Who we are ?
Global South Watch is a digital news portal dedicated to Africa and the wider Global South. We bring together journalists, correspondents, columnists, and experts based across the continent and in the diaspora.
Mainstream media’s coverage of the Global South is deeply inadequate. All too often, it averts its collective eyes from events in the South, but even when it does pay attention, it provides a deeply skewed picture. When reporting on Africa, it gives disproportionate attention to political instability, coups, corruption, and natural disasters. When it reporting on India and Latin America, it focuses excessively on extreme poverty and violence. And in West Asia, it too often follows conventional narratives of religious fanaticism, revenge, and war. Its coverage tends to be driven by Western geopolitical interests. As a result, it perpetrates stereotypes of the Global South as dysfunctional and helpless.
Global South Watch seeks to remedy this imbalance. Without neglecting the real challenges that the global South faces, it provides more meaningful, constructive coverage.
--It highlights social context, focusing on underlying structural issues.
--It reports on positive developments and on social and economic advances .
--It relies where possible on local researchers and journalists.
Global South Watch participates in the growing effort to decolonize media, that is, it goes outside Western-centric viewpoints to amplify the voices of the marginalized and powerless, and highlight independent, alternative views and overlooked perspectives. We are guided by, and we promote, humane values to strengthen society and bridge peoples and communities.
We highlight cultural diversity and support democratic principles, human rights, and environmental consciousness and action. In so doing, we continue the legacy of TOWARD FREEDOM, a news and analysis publication established in 1952 that covered global politics, protest movements, and human rights issues from a progressive perspective.
OUR EDITORIAL BOARD
Global South Watch was established by a group of U.S.-based journalists, academics, activists based in Burlington, Vermont, and Lincoln, Pennsylvania.
Eric Agnero, ex-journalist for CNN and Voice of America; former consultant for the African Union. Native to Côte d’Ivoire.
Janet Biehl, book editor, author, and activist with the Kurdish freedom movement. Native to the United States.
Gnaka Lagoke, founding member of the Ivorian Journalists Association, assistant professor of history at Lincoln University. Native to Côte d’Ivoire.
Robin Lloyd, former publisher and editor of Toward Freedom. Native to the United States.