Thanks for the question question.  To answer we went straight to the...
I'm David Tregde and this is what it's been like to work in news during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I've been a working video editor for about ten years doing everything from short films
to marketing videos and documentaries but for thelast two years I've been working for
TEGNA one of the biggest media
organizations in the country that serves
about 39 percent of TV watching
households.
Specifically I've been working for the VERIFY brand which is a group of fact-checkers that serves all
50 plus stations in the TEGNA family.
But when it first started it was just me
and one journalist - Jason Puckett.
Hi I'm Jason and this is Verify.
He hosts the Verify videos, writes articles for the stations to share and generally keeps
the show going
sometimes through sheer force of will.
In the first few months of 2020 we actually hired for researchers
Originally these researchers were hired to help with the
2020 election season
But then the COVID-19 pandemic happened
When COVID-19 started snowballing through the United States
our viewer request inbox went
from, you know, a handful of requests per week
to a few dozen a day.
Initially we were cutting two videos a day just to try to meet demand.
We had so many
viewers asking so many questions
because information was just flying around like crazy.
Our company instituted a work from home policy.
Now for me and Jason this was relatively easy because we're used to working in remote situations.
But for a lot of people in news this was a
complete change from anything they were used to.
So every morning during the
pandemic I have come out to my garage,
set up the lights, formatted the cards
for the camera, checking lights sound, all that.
Even dealing with noisy upstairs
neighbors.
...coronavirus causing you to lose your sense of taste, smell or both.
Was that in there?  Hello neighbors!
Usually about half way through the day, we've picked our topic, Jason's got a script, we've gotten it approved by
our managers, and we're shooting the video.
From there, I've got three or four hours to edit everything together.
Now Jason will usually source all of the links and documents that we'll need to
show our work, so to speak,
and then I will animate those things, add in others, and any other b-roll that we can use to highlight the facts.
That all sounds easy enough, but on the time crunch and we got people asking
"When's it coming? When's it coming? When's it coming?"
It can get really stressful really quickly
trying to make sure this video gets out
accurately and on time.
Just the pace of day-in day-out creating content that's
affecting every American and
a lot of people around the world is really stressful.
The amount of pressure we feel to deliver this content
accurately and timely is...
it's just been insane.
So it's been really disheartening to go around
Twitter and Facebook and see strangers
and acquaintances talking about "the
media" as if we're all in this together
and we're trying to incite a panic.
While I can only speak for myself,
I can tell you there is no grand plan; there's no conspiracy to just incite panic in the public.
We see the facts and we deliver
them to you as quickly and accurately as
we can, and that's it, from us anyways. 
 There's nothing about what we do that has any malicious intent.
We're just trying to keep the internet honest.
I'm not an idealist when it comes to
journalism I never planned to go into news.
When I first went to school for
filmmaking, I thought I was going to be
making thrillers and blockbuster sci-fi
movies.  That that was my goal.
But as I started getting into documentary and
doing more real-life kind of projects,
I got drawn into this world.
I'll also say that the more I do this job,
the more I realize how little I know about
everything from technology and science
to politics.  There's just so much in the
world that's not as black and white as
the internet wants you to believe.  And
the more I see,
the more I realize how much gray there is and how much have to address things with caution
and nuance.  I believe everything in the
universe happens for a reason and so
once COVID-19 and this pandemic is just
a memory,
I hope that I can keep living my life remembering that nothing is as simple as it seems.
At the end of the day we're all
just human trying to survive and hopefully thrive.
