At the 2026 Global South Journalists Workshop, an Angolan journalist shared his thoughts on why understanding a country’s civilization comes before telling its story. “If I don’t know very well the civilization of China, in my story, I can write there badly.” He pointed out that much fake news about other countries comes from writers who don’t truly understand how that civilization works. “First we want to know very well that people’s culture, that country’s culture, because many things that happened is influenced by the culture of that place.”