Maria Ressa: “Journalism research has no integrity if it endangers journalists at risk”

Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, who runs the independent news site Rappler in the Philippines and is a former Index Awards judge, has slammed the annual Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report on digital news for putting independent journalists like her at risk.

The Guardian has revealed that Ressa resigned from the board of the prestigious Oxford-based institution last year after it listed Rappler as the “least-trusted” news source in the Philippines. She had kept her resignation secret but has now gone public after RISJ failed to change its methodology for this year’s report.

She claimed the regime in the Philippines “weaponised” the Reuters report to attack the work of Rappler. In 2020, Ressa was found guilty of “cyberlibel” in a case relating to a Rappler story alleging links between a businessman and a top judge, even though its publication dated from before the legislation under which she was charged. The appeal is now before the Supreme Court. The authorities have also brought a number of other cyberlibel and alleged tax evasion cases against Ressa and she faces years in jail if convicted.

There could not be a more serious charge against RISJ than putting the brave journalists of Rappler at risk and Ressa’s concerns should be shared by every organisation working in the area of free expression. The digital survey is based on an extensive YouGov survey of attitudes amongst randomised participants in selected countries around the world. It has been funded to the tune of nearly £5m by the global information giant Google over the past three years. Ressa said the research failed to take full account of government disinformation campaigns and the influence of the tech platforms.

Ressa took to Twitter after RISJ issued the following apology: “We are sorry our work has been abused and Maria Ressa thinks our methodology risks undermining media in the Global South.”

In response, the author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator said: “It’s not enough to be sorry when your work is used to attack journalists in ‘inconvenient’ countries. Journalism research has no integrity if it endangers journalists at risk.”

Ressa revealed that she had been involved in four years of behind-the-scenes feedback to the Reuters Institute. She added; “With no substantive changes and no acknowledgement of its harms, you have to ask – what is the purpose of this research?”

She quoted from an email she sent on 4 July 2022 that stated: “If you don’t acknowledge your mistake you will repeat it – and other more vulnerable news groups may not weather it as well as we can.” She went on to explain that the Philippines’ government and “propaganda machine” was using the Oxford University brand against Rappler. “When journalists are under attack, it isn’t business as usual for academics studying journalism. This isn’t just bad actors manipulating the study; the flaw is in the study itself.”

Branko Brkic, editor-in-chief of South Africa’s independent Daily Maverick, said he shared Ressa’s concerns about the Reuters Institute study and particularly its failure to distinguish genuine journalism from misinformation in his country.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of Ressa’s intervention. Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia, told the Guardian that the RISJ methodology was open to question: “If you only take an audience view of the threats to journalism, specifically in markets where you do not have strong protections for a free press, you are at high risk of ending up with a distorted picture.”

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, the director of the RISJ, said he deplores the abuse of Ressa and the way the research has been misrepresented. But the real question is what he is going to do about it. Ressa has described the survey as “giving a loaded gun to autocratic regimes”. Her words are a devastating rebuke to Nielsen and RISJ. But they should also give pause for thought to all western actors in the field of human rights and press freedom, Index on Censorship included. Those working to support dissident writers and independent journalists around the world must first listen to those working on the ground.

Do we need a new kind of journalism in 2019?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”60766″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]The new challenges of trust and misinformation.

This is the first of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s seminars at Green Templeton College in 2019, which focus on the business and practice of journalism.

Rachael Jolley is the editor of the global quarterly Index on Censorship magazine, a magazine that has correspondents around the world reporting on free expression issues. She is a journalist with 20 years’ experience writing and editing for newspapers, magazines, and website. She also appears as a commentator on television and radio, and co-wrote the play, Murdering The Truth.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Jimmy Wales: Fake news “a quantum leap we should be very concerned about”

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Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales speaking at Westminster Media Forum, April 2018. Credit: Daniel Bruce

“The advertising-only business model has been incredibly destructive for journalism,” said Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales at a Westminster Media Forum event on Thursday 26 April 2018 in London that looked at “fake news”.

“We need to resolve the incentives so that it makes sense and is financially sustainable to do good news,” Wales added.

Wales cited examples of false news stories that had been published on the Mail Online, such as an article featuring a projection of a perfect horizon in Beijing, erected as a way to compensate for the pollution, which proved fake, and a story claiming the Pope supported Donald Trump. He said the Daily Mail of 20 years ago was different. While not what he would choose to read, he thinks there is a place in the media landscape for tabloids, but one running fake news is “a quantum leap we should be very concerned about”.

Suggesting alternatives to advertising-only models, Wales said the Guardian’s donation request box (which he admitted he had consulted on) was an excellent example of how a media organisation can earn money without compromising standards. Meanwhile, a total paywall was very beneficial for some media, in particular financial media, with those readers valuing inside knowledge on the markets, though it would not suit all (the Guardian’s Snowden files, for example, were information he said he would want everyone to be able to access at the same time).

Wales’s concerns about the advertising-only, clickbait-style media models were echoed by others throughout the conference. Drawing an impressive panel of industry experts across media, law and tech, they all united in the view that while fake news meant a myriad of things to many different people, and was not something new, it was nevertheless problematic. Mark Borkowski, founder and head of Borkowski PR, spoke of the 19th-century great moon hoax and how “everything is different and everything is the same” before adding: “The speed at which we expect to get information, without proper fact-checking, is a plague.”

Nic Newman from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism proposed different ways for media to gain more trust, of which “slowing down” was one. Richard Sambrook, former director of global news at the BBC and now director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University, said the rise in the number of opinion pieces over evidenced-based journalism was because they were cheaper to commission.

Better education about what constitutes good quality, reliable media was another solution proposed.  

“Audiences need better education and sensitivity around algorithms,” said Kathryn Geels, from Digital Catapult.

Katie Lloyd, who is development director at the BBC’s School Report and who runs workshops around the country educating school children into news literacy, said there was a sense of urgency and confusion when it came to the topic and that teachers feel like it really needs to be taught.

“Young people are on the one hand savvy and on the other not so much and need extra help,” said Lloyd, adding that of those children she had interacted with, most knew what fake news was in principle, but not how to spot it.

“When we started talking to teachers they said they didn’t have the tools and the skills to teach it,” she added, tapping into a point raised by head of home news and deputy head of newsgathering at Sky, Sarah Whitehead, who said media education was just as important for older people as it was for the young, as the world of online was not the domain of only one group.  

Lloyd also explained that diversity was essential when it came to who was delivering news as people were more likely to trust news from those they could relate to. This was in response to an audience member saying they had spoken to school children who expressed that they respected news on Vice over the BBC. Lloyd agreed that it was essential for news organisations to have a wide range of people in terms of age and background. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1524822984082-ad9d065c-d104-5″ taxonomies=”6564″][/vc_column][/vc_row]