone, and I’m going to see what quality journalism I can do that’s going to add value to our

consumers in the country while at the same time enriching our newsroom and the media landscape.

Melissa Aarskaug (48:44.03)
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. Quinteta, do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?

Qaanitah Hunter (48:50.51)
I think artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence has already taken a hold in how we do things and that we can’t be having a conversation about whether we use it or we don’t use it. It’s already there. It’s already in transcription. It’s already in editing. We’re already using it terms of automating so many parts of the news production cycle.

What AI does is that it ought to be the tool that makes things better. As technology, know, back in the day you would physically go and search a word in a dictionary and then there was spell check, you know. And so the idea that it’s the scary thing that we don’t know about takes away from the fact that we need to evolve and that journalism as a whole, systems of journalism need to change to use this to enhance efficiency.

so that we are able then to do, because it will never replace what we do, good journalism. And I think that the decline of legacy media was not entirely because of big tech, but also because we lost sight of good journalism. And so now, this kind of low-hanging, cute, mediocre journalism, there’s no place for it in a competitive world enhanced by AI.

And so I think what you, I’m excited to see new forms of storytelling. I’m excited to see how we are able to use technology to enable someone in droodal Eastern Cape to tell their story or how already, imagine, illegal miners at the bottom of a mine where they were kind of blocked out for days and weeks and weeks were able to film their environment and send that.

Katy Katopodis (50:18.566)
Okay.

Qaanitah Hunter (50:46.984)
video out to reporters. So I’m really excited at the possibilities. I think that there’s a whole conversation around ethics. And if we stop resisting it, we’re able to then embrace and understand and say, this is how it helps us. This is how it harms us, like anything in the world. And so how then are we better prepared versus this kind of we wake up one day and the world has changed and we have it.

Katy Katopodis (50:49.626)
Okay.

Melissa Aarskaug (51:17.128)
Yeah, that’s great. Judy, any final thoughts as we close up?

Judy Sandison (51:22.247)
Yes, I think the biggest challenge is going to be to prioritize stories that really have an impact on the audience, on the audience, on people’s lives directly, because the AI stories are the ones that sort of everyone gets, if you like, and there’s nothing new about them that they regurgitated a lot. So sometimes, well, often, because they go on different platforms and et cetera. So I think the challenge is, again,

Katy Katopodis (51:47.064)
It’s

Judy Sandison (51:51.088)
What what Katie and can you say quality journalism? I turn is that really speaks to people and gets to their hearts and souls and is meaningful for them. So we’ve got to choose the right stories to cover because you can’t cover everything and maybe I will take the grind out of the sort of average everyday story that people need to get like the pet price going up and down. But then the real stories will be okay. How is it affecting people? How does this affect people on the ground?

Let’s hear their stories and really getting original stories. think originality, truth-based originality is going to be the absolute key.

Melissa Aarskaug (52:30.408)
Yeah, I love that. Thank you ladies so much for all the hard work you guys do and your knowledge. You’re super busy. I appreciate you being here and sharing with our listeners. And that’s the executive connect podcast.

Katy Katopodis (52:30.872)
you