Unauthorized street vending is a reality in the daily life of many Catalan municipalities. According to SOS Racisme, a Catalan NGO, street vendors experience racism and abuse of authority. The NGO worked together with the digital newspaper Catalunya Plural to provide an alternative vision to the widespread prejudices that surround unauthorized street vending. The goal of the project, ‘Vide mantera’, was to analyse the causes and consequences of this phenomenon from a global justice perspective.

Their cooperation resulted in a series of for reports and a documentary, ‘Plegar la manta’, which was broadcasted in prime-time on Televisió de Catalunya, the main public TV channel.

A story is born
The collaboration was strong and fruitful for both the NGO and the journalists. It gave SOS Racisme a greater knowledge of how media work: how a story is “born” and written and how journalists choose their sources of information. They were surprised about how the communication of the same topic can be very different from an NGO perspective and a media perspective. They also valued being present in the report as an expert voice on the issue depicted, and they valued the possibility of having an impact on how the information was framed.

Beyond the media dynamics
According to the journalists, the collaboration with NGO allowed them to overcome the traditional media dynamics (breaking news, emergencies) and make space for the news about a topic and an approach that – without the collaboration with an NGO – would have hardly been possible. Their links with NGOs allowed them access to primary sources of information, such as direct testimonies from the street vendors. Moreover, throughout the project, they journalists used terms as ‘unauthorized’ instead of ‘illegal’, to avoid negative connotations and criminalization of street vendors. In addition, they used images that depicted them as active, empowered and determined.