The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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Hello. I think we are going to go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us to have this important conversation. We are going to have a conversation to be clear. We have all agreed that we are not going to do long presentations. I'll explain how this conversation is going to go in just a minute. We are here to talk about disinformation, amplification and intimidation online focusing on the news media. I think that it is important for us to be aware of the impact that these actions take on journalists on journalism on our communities and democracy in general with the explosion of the Fake News and tack ticks that attempt to discredit journalists and have the impact of silencing them. Also to focus on solutions.
So I wanted to raise ‑‑ there has been some research on the impact of these actions against journalists. The IWMF, we just published a report indicating that for U.S. based journalists 70% of female journalists experience online harassmenten at impact of this happens nearly every day. It is driving male journalists out of the profegs as well. And leads to consequences that may very much reflect what physical intimidation and harass many look like. So I think it is really important that we use language that's appropriate and that we don't just call it harassment. These are attacks. And they have very serious implications. I just want to quote from the Huffington Post and it said that the des sent from disdwement to Russ bell tal to vial abuse is skwift and in many case it is doesn't even go through any intervening stages. It is outright hate speech from the start and it gets worse if targets attacks happen to be women or minority communities and I would add or journalists. I want to introduce our distinguished panelists. We are going to spend 30 minutes about our perceived problems and open up to the audience to intervene and then we will move on to solutions. I waunt to be very strict and not focus on concerns and to move on to solutions quickly. I will start by sew duesing our guest. This is Swati Chaturvedi. She is award winning broadcast journalist. She has written several books and her latest book is about her own experience as the target of state sponsored trolls because of her work as journalist. Following her is Joy Wathagi Ndungu. She is the vice‑president of digital grassroots and also the letd coordinator for the East Africa youth Internet Governance Forum. She is a lawyer by profession and she is a working with youth in Nairobi and around Africa to inform them about Internet policies and then I am going to move on to Amy Awad. She is the manager of legislative aregulatory policy broadcasting and digital communications at Canadian heritage and works for the Kay anywayed yan Government and foe kusing on their response to the misinformation online and attempts to address it. And last but not least we have Christophe Deloire. He is the Secretary‑General of reporters without borders, here in France. And he has and his organization have done incredible amount of work and focusing on the impact of online attacks and harassment against journalists and more importantly or as importantly on solutions.
So we are going to open with Christoph and then go to each journalist and speak about two key concerns on this issue.
>> CHRISTOPHE DELOIRE: Thank you so much for this sbroe ducks. You asked to deal with two problems. I will deal with two key problems according to us that are two problems of unfair competition. It could be a surprise that we deal with unfair competition regarding the topics that we have to discuss today. But in fact, what happens in the information and communication space is that there are distortions of competition that are real dangerous. The first one is unfair competition between verified terror rant content. And on the other side, eight lies what some people call Fake News.
Why is there an unfair competition on this? Because some rules were lost. You know that some studies from the MIT, for instance, make obvious that the false information as a potential viralities that are six types higher than verified facts. So nowadays those will spread eight, who spread false information, they have an advantage in what was before the public space.
That big problem how can we distinguish, how can we give incentives to spread true information. That's the first question. The second one is that in this new global information communication space there is a second distortion of competition between regimes on one side and on Democratic or more open political models. Why? Because the first one, the despairic regimes they are able to export more easily than ever their contents and their control. And, of course, they do not import other contents, even if they are produced in more independent ways. They close the doors of the countries. So it creates another unfair competition. And our democracies could die because of this.
Clearly this systemic crisis of the public space is one of the causes, one of the most important causes, not the only one for sure, but one of the most important causes of the crisis of democracy itself.
And for that topic that we have to address of and to address this, we have to consider the causes of the phenomenon. We can speak very long about this information, hate speech, propaganda, but it doesn't really help. What helps is not to criticize the people who spread, for instance, hate speech, that existed before. We cannot say that Internet changed the human beings. But the system has changed in such a way that today it allows and eninsights them to do this. And it could increase the hate.
So we have to analyze the phenomenon to observe the causes, to be able to find the solutions, considering that the Article 19 of the Human Rights Declaration that was established in Paris exactly 70 years ago was perfect about freedom of opinion and expression, but that, of course, it is our source couldn't imagine the world today. We have to find in the same spirit ways to implement guarantees, Democratic guarantees on freedom of expression or opinion in the now global information and communication space.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I think the people most giP compiPed to offer most solutions are the ones that being attacked today. That's a key concern. Amy if you could please tell us from your perspective in what you do err day what are the two things that are keeping you awake tonight.
>> AMY AWAD: Thank you. Interesting starting point or framing of the question, to use the few minutes I have to talk about my concern, I am going to start by giving context in terms of angle or approach that we come at the problem and that's one of Government like many other Governments that have been watching the evolution of the information ecosystem, part of this general shift to digital technologies and that's an evolution that has seen major changes in both production and consumption of news. Some of those changes are unquestionly positive, including potential for access to diversity of voices, new avenues for public participation. Increase in the reach of false and mislieding and inplam tore content is a part of that shift. The concern from a Government perspective is not how however just the fact of this information. It is the potential to undermine Democratic processes and social cohesion. When it reaches that level that it is having that reel social impact that Governments start to become concerned. In Canada this is a concern that is sleared by Canadians with a large ma joort expressing concern about the vor ras at this of information online and impact on democracy and more than half supportive of government action in this area. And that's really an astounding kind of statistic. No tradition of a journalism or media policy. There has been little history of Government support for journalism. So in terments of approach, like how does the Government how come at this issue. There is really two lens. The first one is the lens of civic function journalism and to realize that the rise of these problems has occurred at the time when journalism is in decline and that's of course by no means to diminish the important work that's being done by journalists and media organizations. It is a recognition of reality to distribute news on matters of public importance it costs money and in Canada by historical accident really part of that production was funded by advertising refr news. Nothing specific about news that makes it well suited to advertising but it used to be the vehicle to deliver that advertising and with a digital shift it is not there anymore. So that section of the revenues that was funding journalism is no longer available and nothing to replace it. And without those additional resources, the volume and scope of professional journalism is necessarily reduce as is the capacity of professional journal is to provide a counter balance to the pollution in the information ecosystem. And we can discuss further later on what that role could be but everything from ‑‑ I will come back to it later. Kind of other lens that Government can bring here is ‑‑ sorry. The other lens is to focus on disinformation itself. Looking for points of intervention from the supply chain, with the course author, different motivations to the technical characteristics of content and technological means to spread to and business models curation algorithms all the way until the citizen that receives and engages with that information and there is potential points of intervention all along there but there is also regulatory challenges. And where do those come from? From a public policy perspective this information is not a single problem. It is a small part of many other public policy problems. So it is a small part of foreign political interference and manipulation of public discoarse. Small part of data privacy. Small part of liability for Pratt forms didn't tail copyright, social inclusion, application of law line and the list goes on. Like disinformation each one of those pron problems requires multi‑stakeholder international coordination but also suffers from a lack of research to support evidence‑based public policy making. In Canada there are still significant gaps about the actual gaps in our Juaned standing about the actual overall impact of this information as well as the different sthal impact on different social groups of we don't have the evidence to demonstrate the scope of the problem. And in addition to that gap, of course, there is the om mi presence risks of interference or action of governments in areas that are so closely tied to freedom of expression in the press. Those are the problems and I will come back in a second to talk about potential solutions.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Now we are going to move on to our next speaker who will tell us about the two key issues that and the perspective that you are working on which may be very different and that's okay.
>> Thank you. I don't even know where to begin because the issues in my region are just too many. So the biggest concern to me from a region I come from sub is a hair rasy fray can is censorship. Governments are going to great lengths to censor what journalists. In Rwanda they enacted a legislation where they are banning cartoons. I know. But this means that, you know, anyone who ‑‑ any content creators online or any audiovisual, print media, whatever it is, they have banned cartoons if those journalists are talking about blit kal entities. And very heavy penalties will be incurred should you try and make this communication or present your information in form of cartoons. Uganda on the other hand, has very I would say crazy laws. They ‑‑ that they hide in other legislations and not necessarily ledge sleaxs that concerns to journalism. They currently incarcerated journalists for offensive communication. So they have that to try and control the information that they put out there. Same as Tanzania it is like a trend in the region. They will come and take away your tools and travel documents. This just happened to two journalists who went to Tanzania and even the UN had to intervene for them to be released and it was very unfortunate case. So that is the main, main censorship. I am from Kenya. We just had a gut computer misuse and cybercrimes bill where in it journalists have almost 0 power and the Government will control basically any information that is put out there. This is the same case in ooet yoe we poo ya. If et yoe pee ya is the queen of censorship. I have very many friends from et yoe we ya on Facebook. They use pet names to communicate. We have a point of contact in Ethiopia. Any time there is a looming shutdown, they say I can't do it right now because it will put her in danger. So I would say censorship through legislation and hiding small pieces of legislation in legislations that don't pertain, that take policy arena like in Kenya right now, they have done it in form of a tax. They ‑‑ we have a new finance tax law. And they ‑‑ we have a tax where if you are putting any information out there, if you are as a journalist if it is information meant for the public you have to pay a certain amount of tax. This is the same case in Uganda. And in Tanzania any online communication media has to pay $900 U.S. dollars to put that information out there. So legislation is the big tool that Governments are using to censor what is put out there by journalists. And another big concern is how women are treated in my region. Women in this arena how they are treated in my region. Women are hey hated by the people in same profession. So you get a lot of bullying happening. They call them ‑‑ there is a term that they use in the region they call you a sleafr queen and bimbo if you are a woman especially in visual media. They tell how to dress. You shouldn't dress like that. We don't want you to read for us the news. We don't want you to write the Articles. They don't trust the information that is coming out of you. Toes are the two major concerns I would say. Am I allowed to give solutions? Okay. Okay. So those are ‑‑ would be the key problems in my region at least.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I think it is interesting that we are looking at the golt as a potential source of the solution and a key source of the problem as well. And then we are moving from this very clear (Government) line of attack and hate and aggression online that moovs on to the physical space. Our next speaker can speak to both of those issues. So Swati tell us about your concerns.
>> SWATI CHATURVEDI: Thank you. Most of the women in my country get rape threats each day. It is kind of a blood support to attackers and unfortunately the reason I did my investigative book, I am a troll because I couldn't deal with all this hate. The only tool I had was to find out who was behind it. Much to my horror and shock I found out that all this hate is pretty much organized and the bigger question here was that the party in power was doing this. So India is the world's largest democracy. We all take pride in this. People are attacked for having a view. One thing with Donald Trump and my Prime Minister have in common is they don't like the media. We are not enemies of the people. We all doing our job. I got award for courage recently and to me that's the most sad thing. For doing our job we are given awards for courage last year. Last year a very senior journalist was shot dead in front of a house. A bitch has died and puppies are crying. There was an international outcry and he did not unfollow a single one of those handles of the Government is taking away the merit respectability in a democracy and that has frightening consequences. The Prime Minister has never held a press conference. They want to take away the media and to me this is a concern across the world. If the U.S. presidency is to the media is the enemy of the people. What could be sadder in the U.S. I am all for freedom of expression but why are Governments attacking the media and citizens who have a different view.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. That's such a stark description of the kinds of things that reporters without borders and International Women's Media Foundation and had two works imprisoned in Tanzania have been fighting for 30 years. The tools are differing and our response has to differ. What do you do with the press is canning attacked from all sides and with those attacks are causing people, especially people of diverse whack grounds to leave the news media and leaving only those who are supported by major news organizations to be able to with stand these kinds of sustain attacks. Christoph if we could get from you a metaview of what your position is and how RSF is approaching this problem. Thank you.
>> CHRISTOPHE DELOIRE: Thank you so much. First, of course, and that's what we do on a daily basis we have to ask the people who are victims of all those behaviors. And we do this through advocacy, through capacity building actions, material assistance, legal support, et cetera.
Because if we do not do this, it will really improve that censorship and it will discourage those who would like to take risks to investigator report.
But we do believe that if we just do this, if we would just do this, we would cure symptoms very violent symptoms sometimes but that we very to work on causesen address the causes and find ways to really change the game. To change the game we have launched recently two according to us major initiatives. Macro and a micro as economists would say.
The macro one, as I said the national ‑‑ sorry in history of democracies and we need democracy to exist particular regimes. So we need to empower democracies and mobilize them. So as I said in the history of democracy, the Democratic guarantees of information and freedom of opinion were established through regulation or self‑regulation on a national basis but doesn't work anymore in a global space.
So how do we create guarantees in a global space? For this we have created an independent commission on information and democracy composed of 25 public figures from 18 nationalities. But also Human Rights defenders, specialists of new technologies from different countries and journalists who have to face authoritarian strong men, in Russia, Philippines and Turkey, et cetera, and we have written a de‑Clairation on information democracy. You could say oh, that's ‑‑ we have such a long list of such Declarations. We consider that we enter the new logic. And the new logic is that what happened recently is that the governments Delegated the organization of the public space itself to platforms. They is said to platform ‑‑ not they. We as consumers have said to platforms oh, take the square of the village and you can put the Chairs, tables, where you want. And you decide who sits here. So we have Delegated this without expressing this space, without expressing ourselves as citizens. Without saying okay we can Delegate this but under certain conditions. And those conditions are just the principles of democracy and of the difference ‑‑ of information, for instance.
And so this is a principle of this Declaration that is I think quite original. And this Declaration was published exactly one week and one day ago. So please I will comment ‑‑ look at our website. And last two days ago on Sunday, sorry, three, three days ago, a few leaders from all the continents heads of Governments and states have launched a political process on the basis of this Declaration. We had prime main center of Canada and Presidents of cogs that kre and prime minute ter of Norway, et cetera. 12 Heads of State on Governments published a common press release on Sunday saying that they commit to build those guarantees. Taking the vision on the principles of this Declaration.
And now we will have to move forward and to move forward quickly but we have I would say imposed vision and you could have a look in your newspapers, in a lot of newspapers in the sber national press, there was call of heads of governments and states in many countries to mobilize beyond the first circle. But we consider that we have to start with the more number of countries but in a strong position. Avoiding just to have a consensus between all the countries. We do believe that we have to be pushy and a strong position some that's the macro solution.
Then and I will try to be shorter, the micro solution. When you say in the principles and that is just a principle among others, that platforms have to give advantageous ‑‑ have to insight trustworthiness of information of. How do you proceed. We need a market slugs. We need a concrete solution to help distinguish the good from the bad. When I say the good from the bad, I mean the contents or the media outlets that are closer to the ideals of journalism, verification and that the other media outlets that are really far away from this. And we started with the European solution to avoid too many trolls from countries where the vision about journalism is really different. But in fact, it is a global initiative. We have a lot of stakeholders from every where. And just in a few words the principle is we start with standardization, like ISOC process, concerning that journalism is a process and that's standardization is about setting up guarantees for processes. That remain neutral regarding the conception of journalism. The minimal guarantees that define journalism and then it will help to establish white lists through certification. And then we can request from different stakeholders to give incentives. First platforms, and incentive for indexation, ranking, second incentives with advertisers, and a lot of them agree on this principle. Possibly regulatory bodies, et cetera. And we have a lot of stakeholders, dozens of media outlets, press Councils, unions, regulatory bodies, et cetera, with different trolls and legitimate stakeholders that establish the norms, the standards. And we are convinced that it is really a solution because fact checking unfortunately that's wonderful way to exercise journalism but we know that every day 100 million contents are published on the Internet and the total capacity is global capacity of news rooms regarding fact checking is just a few thousand Articles. What weigh have established is a trusted third party mechanism that helps to avoid that both Governments or platforms make decisions about what media outlets, which media outlets should be ‑‑ should get advantageous. That's purely in principles but that's also the same time very concrete mechanisms that can't function and I have to say that Facebook has registered and Google and others do participate in this work and we are on the other side have BBC, guardian, European media outlets everywhere, Poland, Germany, France, et cetera, and surprisingly for this Europe initiative it will be my last word the country where we have the biggest number of registered companies or stakeholders is the U.S.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you.
>>.
>> CHRISTOPHE DELOIRE: The name of the initiative is journalism trust initiative.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I hope when we come back to you we can talk a little bit about how the initiative deals with the increasing nature of independent journalists and freelancers and what their ‑‑ how they are going to be representatives among these platforms and how they would be certified and just to make sure that they are not the last ones on the list. Amy if you could sdauk about solutions from if from your perspective.
>> AMY AWAD: Thank you. It should be reflected in the way that Governments approach this issue that they can't only look sbern nally at their situation and the state of their democracy but understand that these things cross‑borders and the actions of one Government can motivation actions in different ways from other Governments. So that I think that needs to be always present in the considerations as we said the issues those basic Human Rights issues freedom of speech and freedom of press need to be Omni present and it is in that context that isle going to suggest two areas of potentially immediate action that governments can consider and the first one relates to the cham ledge that I talked about in this lack of everied. In lack of evidence‑based upon which to build public policy and that's something that be addressed immediately and that's ‑‑ that is the role of Government to help support investments in research and build those reser. Networks. So na research and those investments should be coming quickly and as quickly as possible so that we have that evidence base that's required. It is not enough to invest in the research and there is also issues of data in we voer offers don't have access to they may not be able to come up with the solutions Juaned standing the problem that we need. (Researchers) and there is a role for Government either through legislative regulatory measures our through kind of voluntary agreements to provide to ensure that those researchers are access to the data from the intermediaries required to properly study the impact of the problem. So that whole area of kind of helping further research with the access to the data is I think it is an important one and one that the government should be working on right away and could cooperate with each other on. The second one and this one has been discussed a lot at there conference, so I don't want to discuss it more but to add a few qualifications and that's the idea of supporting dij talt media or civic literacy or education. These are scales that people need anyways and if it doesn't do anything with disinformation people would be more media literate. There is a reason why people put this forward as a potential solution. We don't know yet though. Because of research gap we don't know to we ex‑dedre disinformation is actually responsive to media education. So will media education reduce the spread of this, have effect on negative social impacts. But that's not a reason not to do it. It is just a reason to continue to study and readjust and make sure they are lawn offed in dynamic ways that allow you to cater them to the information as it becomes available and to make sure launch them in a rigorous way that you are collecting data and making those adjustments. Combined with that is the issue of and I think it is a looming issue is it possible for somebody. We are not talking about the children or teenagers but even for adults like ourselves, if we were honest with ourselves we would say sometimes I do get caught believing something I shouldn't. Ant people in this room are highly educated very worldly people. There is difficulties for navigating that ecosystem. We through media education campaigns will be able to help guide people through the system. One part of that answer might for Governments not only to be looking at education but also at tools. So there is lot of different kind of inl know veattive enterprises all over the world that are looking at providing tools to help navigate the information ecosystem and there may be a role for Government to support those things. The initial tifr that Christoph kas talking about fuelly could be a very good feeder for those tools. He presented it from an economic perspective about aligning the incentives. But those types of internationally agreed on initial tifrs and rating systems could be used to fuel tools in education process and for children. Is there a lot synergies to be had between the different solutions and a role for government to help encourage that in using different levers that they have. I will say which is part of the problem is the decline or financial dwaP for journalism there is also areas of intervention for Government there but I am not going to raise them alt this stage. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you.
>> SWATI CHATURVEDI: Thank you. I like that Amy said, you know, actions of one Government could definitely influence the actions of another Government. Because that is exactly what is happening right now in Africa. And Tanzania started us off by introducing the Internet Acts to sense sore bloggers and other journalists and shortly thereafter Uganda da did and Kenya da it and Zambia did it and right now Rwanda wants to do it. So we have seen it happening. So with that said I think my two best solutions that I have are right now are one strategic litigation. Of course, this requires resources and requires lot of patients and it is time consuming and it requires a lot of research. We realize by the these legislations and laws are being passed they don't come from people who are from a position of knowledge. They just sit down and pass these laws. Like we had the southern Africa dij tat rights workshop the other day, we invited law makers and media, it was the whole multi‑stakeholder thing and we realized they are not informed. They don't even know anything about what is digital rights, why do we need to have this kind of regulation. So we find ourselves, we are going to fight when it has already been passed, the Act has been passed by people who are not informed. So with strategic litigation, you have to start while that legislation is at infancy instead of waiting it for to be an action. Increasing our advocacy efforts. So I think there is a large Civil Society in Africa that has not been tapped in to. So we need to work with other civil society organizations and, you know, when visions of collaboration are put out there it is important that we sfond and accept and go to collaborate, when we ask someone let's collaborate because you bring something to the table and we want you to help us with. And advocacy as well will require a lot of resources. But it has worked. I have seen it work. In Kenya the computer misuse and cybercrimes Act we followed the entire litigation process and we are still in court and we have some sections that have been declared un constitutional. It does work but it requires a lot of patience. Definitely in Uganda we are trying to have that section from the Act that provides for offensive communication. We are trying to ensure that it is tracked because it limits a lot of freedom. So we want to ensure that are, you know, law makers stop hiding small sections of legislation and legislations that don't even ‑‑ don't relate to what is the entire bill should be about. And in terms of advocacy, education is important. So we need to ensure that everyone is in the room. We will not ‑‑ we need to ensure that everyone is in the room and we need to ensure the multi‑stakeholder approach is upheld because when everyone is talking, when this ‑‑ they will be able to understand then why are we doing this. We shouldn't pass this legislation. So we saw it happening in Nigeria. So we ensured that everyone was in the room and we invited police officers to come to the room. And he was really fighting us. He was like, you know, why do I need to do this. Why do they need to talk and say anything ne want to say. And, you know, he was really complaining and fighting us but we realized what he wanted to do was understand. And two months, I mean six months later he was pinted to be the chief in charge of digital ‑‑ the digital space in region in Nigeria and the first thing that he passed was myself as a police officer, as an officer in charge of this department, I promise to ensure that in this region digital rights are uphold held and everyone that is in this space is protected. And we will ensure that we drive this message. What people really want is to have the kshgs and they want to understand. That that's one of thes things that we need to do while we do our advocacy. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Congratulations. That's a great result of your work and proof that engagement often does work. Is Swati, you lived a pretty horrible experience and you are probably still living it now *** and I wonder what has been most helpful to you as a journalist, as a woman what you see as more of high level interventions that have been helpful to or could have been helpful to you in your own experience.
>> SWATI CHATURVEDI: That's a good question because the only things thaePg help l to me were my investigatestive journalism skills. Nobody helped. Unlike the rest of the panel I am extremely pessimistic. When a Government interferes in our country's elections. When ‑‑ just to ensure a certain amount of ‑‑ a certain kind of election result. Those are real issues. Everything else sounds very Utopian. I don't think that fifr people chatting in a room is going solve anything. Social media Governments realize they can actual lay play mooin games. And as we saw in the case of Russia and the U.S. elections where we still don't know the extent of what really happened. In my own country elections are due this year and I know for a fact that the stuff that people cannot say in print our put out in television is owl being put on social media, on phones for their what's up. So I don't see any solution until we have people respecting things like freedom of expression because propaganda is a way to gain political power and I don't see any solutions for that.
>> MODERATOR: Well, then maybe it is a good time to open up to the audience and maybe they have some solutions. That was very disheartening and I don't disagree and there is room for a lot of other players. Let's have a conversation on either side of the discussion. Your hand went up first. If you could introduce yourself and then ‑‑
>> Happy to. My name is Hans Klein. I am from Georgia Tech and admire journalists. But what I am going to say is critical of journalists. The speaker from India. You have made important points and asking is media the enemy of the people. I live in the United States and it is my per sense that the media and journalists working for the media play a very important prop ban da role in American society, particularly in U.S. foreign policy. So approximate u states inveatded Iraq the media poeblize the public and a real joy and support for going to war doing the right thing. When we engage in regime change in Libya it was a responsibility to protect and humane tare yan enterprise. Destruction of Syria freedom fighters on the ground. The place where I was able to find alternative anywhere ra tirs and facts in what is often branded the fake few news. People like Seymor Hirsh. He was expelled from the profession from the media outlets and Gary web who broke the CIA role in cocaine trade, Robert Perry who broke the Iran contrastory. These are the great journalists and they are no longer in the profession and excluded from the institutions. So I wonder if if wouldn't be important for when we speak about journalism to really ask some tough questions of journalism or at least the large corporations that provide us with journalism and the role they do as propaganda and legitimating the state, et cetera, et cetera.
>> MODERATOR: I think part of what you are getting at is consolidation of news ownership as well which contributes to this problem and I think it is important to in the world that we live in today to distinguish the work of the individual journalists with the result of the media enterprise and also caution against using alternative new has been co‑op to be a bad things to independent news and those independent journalists who were fighting war of mainstream and Maclachi was on other side of sort of main straem fact the. I want to make sure that anybody on the panned nel has a opportunity to respond to theed critical role and professionalism and the need to make sure that public understands what that role is.
>> SWATI CHATURVEDI: What you meant is imbedded journalism when something kind of accompany the Army and which happened a lot in the U.S. I don't think the U.S. media at the current moment is doing a brilliant job. So I don't think we are pessimistic at least right now the U.S. media.
>> So it is doing a great job. The whole weapons of mass destruction, all that kind of stuff, Syria, Libya.
>> SWATI CHATURVEDI: . No, I was talking about at the current moment. What you are talking about is embedded journalism which I think is wrong. I doechblt think that should actually happen.
>> I appreciate your question but I also admire Seymor Hirsch. For sure we shouldn't consider that journalist by definition are doing a great job. It would be totally stupid. There are corrupt journalists and biassed journallists and factors like media ownership but also sometimes just that journalists believe the closest sources on the national resources. For sure journalism sometimes can be exercised in such a way that sets that are not appropriate. But the question today for societies, is how can we have the best guarantees and they were never perfect for sure, to ‑‑ so that human beings can exercise their right to trustworthy information. Because if they do not get trustworthy news information, their rights will be violated. How do we proceed? And the question is how can we secure not only for journalism, also fou scientific information or in all the fields in fact, of information. How do we secure or at least promote trustworthy information. And journalism has a role to play. And we have to create the conditions so that the journalists the academics, whatever is the main, are incentive idzed to be as close as possible to the ideals. Use the rational methods, listen to different voices. And really try to get the truth from different points of views. And that's a question I think that you can criticize very deeply the media outlets or be admirer of media outlets in the two cases, think all the people can agree it is better to have independent information than an independent, to have information that is verified incitied of not verified and we so to start from there. And then journalism, but journalism is not the only institution that has to play a role but we have to defend journalists but also having in mind that we have to ‑‑ not to consider that whatever they do that's perfect. But really to have ideals in mind. (Christoph).
>> Can we just go on to the next ‑‑ sure. I saw your hand up.
>> Hi. My name is Amin. I am a journalist and Human Rights activist. My question is to reporters without borders. You were talking about trolls. How to make better role of UNESCO? Because today we are here in Paris in IGF and now UNESCO have a new leadership but from my perspective since new Director‑General appointed her positions, nothing move on on prevention of the crime against journalists. Yes UNESCO aisles react if journalist are killed. We only react with journalists are murdered. Why U.S. not react before journalists is murdered or jailed. What do you think about perspective to make while mandate for UNESCO, start to make this initiative. Why I am talking about this previous Director‑General Azerbaijan have some kind of stories which is written in the media. It is many stories written with unfairness. She is very best friend of wife of our dictator and wife is goodwill UNESCO and still today with dozen times to give RCF call to top her mandate it is a shame for UNESCO who have goodwill Ambassador like her. The journal are detained or jailed, today we have ‑‑ very brave Excel based journal ist. Started blaming her for last two weeks. We need to bring back to Azerbaijan. How are we able to make same joint of the effort it is time to make actions to stop this honey moon for these dictate tars to using this important institutions and next year they want to organize a cultural heritage in a Azerbaijan.
>> CHRISTOPHE DELOIRE: Thank you. I do not represent UNESCO at all. Spoke about the new leadership and that's important. I have to say that the new Director‑General of UNESCO supported the launch of our initiative last Sunday. So did also the UN Secretary‑General and head of Council of Europe. It is very important that even heads of international organizations support such initiatives even if that's not easy probably when you run ser such an institution with so many different countries and political regimes. Second regarding journalist safety, a lot of Resolutions have been adopted by various UN bodies. The UN Security Council in 2006 and 2015. The Council on Human Rights, the General Assembly and UNESCO. UNESCO plan in fact, United Nations plan but run by the UNESCO has been launched in 2012 on question of journalist safety. It is very difficult to get results on the field because of the fact that it is difficult to influence regimes such as the one in Azerbaijan. And also because today the level of im punity is so high. 90% of the cases of crimes against journalists there is no condemnation and no sentence. So that's why we at reporters without borders have launched in 2015 a campaign. So that the UN adopts a concrete ‑‑ create a concrete mechanism for the compliance for the implementation of the international law and we do consider and we advocate for this that Special Representative should be appointed to the Secretary‑General of the UN as a question of protection of journalists. And predecessor supported this idea. We do believe that we need to this so that Governments, Member States have to face their obligations that are set up by the international law. That's an emergency because we have to notice this year, for instance, that the number of crimes of murders of journalists in the course of doing their jobs is much higher than last year. And in fact, we could believe that the different topics that we spoke about today, the structure of the space, and the life of journalists, that's two different topics. But in fact, when journalists are living in a public sphere and when they are weakened there is a lack of resistance. On guys who wouldn't have Acted against them decide to Act. Even on the European soil investigates tifr journalists are killed within a few months and Europe remains the best continent for press freedom. That's a bad sign and that's a sign that the speeches we hear by pol tigss, they have consequences.
>> MODERATOR: We can no longer distinguish that line between the hate that's happening online and the happening on the ground. So we are closing out but there are couple of other hands. . We will do would more. Let's keep brief.
>> I'm from from Reuters institute. I wanted to congratulate you. It is only just now that I really feel that we are integrating our approaches and discussions and starting to talk about practical modes to respond. I just wanted to draw people' attention to the book that was launched yesterday called journalism Fake News and disinformation which has a range of practical approaches, skills development, and resources. Particularly going to the issue of gendered online harassment which we know is being a tool to suppress journalism and it is case studies from India and aFriday da as well. I had debates recently with groups of highly influential journalists who want to continue to argue this is not a time knock journal arc tiftism and for journalstist to be reporting on these too thooes problems because it feeds community exceptions of bias and self‑interest and that goes to polarization. So there still seems to be a resistance and to addressing these issues. And to me this is a misconstrued. So I'm interested in your responses to that. I know a couple of you and many others have used investigatestive journalism very effectively to expose those issues. What you would say in response to that as other journalists.
>> MODERATOR: How effective as ice using skills to report and what has happened to and what's the backlash of using yourn nalism for that cause?
>> SWATI CHATURVEDI: Virtual censorship is death. I have faced a lot of threats. Recently a police officer told me that the police are jumping traffic liks at night don't stop because you can get murdered. Having said that I don't journalists are asking for any Pegs privilege. We want to be aallowed to do our Josh and that's the problem here. Moed mode right there.
>> I have a question for Secretary‑General for reporters without borders. Influences taking a look at these declayation that just told us about. It says here that one of these principles that you are promoting is that those who produce and help spread and spread information should be responsible and also says that I am speaking about social networks and like these platforms. And that they should implement mechanisms to translating back from Spanish to favor truthful information.
So I was wondering what is the role that you think these platforms should have?
>> There are different stories. Some people consider that the platforms are just media outlets. They spread contents. And so there should be considered as like publishers. (Christoph) circle back is like an editor‑in‑chief. He enjoys his freedom of expression and he does what he wants with his algorithm. That's a conception.
We do believe that this conception is dangerous because it would be a way to say that if talk back wants his algorithm to have a bias it is freedom to do this. It would be true for Chinese platforms that are aligned with the community spot in China and we do believe and that's an in‑depth principle of this Declaration. That the platforms today they are in fact, entities that create the norms, the architectures of choices, and means of the information and communication space.
Create a structure. They do what our Governments did before. The laws of our Government were sometimes good, sometimes bad but we could check it. We knew the laws. With the exception of these particular regimes and just states, the public space was neutral. Today you do not have a guarantee on this. So that's why we have to change the logic of regulation. We have to change the logic the way Government see this information field. Considering that when you create the field itself, when you structure, tu have special responsibilities that are not the responsibilities of platforms according to freedom of expression of publishers according to freedom of expression. That's something else.
>> You say they had should be neutral but favor content.
>> CHRISTOPHE DELOIRE: It should be politically fru noou tral. Ful neutral to their own services. I mean not have different factors or criteria when it is about their own interest but, of course, we do not consider that it should be neutral about the question, of trustworthiness of information on this note. We do not want neutrality. Is this clear? I am open to continue the talk but I do not want to.
>> It is clear. But I'm wondering like there a concern that I am sure you are very well aware of the ‑‑ like they making the decisions of what's truth ful of what should go there and what should be left out. So that's ‑‑ I think it is an issue that it is not solved and I was wondering where you guys were drawing that line.
>>.
>> CHRISTOPHE DELOIRE: We do not want them to make the decisions. We want them to set up mechanisms that avoid that they have to make the decisions.
>> Okay.
>> MODERATOR: One more quick question.
>> Thank you very much. My name is louisa. I am a Brazilian student. In my Point of View the problem with legal and state led guarantees is that it is developed by the logic of Democrat stick countries and the mentality that the state is service provider for citizens. However, in a lot of us here live in countries that have authoritarian countries or have a history of authoritarian Governments. It means the Government is the enemy of the people. In that logic that legislation made in one country influences legislation made in other countries. Do you believe that there is any way the Civil Society can Act that is not related to the sfeat at so that we can make guarantees for journalists to work on is there any way that the Democratic and first world countries can provide legislation that does not interfere negatively in this global problem? . Thank you.
>> That's a pure question. In fact, des peak ratic regimes they create the norms and everyone complies with it. So we have to create other norms, complying with principles of freedom to oppose the first one. If you accept that despairic regimes we impose of and that these Democratic models does not impose enough of you they will be weakened. We could consider that for democracy but for the rest of the world do you consider them. If you want to dispose regimes we have to create another vision. We have to develop it and create a means and you could say yes, but if you accept the principle of norms in this country as ones that we use it. But in any case we use it. It is better to impose your own vision. That's a way, the initiatives I spoke about are four democracies but are a way to exercise the biggest possible pressure on this despairic regimes.
>> MODERATOR: Brazil sl a great example of moenlizing. The loet us work campaign, led by women sports reporters in Brazil was hugely success of the and I think there has been others and I think also in ferm terms of thes public spear we have seen Democratic countries at least expressing their displeasure at companies who bow to the will of despottic regems that go along with rules that we would not accept for ourselves. We play a big role in helping to oppose those despottic regimes as well. I think we are closing up. I know we just scratched the is your anyways as always happens with these discussions because there are so many and bels but I think from the perspective of sber national women's Media Foundation, and on behalf of journalists Iern kushlg you to support journalists and journalisms a much as you can to keep in mind that it is important to have a diversity of news sources, whether they be independent or mainstream that ‑‑ and also diversity of reporters reporting the news. Without it we are going to be in a lot of trouble. Thank you very much to our panels and interventions and thank you for coming.