Using WhatsApp as a Journalistic Tool
The rise of encrypted end-to-end messaging systems has become a valuable tool for journalists around the world, especially those living in countries with very low press freedom indexes or, in a timely manner, who are living in a country under siege and do not have access to the normal channels of communication they would otherwise. Some of these apps – Signal, Telegram, Discord, and other independent messaging apps – are also used where phone lines are unavailable, either because phone service is unreliable, or because the government has them under surveillance.
WhatsApp, while similar to these platforms, comes with its own unique tools and challenges. WhatsApp has over 2 billion users – meaning close to 1/4th of the world has the app available to them.
Consumers have increasingly relied on WhatsApp for news. In fact, since 2014, the amount of people using WhatsApp primarily for news has almost tripled. “Much of the public does not feel it can trust the news, especially in countries with highly polarized politics and where many media are vulnerable to undue economic or political influence,” says Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, of the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
If the public has naturally selected to learn its news from this app because of how much safer and less polarized it is, it becomes our job as journalists to safeguard those tenets.
ATTRACTIVE FEATURES TO JOURNALISTS
WhatsApp features end-to-end encryption in chats. That means every piece of information contained in the chat is protected: photos and videos sent through the app will not be able to be accessed by a third party. Same for voice memos, which is what most journalists say they find to be the most useful feature of WhatsApp. "I use it a lot, especially in covering the news in Yemen as it is hard to get a clean phone line there. I end up sending the questions on WhatsApp and get the answers back in text or voice,” says Amjad Tadros, a CBS reporter in Amman, Jordan.
WhatsApp is also connected to a number of “channels” that send alerts based on the country they are set up in. For example, connecting with Bloomberg|Quint on the app will provide daily updates and news stories. Other countries have news channels that are not monetized, but aim to fill the gaps that their country may be suppressing.
WhatsApp, as a single source, also keeps a lot of information in one place and can absolutely make or break deadlines as a journalist gathers more and more data, interview responses, and real-time developments for their stories. It makes getting this information and securing it extremely simple.
But there are some things to be cautious of as well.
CAUTION WHEN USING
One of the biggest drawbacks of WhatsApp is that there is no guarantee you know who you are talking to on the other end. "This was especially the case in Syria since access was an issue. Journalists would contact someone who claimed to be in a certain area. There is no way to prove that they were in that area,” said Nabih Bulos, staff foreign correspondent in the Middle East for the Los Angeles Times.
Safety is guaranteed on WhatsApp only if both parties have a common goal toward protecting and uplifting the truth, which sadly is not always the case. Not only does Bulos say you can be tricked into some “really dumb reporting” over the app, but you could be getting false information or being tracked by an opposing agent.
Safety on WhatsApp is only guaranteed while the journalist or the other party are the sole persons with access to that phone and that conversation. WhatsApp offers a number of security mitigations, including face ID and complicated passcodes, but being aware of the sensitivity of the information and taking steps to protect it, both for you and your source’s sake, is tantamount to safety when using this valuable resource.
All this is to say that WhatsApp is a great resource but as expected, not a panacea. Some of the most basic steps that we all have to take in our daily journalistic practice apply just as much, if not more, to these newer resources, especially as they begin to draw attention from the public. Once the landscape on these apps begins to shift, so too must our reporting methods.
