Love, publicly...

Why empathy, language, and responsibility matter more than ever before.

Photograph: Canva

Text: Lyndsay Jensen

Dear Readers, Valentine’s Day usually invites us to think small and personal. Romantic love. Private moments. Quiet gestures exchanged behind closed doors. But this year, love feels bigger than that. It feels public.

The world feels tense. Conversations feel sharper. Empathy often seems to disappear the moment power or politics enter the room. Writing this as an international, I keep returning to the same thought: love today is less about sentiment and more about responsibility. How we speak matters. Who we respect matters. Who we dismiss matters. And right now, those choices feel impossible to ignore.

When journalism and free speech are under pressure

Journalism has changed since I began my publishing journey in the 90s. News moves faster than reflection. Outrage travels further than nuance. Algorithms reward certainty and extremes, while care and complexity are often treated as weaknesses.

At the same time, freedom of expression itself is under strain in more places than we like to admit. Around the world, governments and powerful institutions are tightening their grip on speech. Laws that once protected resistance are being reinterpreted to punish it. Platforms and public squares are shrinking. Voices that once felt free to speak are increasingly muted - through legal pressure, social intimidation, or cultural backlash.

This matters because free speech isn’t just a legal clause. It is the oxygen that allows journalism to function. It allows difficult stories to be told. When journalists face retaliation or the media is pressured into caution, the public loses access to honest reporting. And when that happens, trust erodes - quietly, but profoundly.

We won’t look away. We won’t cheer when journalists, voices, or movements are pushed off a stage they never asked to stand on. This moment in history calls for journalism that understands tone as power, context as responsibility, and humanity as non-negotiable.

When countries are spoken about carelessly

Recent comments from the USA President and his administration about Greenland and Denmark unsettled me - not because political disagreement is new, but because of how casually places and people were spoken about.

When nations or territories are framed as assets, leverage, or deals to be negotiated, something essential is lost. Greenland is not an abstract idea. It is not a bargaining chip. It is a place where people live full lives, where culture, language, history, and identity are carried forward every day.

When language reduces a place to usefulness, dignity is the first thing stripped away. And once people are spoken about as objects, it becomes easier to ignore their voices altogether. That should concern all of us.

“We are not ready to sit and be quiet. We have to speak up.” - Jane Fonda, Actor and Activist.

Living inside the conversation as an international

Living in a country you were not born in heightens your awareness of these moments. Being an international often means constant adjustment - learning new systems, reading unfamiliar social cues, and making an effort to show respect for the country you live in while making sure there is room for who you already are and what you bring to the table.

There is pride in that work, but there is also exposure that comes with vulnerability. Your presence can feel visible, sometimes questioned. That awareness shapes how global conversations about borders, ownership, and power land in your body. You listen more closely to who is being spoken about, rather than spoken with.

What internationals actually bring

It matters to say this clearly: internationals do not arrive empty-handed. We bring professional experience shaped elsewhere. Education is formed in different systems. Cultural understanding that comes from navigating more than one world at once.

These are not inconveniences to be managed. They are contributions. They are value.

I often think about this in the context of a great recipe. A single spice has its own character, but when spices are combined thoughtfully, flavour deepens. Nothing is lost. Everything is intensified. Communities work the same way. When different backgrounds come together with openness and curiosity, the result is richer, more unbreakable, and more creative than anything produced in isolation.

The danger of national shortcuts

One of the most damaging habits in public discourse is our reliance on shortcuts. Danes are cold. Or welcoming. Americans are loud. Or generous. Entire countries are flattened into stereotypes and judged by their loudest voices or most extreme moments.

Many of us arrived somewhere new with assumptions, only to watch them dissolve through lived experience - through colleagues who challenged us, neighbours who surprised us, friendships that refused to fit the narrative.

No country is one thing. No culture can be captured by a single headline, a single administration, or a single news cycle. Judging a nation by its most visible conflicts is as limiting as judging a person by their worst day.

Why do we choose positive stories

At The International, we are often asked why we focus on positive stories. The assumption is that positivity means avoidance or denial. It does not. It is a decision about what we amplify.

We believe stories of connection, contribution, creativity, and inclusion are not distractions from reality. They are part of it. In a media environment saturated with fear and fracture, balance becomes a form of integrity.

This does not mean avoiding difficult conversations. Honest journalism must still confront harm, inequality, and uncomfortable truths. But it can do so without dehumanising. It can challenge power without flattening the people affected by it.

Choosing love, publicly

It is possible to critique language while still offering compassion. The United States is moving through a deeply divided and emotionally charged period. Many people there feel exhausted, uncertain, and unheard. That reality exists regardless of political position.

Sending love does not require agreement. It requires recognising shared humanity during moments of strain.

For me, love right now is intentional and public. It shows up in tone. In word choice. In refusing to reduce places like Greenland to talking points. It shows up in recognising internationals not as outsiders to be managed, but as people who actively shape the societies they move to.

It shows up in journalism that resists cynicism and insists that stories can still build rather than tear down.

This Valentine’s Day, I want love to reach beyond romance. I want it reflected in how we cover stories, how we speak, and how we listen. Because when we choose dignity over dismissal, we make the world feel less hostile - and far more human.

Standing together in peace and love,

Lyndsay Jensen

Editor-in-Chief & Founder