Even though we live in a globalized world, media coverage often fails react to reflect this. Global journalism responds to these shortcomings through an approach to reporting that explores, analyses and reflects on the relations and interconnections between people and events in different parts of the planet.

All too often in the media, there is a hard distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ news, despite the fact that we live in an ever more globalized world. The global issues we face cannot be covered accurately from either a ‘domestic’ or ‘foreign’ perspective alone. It means that journalism “requires a major change in serving the public,” as Stephen Ward puts it.

Ward speaks about the globally-minded journalism ethics to serve the changing world that journalism inhabits. He explains that “global journalism ethics holds that transnational principles of human rights and social justice take precedence over personal interests and national interests, when they conflict”. Putting the global community, one global whole, to the forefront and the centre of attention.

Similar assumptions seen and reflected from diverse theoretical perspectives have in the last decade and further been challenged by a number of prominent media theorists, including Peter Berglez, Simon Cottle, Shani Orgad, aforementioned Stephen Ward and many others.

While some newsrooms have a ‘global news’ section,  this is not the same as ‘global journalism’. What the latter describes is not necessarily a greater emphasis on international rather than domestic issues, but a fundamentally different approach to reporting and editorial practice when covering the same stories, founded on intercultural communication, global imagination and a shift in narration.

Issues such as migration, climate change, industrial pollution, tax evasion and many others simply cannot be accurately grasped and analyzed through a narrow lens. Long-sighted vision cannot see local issues clearly, just as a near-sighted perspective cannot glimpse international issues. But what about a different journalistic vision, bringing together the foreign and local at the same time? This is what is meant by a global outlook in reporting.