Jairo Lugo-Ocando

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Jairo Lugo-Ocando
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Jairo Lugo-Ocando (born 1968) is a Venezuelan-British academic author who writes about journalism, poverty and general media issues. He is best known for his work around the way the news media reports poverty, social exclusion and development. He is currently a Professor in Residence and Director of Executive and Graduate Education at Northwestern University, Qatar. His books include the recent titles 'the News Media in Puerto Rico. Journalism in Colonial Settings and in Times of Crises' (Routledge, 2020), 'Media & Governance in Latin America. Towards a Plurality of Voices' (Peter Lang, 2020) and 'Foreign Aid and Journalism in the Global South. A Mouthpiece for Truth' (Lexington Books, 2020). Before becoming an academic, he worked as a journalist, correspondent and news editor for several media outlets in Latin America and the United States.

Education and career

Lugo-Ocando studied in Venezuela at the Ciclo Combinado Udon Pérez high school in Maracaibo and from there went to study a Licentiate degree (equivalent to BA+MA) in Social Communication and Print Journalism at the University of Zulia in his home state. He worked at several newspapers in Venezuela, including as a reporter at Diario La Columna, correspondent of Economía Hoy, columnist in Diario Panorama, news editor at Diario Los Andes and later chief news editor at Diario La Verdad.

He has written for a variety of magazines and contributed to television and radio program as well as founder in 1995 of Diario del Lago, the first online daily news media in Venezuela. After years of practicing as a journalists and news reporter, he went to the United Kingdom where he first studied as a Master's in Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University with a Chevening scholarship and then he undertook a PhD at the University of Sussex in media Studies, where he also received a scholarship from that university.

In academia, he has worked in the UK as a scholar at Liverpool University, the University of Stirling, the University of Sheffield and at the University of Leeds , where he became the deputy-head of the School of Media and Communication. In 2018, he was recruited to Northwestern University for its Qatar campus, to design and develop their Master's and Executive Education programs.
Over the years, Lugo-Ocando has researched and published a variety of books, peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in different languages, where he discusses a variety of issues around media studies and journalism. Today he continues to be engaged with the mainstream news media as regular commentator of Al-Jazeera, columnist in several newspapers, while being the vice-president of Golfo Radio 98.3 FM radio in Qatar, which is the first free-to-air radio station in Spanish and Portuguese in the Middle East.

Body of work

Jairo Lugo-Ocando's work mostly debates the way news media represents issues around poverty, social exclusion and, more broadly in the international level, development. He has argued that generally speaking while the news media tends to cover poverty, it does so by presenting the manifestations of poverty rather than its root causes. This lack of structural analysis, he says, can be traced back to the deontology of journalism which embraces objectivity. In so doing, journalists refrain themselves from incorporating any type of language or narratives that could be seen as ideological. Moreover, he adds, it is often the case that poverty is either blamed upon the individuals themselves and the choices they made or upon natural causes.

Criticism

Scholarly debates have produced important criticism against Lugo-Ocando's thesis, including Toussaint Nothias own work that argues against the idea that news coverage of Africa remains detrimental. He highlights instead that news coverage about Africa has actually improved and is far more positive today that what many as Lugo-Ocando give credit for.

Other scholars such as Isabel Awad criticises Lugo-Ocando's deterministic approach and remind him and others that when it comes to reporting poverty, it is important to consider that journalists are 'sociological beings' with power and agency and that the production is not an inexorable process just defined by structure. Awad has made clear in her own work, that people in poverty and journalists are agents and that it is not possible to keep structure and agency as oppositional categories in the analysis.

Media Coverage

Lugo-Ocando remains very active in traditional and social media here is discussing his work and current affairs. Invited regularly to Al-Jazeera and other networks, he often talks about issues around power, poverty and the media. He continues to write for a diversity of publications and his columns have appear in Clarín_(Argentine_newspaper), The_Conversation_(website), among others.

Selected bibliography

Books

• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2020). Foreign Aid and Journalism in the Global South. A Mouthpiece for Truth. London: Lexington Books.
• Harkins, Steven & Jairo Lugo-Ocando. (2017). Poor News. Media Discourses of Poverty in Times of Austerity. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Lugo-Ocando, J. and Nguyen, An (2017). Developing News: Global Journalism and the Coverage of 'Third World' Development. London: Routledge.
• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2014). Blaming the Victim: How Global Journalism Fails those in Poverty. London: Pluto Press.

Selected peer reviewed journal articles

• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2019). Lugo-Ocando, J. (2020). The 'changing' face of media discourses on poverty in the age of populism and anti-globalisation: The political appeal of anti-modernity and certainty in Brazil. International Communication Gazette, 82(1), 101-116.
• Alaqil, Fisal and Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2019). Challenges and opportunities for teaching data and statistics within journalism education in Saudi Arabia: fostering new capabilities in the region. Journalism Education. Vol. 8, No. 2, pp 57-66.
• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2019). Poverty in the News Media: Continuities, Ruptures and Change. Reporting Socio-economic Inequality. Sociology Compass.
• Salar, Silvia Olmedo, and Jairo Lugo-Ocando (2018). "International Cooperation, Foreign Aid and Changes in Media Agenda: The Case of Voces." Journal of Latin American Communication Research 6.1-2.
• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2018). A Mouthpiece for Truth: Foreign Aid for Media Development and the making of journalism in the Global South. Brazilian Journalism Research (BJR). Vol. 14, No 2. Pages 414-431
• Harkins, Steven & Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2015) "How Malthusian Ideology Crept Back into the Newsroom: British tabloids and the coverage of the 'Underclass'", Critical Discourse Studies, Volume 12, Issue 4, 2015, pp. 1-16.
• Martinisi A, Lugo-Ocando J (2015). Overcoming the objectivity of the senses: Enhancing journalism practice through Eastern philosophies. International Communication Gazette. 77(5), 439-455.

Selected book chapters

• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo and Harkins, Steven (2022). Is the Objectivity Stupid! Why the Digital Revolution has meant so little for the voice of those in poverty in the Global South. In Milad, Noureddine. Global Media Ethics and the Digital Revolution: Contested Narratives and Conflicting Views. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2021). A Very Poor Watchdog: How the Political Economy of the Media continues to define the News Reporting of Inequality and Social Exclusion. In Borden, Sandra. Routledge Companion to Media and Poverty. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2021). Noticias, modernidad y discurso: Reflexiones para un nuevo modelo de periodismo latinoamericano. In Donot M, Serrano Y & Smouth E (Ed.) Medios y América Latina. Propiedad – Discurso – Recepción. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg.
• Pizarro, Marcela and Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2021). Digital dispatches from la Crónica Roja: Why Sensationalism and Crime still matters in the New Latin America Media Ecology. In Conboy, Martin and Eldridge, Scott (2021). Global Tabloid: Culture and Technology. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (2021). Changing Hegemony and Media Cesarism: Continuities and Changes in the News Media Landscape under the Chavismon. In Korin. Ezequiel P. Media Succumbs to Rising Authoritarianism: cautionary tales from Venezuela's recent histor. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo; Pizarro, Marcela; Brambilla, Julieta (2020). New Maquilas for old Powers? The (un)changing face of Latin America's Media in the Post-Pink-Tide era. In Orchard Rieiro, Maria Ximena, Sara García, Brambilla, Julieta and Lugo-Ocando, Jairo (Editors) (Forthcoming, 2020). Media & Governance in Latin America. Oxford: Peter Lang.
• Lugo-Ocando and Andrade, Gabriel (2019). Selling the Lottery to earn salvation: Why journalism practice needs to embrace risk to achieve effective humanitarian communication. In Lawrence, Michael and Tavernor, Rachel. Global Humanitarianism and Media Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Lugo-Ocando, Jairo and Lawson, Brendan (2017). Poor numbers, poor news: the ideology of poverty statistics in the media. In Nguyen N (Ed.). News, Numbers and Public Opinion in a Data-Driven World. London: Bloomsbury.

External links

Official site: Jairo Lugo-Ocando

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