Giving Compass' Take:

• Krista Kapralos explains how the 'reliability gap' that opens when a non-local attempts to report in a context that they do not understand and reports information that is accurate but not true, because of improper interpretation. Local journalism avoids this problem.

• How can philanthropy support local journalism? How does the reliability gap impact our understanding of foreign affairs?

• Find out how place-based foundations are supporting local journalism.

My plane landed late at night in New Delhi on my first visit to India, so I was still groggy at 6 a.m. when the sound of shouting right outside my window jolted me awake.

Worried that something was amiss, I jumped out of bed and ran into the next room of the guesthouse where I was staying. Hours later, someone explained that the person shouting was a vegetable vendor announcing the day’s produce.

Even today, when I retell that story, I focus first on what I knew for sure was happening: Someone was shouting. That was accurate. But my understanding of the situation—that the shouting was a sign that something terrible was happening—wasn’t true.

It is possible for a piece of information to be accurate, but not true.

I could recount my experience with precise accuracy but I wasn’t a reliable compiler of facts because I didn’t understand the local context. In my culture, the sound of early-morning shouting is cause for alarm. I used that cultural norm as a standard for truth, casting that vegetable seller as a potentially-violent interloper.

At Global Press Journal, we call this the Reliability Gap.

When you speak the local language and understand local customs, the information you gather is filtered in a culturally appropriate way.

According to the World Bank, 36 percent of Kenyans live on less than $1.90 per day. But Global Press reporters there know that, in some areas, some thriving farmers own vast swaths of rich farmland and manage large herds of cattle. They eat what they grow and don’t spend even a dollar on most days. As one of our Kenyan reporters once asked, “Can we call them poor?” The World Bank’s poverty data asserts a narrative that neglects to consider the dignity of a life carried out in a mostly-cashless society.

Read the full article about local journalism by Krista Kapralos at Nieman Reports.