The journalist is in Portugal, at the invitation of the US ambassador, Randi Charno Levine, as part of the commemoration of 'Women´s History Month'.

"There are two big challenges facing journalism right now," she says, noting as "number one" the fact that local newspapers are closing "and local news is running out."

In the United States "we call it a news desert where local newspapers no longer cover cities", continues the journalist.

"And there are statistics that show that when city councils or legislatures are not covered by local journalists, municipal bond ratings go down because reporters aren't there to hold local government accountable," argues Jennifer Griffin.

Therefore, "the changing news landscape, where it is not financially viable to have reporters reporting fearlessly and holding government officials accountable, is a problem", underlines the Fox News Channel (FXC) journalist.


Disinformation


And the fact that there are countries "where journalists are no longer safe, be it China, Russia or Iran or Afghanistan" and where "we don't know what's going on there", that "allows autocrats to use disinformation to basically lie to their audiences", who, in this way, "do not know what is really happening in the world".

"Disinformation and the proliferation of publics who don't know the difference between truth and fiction and are being manipulated by Putin and other world leaders who don't want them to know the truth, that is the greatest danger facing the world and democracies right now", concludes the journalist.

Jessica Griffin says she never felt that being a female journalist stopped her from doing her job. Asked what advice she would give to a young journalist, she argues that the first thing is to go into the field.

"I never like to tell young people that it is more dangerous to be a journalist now than when I started", because at the time it was dangerous, but now, after the decapitation of journalist Daniel Pearl and the fact that the journalist is often the target, things changed for the worse."

"When Al-Qaida started murdering journalists in front of cameras for propaganda purposes or in Serbia, during the Yugoslav war, where they were targets, everything became very dangerous ", she stresses.

Journalists "are targeted in conflict zones. That's why I hate to tell young people to go" to conflict zones, but "that's where you make careers, that's where you can be a witness" to history.

However, she would "tell young women" to follow whatever story they are interested in.