general paper

—
m . e.di.a
 H1 General Paper Content
Notes
Media

Essay Questions.......................................................................................................................... 2
Quotes........................................................................................................................................... 3
1 Social Media and the Internet...........................................................................................4
1.1 Social Media Activism.....................................................................................................4
1.2 Social Media in Politics...................................................................................................6
1.3 Disinformation on Social Media...................................................................................7
1.4 Misinformation on Social Media...................................................................................8
1.5 Violence and Extremism on Social Media................................................................10
1.6 Misuse of Social Media................................................................................................11
1.7 Social Media and Wellbeing........................................................................................12
2 Journalism and the News Media....................................................................................15
2.1 The Role of Journalism.................................................................................................15
2.2 Investigative Journalism...............................................................................................16
2.3 The Future of Journalism.............................................................................................16
2.4 Fake News.......................................................................................................................19
3 Media Freedom.................................................................................................................26
3.1 Freedom of Speech.......................................................................................................26
3.2 Journalism and the War on Truth..............................................................................28
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

Essay Questions
GCE A Level Paper 1 Questions
1. Is regulation of the press desirable? (2017 Q5)
2. ‘The quality of written language is being destroyed by social media.’ What is your view?
(2017 Q12)
3. ‘Any adaptation of a novel for a film, television or the theatre is never as effective as the
original.’ Discuss. (2016)
4. Consider the argument that the main purpose of television should be to educate rather
than simply to entertain. (2015)
5. There is no such thing as bad publicity. To what extent is this true? (2015)
6. Do films offer anything more than an escape from reality? (2014)
7. How far is it important for people to be aware of current events in countries other
than their own? (2014)
8. Why should we be concerned with current affairs when most of them will soon
be forgotten? (2013)
9. In the digital age do newspapers still have a role in your society? (2011)
10. Assess the impact of foreign films or foreign TV programmes on the culture of
your society. (2009)
11. ‘Nowadays, the pleasures of reading can never compete with the pleasures of visual
entertainment.’ To what extent do you agree? (2008)
12. ‘Advertisements are often entertaining, but they rarely affect consumer choice.’ Is this
your experience? (2007)
13. To what extent do the newspapers and magazines that you read deal with what is trivial,
rather than with what is important? (2006)
14. How far do magazines or television programmes aimed at young people in Singapore
have a positive effect? (2005)
15. Advertising encourages a desire for products which people do not actually need.
Discuss. (2004)
16. Can the media ever be relied upon to convey the truth? (2003)
17. Should advertising be restricted in any way? (2001)

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 2 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

Quotes
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook
When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a
really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power. By giving
people the power to share, we're making the world more transparent. (2012)

Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook

Social media has created a historical shift from the historically powerful to the historically
powerless. Now everyone has a voice. (2015)

Erik Qualman, American author

Social media has made the web all about me, me, me.

Hillary Clinton, former First Lady of the United States

If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle. (1995)

John Naisbitt, American author

We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge. (1982)

Allen Ginsberg, American poet

Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.

Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher

The medium is the message.
We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

Malcolm X, former American minister and civil rights activist

The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent
guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of
the masses.

Ai Weiwei, Chinese contemporary artist and activist

If there is no freedom of expression, then the beauty of life is lost. Participation in a society is
not an artistic choice, it’s a human need.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 3 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

1 Social Media and the Internet

Despite controversy around privacy, hacking, fake news and all the other negative aspects of
online life, the world continues to embrace the internet and social media. Global digital
growth shows no sign of slowing, with a million new people around the world coming
online every day. This growth is clearly fuelling social media use. 45% of the world’s
population are now social media users: a whopping 3.5 billion people.

Interesting Statistics
 In June 2017, the number of active phone connections reached 7.7 billion, exceeding the
world’s population for the first time ever. It now seems astounding that, in 2001, more
than half of the world’s population had yet to make their first phone call.
 $1.3 billion was wiped off Snapchat’s value within a day of one Kylie Jenner tweet
(“does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?”).

1.1 Social Media Activism

Opinion | Hong Kong’s Protests Could Be Another Social Media Revolution That
Ends in Failure
The New York Times. Sep 17, 2019
 While social media has made it easier to build mass movements, like the one in Hong
Kong, it has made it harder to translate the sentiment into real change, argues our
columnist Thomas Friedman.
 “These modern movements are crowdsourced but also crowd-enforced,” he writes, “and
that’s intimidating for anyone who wants to make a deal.”

Protesting in the Digital Age

Ngaire Woods. Project Syndicate. Apr 26, 2019
 Social media have made it easier to organize mass protests. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram, people with a common cause can instantly fuel each other’s outrage while
sharing logistical details. But these modern-day demonstrations often lack the leadership
and coalition-building skills that can translate collective grievance into real change.
 True, large protests may help to push an issue up the agenda and increase public debate.
But even in democracies, big crowds are often not enough to sway governments.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 4 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Massive antiwar demonstrations in the U.K. and the United States in February 2003 did
not stop the two countries from invading Iraq the following month. The 2011 Occupy
Wall Street movement, which spread to some 900 cities worldwide, did not achieve any
particular goal. Nor did the three annual Women's Marches that took place between
2017 and 2019 in cities around the world.
 The new social-media-driven "adhocracy," for all its flexibility and efficiency, often
lacks leaders who can mobilize people toward a well-defined, achievable goal.
 Yet there have been successes. In Poland in 2016, well-organized protests persuaded the
country's parliament to reject a proposed near-total ban on abortion. Recent successful
mass protests in Algeria and Sudan, meanwhile, highlight the importance of building
coalitions with parts of a ruling regime.
 Digital platforms are good at crowdsourcing dissatisfaction and magnifying it online, but
they are more likely to polarize than to help a movement build bridges.
 Change happens when well-led citizens find ways to speak truth through power in
coalitions that are unlikely to be forged online. Digital tools can facilitate
effective political organizing. But they should never be viewed as a substitute for
it.

Activism in the Social Media Age

Pew Research Center. Jul 11, 2018
Twitter hashtags related to political or social issues
1. #BlackLivesMatter: has become an archetypal example of modern protests and political
engagement on social media. It has been used nearly 30 million times on Twitter as of
May 1, 2018. The conversations surrounding this hashtag often center on issues related to
race, violence and law enforcement, and its usage periodically surges surrounding real-
world events.
2. #MAGA: grew increasingly prevalent on Twitter beginning in early 2016, peaking in
the days immediately following the 2016 U.S. election in November.
3. #MeToo: rose to prominence in 2017 and has continued to be used with some frequency
following the revelations of alleged sexual harassment and assault by Hollywood
producer Harvey Weinstein. It was used hundreds of thousands of times on Oct. 16,
2017, as users took to the platform to share their own personal stories of harassment and
abuse.
4. #JeSuisCharlie: commemorating the Jan. 7, 2015, Charlie Hebdo shooting in France.
Despite being essentially non-existent prior to the shooting, it was used roughly 2 million
times on Jan. 7 and 8, 2015.
5. #LoveWins: commemorating the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26, 2015, decision on same-
sex marriage. It appeared on Twitter more than 7 million times on the day of the
Supreme Court ruling.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 5 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

1.2 Social Media in Politics

More politicians harness social media to enhance public outreach

The Straits Times. May 19, 2019
Politicians around the world have taken to social media to amplify their voices, sway
election outcomes and give their public personas a bit of a shine.
 Last year, Indonesian media company IDN Times published a list of 47 "influencers" who
had pledged to back President Joko Widodo's campaign. Among them were politicians
and businessmen, but there were also celebrities with millions of followers on Instagram.
 In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has enlisted the help of Bollywood stars in his
current bid for a second term in office.
Politicians have also used social media to present a softer - and hopefully more relatable
- side of themselves to the people.
 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for example, has pictures of his family dressed
up in Halloween costumes on his Instagram page, while South Korean President Moon
Jae-in has a photo of himself stroking his pet dog, Tory.
 And United States President Donald Trump often takes to Twitter - not to sell policy, but
to sell his unfiltered point of view.

Social media 'can be a bane and a boon in politics'

The Straits Times. Sep 5, 2017
As social media gradually takes over a bigger share of political communication and
discourse, the jury is still out on what this will do to the overall quality of discussion.
Social media can be a bane when it is nasty, perpetuates misinformation or prompts
hasty judgment
 The conversation can get very hateful very quickly.
 More misinformation, put out deliberately or otherwise, also passes through social media.
This is due to its spontaneous nature and its lower, or even non-existent, thresholds of
verification.
 Social media can also coarsen political discourse because it cues users to pass immediate
judgments on complex issues that require more thought and deliberation.
But it can also be a force for good when it forges more direct and authentic connections
and projects underrepresented views.
 Without social media, people could end up living in worse echo chambers, consuming
only from media outlets that reflect their own biases. Social media at least allows for
some "incidental exposure" to contrary views.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 6 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Social media can also be a boon when it provides a platform for disadvantaged or
minority groups and viewpoints to get organised and be heard. For instance, Egyptian
protesters in the 2011 Arab Spring using social media to communicate and avoid the
government crackdown.
 It also has the potential to build more direct and authentic links between voters and
politicians, making the latter more accountable and responsive. The German
government does this well by using social media as a two-way channel. It tries its best to
answer questions posted on its Facebook page.

PM Lee Hsien Loong on using social media: Some of his most popular Facebook posts
The Straits Times. Jan 16, 2015
 From putting across serious messages to putting up light-hearted posts, Prime Minister
Lee Hsien Loong spoke about how social media has changed the way he engages
Singaporeans.
 “It makes me a lot more conscious in pitching what I want to say, to ask myself how will
I distil this down in a form which someone can digest on Facebook or Instagram?”

1.3 Disinformation on Social Media

Facebook Finds New Disinformation Campaigns and Braces for 2020 Torrent
The New York Times. Oct 21, 2019
 Facebook said that it had removed four state-backed campaigns — three from Iran and
one from Russia — in addition to dozens of similar campaigns it has already removed this
year.
 The accounts targeted people in North Africa, Latin America and the U.S. — an
indication that the spread of false information is still a big problem as America heads
into the 2020 election.

At Least 70 Countries Have Had Disinformation Campaigns, Study Finds

The New York Times. Sep 26, 2019
 In Vietnam, citizens were enlisted to post pro-government messages on their personal
Facebook pages. The Guatemalan government used hacked and stolen social media
accounts to silence dissenting opinions. Ethiopia’s ruling party hired people to influence
social media conversations in its favor.
 Despite increased efforts by internet platforms like Facebook to combat internet
disinformation, the use of the techniques by governments around the world is growing,
according to a report by researchers at Oxford University. Governments are spreading
disinformation to discredit political opponents, bury opposing views and interfere in
foreign affairs.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 7 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 They found that the number of countries with political disinformation campaigns more
than doubled to 70 in the last two years, with evidence of at least one political party or
government entity in each of those countries engaging in social media manipulation.
 In recent years, governments have used “cyber troops” to shape public opinion, including
networks of bots to amplify a message, groups of “trolls” to harass political dissidents or
journalists, and scores of fake social media accounts to misrepresent how many people
engaged with an issue.

How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

The New York Times. Sep 18, 2019
 Last month, Twitter took down nearly 1,000 accounts that it said were part of a Chinese
disinformation campaign to undermine the antigovernment demonstrations in Hong
Kong.

India’s Social-Media Lynch Mobs

Shashi Tharoor. Project Syndicate. Jul 11, 2018
 Over the last decade, India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has cultivated an
army of cyber warriors to propagate its message of Hindu chauvinism, contempt for
minorities, and hyper-nationalism, including through ferocious attacks on political
opponents.
 Rumours forwarded via social media, especially on WhatsApp, have led to mob
lynchings of innocent people. In the last year alone, there have been 15 such
lynchings across nine Indian states, resulting in 27 deaths.
 Social media, by nature, rewards speed and sensationalism, not verification and caution.
There is no easy solution: a wave of regulation could open the way for censorship of
free expression on other media.

1.4 Misinformation on Social Media

How TikTok Holds Our Attention

Jia Tolentino. The New Yorker. Sep 23, 2019
 On the popular short-video app, young people are churning through images and sounds at
warp speed, repurposing reality into ironic, bite-size content.
 I was giving TikTok my attention because it was serving me what would retain my
attention, and it could do that because it had been designed to perform algorithmic
pyrotechnics that were capable of making a half hour pass before I remembered to look
away.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 8 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 We have been inadvertently preparing for this experience for years. On YouTube
and Twitter and Instagram, recommendation algorithms have been making us feel
individually catered to while bending our selfhood into profitable shapes.
 TikTok favors whatever will hold people’s eyeballs, and it provides the incentives and the
tools for people to copy that content with ease. The platform then adjusts its predilections
based on the closed loop of data that it has created. This pattern seems relatively trivial
when the underlying material concerns shaving cream and Crocs, but it could determine
much of our cultural future. The algorithm gives us whatever pleases it. As the circle
tightens, we become less and less able to separate algorithmic interests from our own.

People's motivations bias how they gather information

ScienceDaily. Jun 27, 2019
 The internet makes people less informed, a new study (published in PLOS Computational
Biology) suggests, because an abundance of easily accessible information makes it easier
for people to find facts or viewpoints that will support their current beliefs.
 And, given a choice between learning something new and confirming what they already
think they know, people will generally choose the latter.

How Social Media Has Changed How We Consume News

Forbes. Nov 30, 2018
 Social media has become the main source of news online; nearly 64.5 percent receive
breaking news from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram instead of
traditional media.
 In a recent survey, 50 percent of Internet users surveyed said that they hear about the
latest news via social media before ever hearing about it on a news station. The
survey found 57 percent increase in traffic to news sites referred from social media.
 However, there has been a decrease in how much of an article that people read. An
average visitor will only read an article for 15 seconds or less and the average video
watch time online is 10 seconds.
 Our social media friends have become the “managing editors” deciding what we see. An
article needs to be "liked" and shared multiple times before many people see it in their
feed.
 There are also many "fake news" websites that compete for attention with sensational
headlines and ridiculous storylines that tend to get shared more often due to the lack of
readers fact checking or reading more than the headline.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 9 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

Curbing online misinformation - Breaking the fever

The Economist. Jul 26, 2018
 Services such as Facebook and Twitter are built to maximise “virality”, making it
irresistible to share, like and retweet things. But viral content can have grave
consequences.
 In the 2016 presidential election, Americans spread divisive posts that had been planted
on Facebook by Russian troublemakers; the social network reckons that about 40% of
Americans saw at least one of them.
 At least two dozen innocent people have been lynched in India this year after bogus
rumours warning of child abductors went viral on WhatsApp, a messaging service owned
by Facebook. WhatsApp has also been used by political operatives in India, its largest
market, to stoke religious and nationalist fury.
 Starting this month, however, users of WhatsApp will no longer be able to forward
messages to more than 20 others in one go, down from more than 100. The goal is not to
prevent people from sharing information—only to get users to think about what they are
passing on.
 Sceptics point out that WhatsApp can afford to hinder the spread of information on its
platform because it does not rely on the sale of advertisements to make money. Slowing
down sharing would be more damaging to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter,
which make money by keeping users on their sites and showing them ads.
 Yet the short-term pain caused by a decline in virality may be in the long-term interests of
the social networks. Fake news and concerns about digital addiction, among other things,
have already damaged the reputations of tech platforms. Moves to slow sharing could
help see off draconian action by regulators and lawmakers.

1.5 Violence and Extremism on Social Media

Assailant Live-Streamed Attempted Attack on German Synagogue

The New York Times. Oct 9, 2019
 A heavily armed assailant wearing a live-streaming head camera tried unsuccessfully to
invade a synagogue in a city in eastern Germany on the holiest day of the Jewish
calendar, then killed two people and injured two others outside.
 It bore a striking resemblance to the rampage by a far-right extremist on two mosques in
New Zealand more than six months ago, which he broadcast live on social media.
 The assailant in Germany streamed at least parts of the attack via Twitch, which is owned
by Amazon that has struggled to moderate content flooding in from millions of active
users. Alerted to the broadcast, Twitch scrambled to remove it and issue an apology.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 10 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

Facebook Expands Definition of Terrorist Organizations to Limit Extremism

The New York Times. Sep 17, 2019
 The social media giant expanded its definition of terrorist organizations as part of a series
of changes intended to limit hate speech on its platform.
 Facebook said the shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which an Australian man
who is accused of killing 51 people live streamed the attacks, “strongly” influenced its
changes.
 The platform is also planning to deploy artificial intelligence to better spot and block
live videos of gunmen, and expanding a program that redirects users searching for
extremism to resources intended to help them leave those groups behind.

Host Violent Content? In Australia, You Could Go to Jail

The New York Times. Sep 11, 2019
 In Australia, a new law criminalizing violent content online was seen as a model for
creating a safer internet, but enforcement so far is largely passive and reactive,
highlighting limits to the approach.

How technology can fight extremism and online harassment

Yasmin Green. TED. Apr 2018
 In this illuminating talk, technologist Yasmin Green details programs pioneered at
Jigsaw (a unit within Alphabet Inc.) to counter radicalization and online harassment.
 In 2016, they piloted a new approach to countering radicalization, the "Redirect
Method." It uses the power of online advertising to bridge the gap between those
susceptible to ISIS's messaging and those credible voices that are debunking that
messaging. The Redirect Method is now being deployed globally to protect people being
courted online by violent ideologues, whether they are Islamists, white supremacists or
other violent extremists.
 Another project could give commenters real-time feedback about how their words might
land, which has already increased online spaces for dialogue.
 "If we ever thought that we could build an internet insulated from the dark side of
humanity, we were wrong," Green says. "We have to throw our entire selves into building
solutions that are as human as the problems they aim to solve."

1.6 Misuse of Social Media

The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?
The New York Times. Sep 28, 2019
 There has been a boom in the online trading and sharing of images and videos of children
— some just 3 or 4 years old, some even younger — being raped and tortured.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 11 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Last year, tech companies flagged a record 45 million illegal images, exposing a response
system at a breaking point, an investigation by The New York Times found. And the
images show increasingly heinous forms of abuse.

Instagram moves on online bullying with pop-up warning

The Straits Times. Jul 9, 2019
 Instagram announced new features aimed at curbing online bullying on its platform,
including a warning to people as they are preparing to post abusive remarks.

1.7 Social Media and Wellbeing

Social media effect 'tiny' in teenagers, large study finds

BBC. May 7, 2019
 The effects of social media use on teenage life satisfaction are limited and probably
"tiny", a study of 12,000 UK adolescents suggests. Their study concluded that most links
between life satisfaction and social media use were "trivial", accounting for less than 1%
of a teenager's wellbeing - and that the effect of social media was "not a one-way street".
 It claims its study is more in-depth and robust than previous ones. Past research on the
relationship between screens, technology and children's mental health has often been
contradictory.

Social media and celebrity culture 'harming young people'

The Guardian. Jul 23, 2018
 Airbrushed photographs of celebrities with perfectly preened bodies staged in exotic
locations are all over social media, but such flawless images have been described as
damaging for the way they pressurise young people to meet unobtainable body-image
standards.
 The youth charity YMCA found that 62% of 15 to 16-year-olds felt that social media had
ramped up expectations over their personal appearance.
 Ideals of physical perfection were also said to be driven by celebrity culture, with 58%
of 11 to 16-year-olds identifying it as the main influence.
 Social media was already a concern among 11 to 12-year-olds, with 43% of those
surveyed claiming individuals they saw on online influenced them.
 The charity has joined Dove, the health and beauty products company, for its Be Real
Campaign, which is asking people to sign up to its body image pledge,
IPledgeToBeReal.
 Increasing numbers of academic studies have found that mental health problems have
soared among girls over the past decade, coinciding with the period in which young
people’s use of social media has exploded.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 12 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Social media such as Snapchat and Instagram “can be damaging and even destructive” to
girls’ mental wellbeing. “There’s a pressure for young people to be involved 24/7 and
keep up with their peer group or they will be left out and socially excluded.”

Social media linked to higher risk of depression in teen girls

Reuters. Jan 4, 2019
 Teenage girls are twice as likely as boys to show depressive symptoms linked to social
media use - mainly due to online harassment and disturbed sleep, as well as poor body
image and lower self-esteem, a study of young people from Britain found.

High social media use linked to well-being issues in teen girls

The Straits Times. Mar 26, 2018
 A study in the UK found that teenage girls are by far the highest users of social media,
and those who are using it for more than an hour a day are also at the highest risk of
developing well-being problems in later teen years.
 Girls participate in more comparisons of their own lives with those of the people they
are friends with or follow. Viewing filtered or photoshopped images and mostly positive
posts may lead to feelings of inadequacy and poorer well-being. Girls also feel more
pressure to develop and maintain a social media presence than boys.
 A recent report by the Children's Commissioner for England, "Life in Likes", suggested
imploring social media platforms to check underage use and preparing children better for
life in a digital age. There have also been calls for the technology industry to look at in-
built time limits. The amount of increasing time online is strongly associated with a
decline in well-being among the young, especially for girls.

Young teens with big following on social media

The Straits Times. Sep 10, 2017
 There are a number of "student influencers" who are followed by tens of thousands on
social media. Several study at brand-name schools. These teens take on marketing gigs
for sponsors, in exchange for freebies, discounts and even advertorial fees.
 There is a risk that student influencers may feel a false sense of self-worth or belonging
from the popularity they experience on social media.

How Social Media Is Hurting Your Memory

TIME. May 8, 2018
 In a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers
showed that those who documented and shared their experiences on social media formed
less precise memories of those events. They performed about 10% worse on memory
tests across all experiments.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 13 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Externalized information used to take effort to retrieve, but with the arrival of the
portable Internet, almost any fact is accessible within seconds. This ease has produced
what researchers call the “Google effect,” in which there is less need to store information
internally when it is so easily accessible elsewhere. This availability of external
information causes us to neglect information itself, but instead remember where to find
it.
 This effect is related to another concern linked to social media: FOMO, or the fear of
missing out. FOMO, not surprisingly, is associated with being less satisfied with your
life, in a worse mood and emotionally unfulfilled.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 14 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

2 Journalism and the News Media

2.1 The Role of Journalism

World News Day: Why the news matters to you and me

Warren Fernandez. The Straits Times. Sep 28, 2019
 So, ironically, while the world is more connected today and more people have much
more information readily available at their fingertips, societies are not necessarily better
informed or equipped to make the tough choices needed if we are to address the many
challenges we face.
 Instead, the credibility of and trust in major institutions seem to be insidiously chipped
away amid the welter of information and disinformation, facts and alternative facts,
thereby undermining our ability to have sensible democratic discussions on the way
forward.
 This is where journalists and professional newsrooms come in.
 Our job is to seek out information, cross-check and verify it, understand the history,
background and context, strive to be balanced and objective, analyse and interpret
developments, and seek to put out as fair and unvarnished an account of events as we
can, to help our audiences make up their minds on what it all means for them.
 This matters. Because in the absence of credible and reliable information, we cannot
have rational and reasonable debates. Instead, discussions turn into shouting matches,
which tend to be dominated, and won, by those with the loudest, most nasty or persistent
– or often, the best financed – voices.

World News Day: How newsrooms made an impact in society

The Straits Times. Sep 28, 2019
 Bangladesh’s The Daily Star highlighted its stories on frequent accidents from fire in its
capital’s densely populated commercial zones, which forced the government into action.
 German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung shared its explosive expose with German news
magazine Der Spiegel earlier this year that led to the fall of the ruling government.
 Brazil’s Zero Hora has an investigative report on how retirees in their country were being
charged for insurance that they did not sign up for. It took the paper’s team close to two
months to expose the scam.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 15 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

2.2 Investigative Journalism

Panama Papers
Encyclopedia Britannica
 In early 2015 the Panama Papers were leaked by an anonymous source to the Munich
newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung , which shared them with the International Consortium
of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a U.S.-based global network. The ICIJ then shared the
material with 107 media organizations in 80 countries, including such newspapers as
France’s Le Monde and the United Kingdom’s The Guardian.
 A communal database was created for the 11.5 million leaked documents. For a year a
team of some 370 journalists accessed and researched the collection, thus creating the
biggest international investigative journalism project.

Ten Noteworthy Moments In U.S. Investigative Journalism

Brookings. Oct 20, 2014
 In early June 2013, The Post and The Guardian broke nearly-simultaneous stories about
National Security Agency surveillance activities being conducted on U.S. citizens and
foreign officials. Both newspapers shared the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for their articles.

Functions of the Media

SparkNotes
 The classic example of watchdog journalism, or activist reporting that attempts to hold
government officials and institutions accountable for their actions, is the Watergate
investigations of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The Washington Post reporters
doggedly pursued allegations of campaign misdeeds and presidential crimes, which led to
the indictments of a number of White House officials and the resignation of President
Richard Nixon in 1974. Journalists have exposed many other government scandals and
misdeeds, including the Iran-Contra affair and the Lewinsky scandal.

2.3 The Future of Journalism

Securing the future of quality journalism

Warren Fernandez. The Straits Times. Sep 22, 2019
 Media leaders at similar events have long lamented the triple challenges facing the
industry: growing threats to media freedom, the existential question of media
viability and the pressing need for innovation in newsrooms. All three issues are now
inextricably linked, equal sides of a trilemma that have to be tackled together.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 16 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 While some news groups have seen significant growth in both digital readership and
revenues, these increases have come off a low base and so are not quite enough to make
up for the print shortfall.
 Besides, the bulk of digital advertising has been hoovered up by the likes of Facebook
and Google, riding on the backs on media groups which produce the content they
amalgamate to draw audiences, while insisting they bear no responsibility for the content
on their platforms.
 Today, just about every media group is dabbling with paywalls and digital subscriptions,
moving from "advertising revenue to reader revenue", notes Mr Juan Senor, president
of Innovation Media Consulting.
 Despite the stark warnings, he insists he is optimistic about the future of journalism. Fake
news, he contends, "will save journalism". Declines in trust amid the welter of fake
content will drive audiences to seek out credible voices for reliable content and they will
pay for quality content they can count on.
 An independent commission in the United Kingdom published a report titled The
Cairncross Review: A Sustainable Future For Journalism in February.
 Without societal support, public interest news risks being crowded out by reports that
draw wider audiences for their ability to shock and awe. Fake news also tends to spread
faster and further for similar reasons, studies show.
 "Ultimately, the biggest challenge facing the sustainability of high-quality journalism,
and the press, may be the same as that facing the sustainability of many areas of life: The
digital revolution means that people have more claims on their attention than ever
before."
 "… this review proposes that most energy be given to the provision of public interest
news … the future of a healthy democracy depends on it."

Journalism’s Comeback
Alexandra Borchardt. Project Syndicate. Sep 7, 2018
 After years of ill health, the news industry is finally showing signs of a modest recovery.
According to the Digital News Report 2018 – the most comprehensive survey of digital
media consumption – subscriptions are trending up while consumer confidence has
stabilized. For a much-maligned business that trades in trust, these fragile gains amount to
meaningful progress.
 To be sure, the world’s media remain troubled; the report, produced by the Reuters
Institute for the Study of Journalism, shows that only 44% of news consumers believe
what established media brands publish. But that represents an increase of one
percentage point from last year, suggesting that the industry’s trust deficit has either
stopped growing or is actually narrowing.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 17 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Other surveys are even more bullish; for example, the annual Edelman Trust
Barometer found that journalists are regaining their credibility, while overall trust in
traditional and online-only journalism is at its highest point in seven years. These
findings prompted the firm to declare that “the return of experts” is upon us.
 Perhaps the most revealing trend in this year’s Digital News Report is the growing
distrust in news shared via social media. For example, our study found that only 23%
of respondents trust news they find on social media, and just 34% believe what they turn
up in search engines.
 But while platforms like Facebook stumble, many traditional media outlets are finding
their footing; subscription trends support this conclusion. Of the 74,000 survey
respondents, 14% said they paid for digital news at least once during the previous 12
months, while the average in the Nordic countries was closer to 30%.
 In the United States, President Donald Trump’s attacks on so-called “fake news media”
have had the opposite effect, pushing more people to support independent journalism than
ever before. In 2016, for example, only 9% of American consumers paid for news online;
that share rose to 16% in 2017 and has held steady this year.
 Even in countries like the United Kingdom, which has no shortage of free news websites,
people are investing in quality reporting. The Guardian’s model of soliciting donations or
membership payments is fueling a financial turnaround.

How we're helping local reporters turn important stories into national news
Gangadhar Patil. TED. Apr 2019
 Local reporters are on the front lines of important stories, but their work often goes
unnoticed by national and international news outlets.
 TED Fellow and journalist Gangadhar Patil is working to change that. In this quick talk,
he shows how he's connecting grassroots reporters in India with major news outlets
worldwide — and helping elevate and expose stories that might never get covered
otherwise.
 “According to a 2011 media study, only two percent of India's mainstream media
coverage is about rural issues. Even though almost 70 percent of India's population, 1.3
billion population, live in villages. This is disturbing for a democratic country like
India, where transparency is key to ensure justice to everyone, especially the poor.”

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 18 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

2.4 Fake News

You really can fool some of the people, all of the time
The Economist. Oct 31, 2019
 Dictatorships have always been built on lies: that Kim Jong Un is a demigod, that
nothing much happened on June 4th 1989 in Tiananmen Square. The Soviet Union called
its main newspaper Pravda (“Truth”). That was a lie, of course.
 Politicians in democracies have always mangled the truth: denying affairs and
downplaying the ill effects of their policies. What is new is the degree to which voters
are prepared to back leaders who seem to revel in their mendacity.
 Boris Johnson’s first notable act was to be fired from a newspaper for making up a quote.
Yet he is Britain’s prime minister. India said that it had downed a Pakistani F-16 fighter
jet over Kashmir in February. Facing an election, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister,
said his country had taught Pakistan a lesson. A subsequent inspection of Pakistan’s
aircraft by American officials showed that none was missing (India maintained its
position).
 As for President Donald Trump, whole websites are devoted to his truthlessness. As of
October 9th, the president had made 13,435 false or misleading statements while in
office. Rather than grapple with what is true and what is false, Twitter said on October
30th it would ban political ads (Facebook has so far declined to the same).
 Yet their duplicity seems to cost politicians little, if anything, in electoral support.
Surveys by YouGov, a pollster, put Mr Johnson’s Conservative Party in the lead in the
election due in December. Mr Trump’s job-approval rating, at 43%, is low but only one
point below what it was when he took office. No one takes for granted that he will lose
next year’s presidential election.
 Fake news may be exacerbating people’s inbuilt gullibility. A study published last
year in Science, a journal, concluded that “falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster,
deeper and more broadly than the truth” and that this effect was especially strong for fake
political news. Fake news provides voters with a smorgasbord of facts and lies from
which to pick and choose.
 In politics, however, these explanations cannot be the whole story. At the heart of the
lying-politician paradox is an uncomfortable fact: voters appear to support liars more
than they believe them. Mr Trump’s approval rating is 11 points higher than the share of
people who trust him to tell the truth. A third of British voters view Mr Johnson
favourably but only a fifth think he is honest. Voters believe in their leaders even if they
do not believe them. Why?

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 19 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 The answer starts with the primacy of intuitive decision-making. If voters’ judgments
are rooted in emotion and intuition, facts and evidence are likely to be secondary. The
most important consequence of the domination of intuition is the pervasiveness of
confirmation bias—the tendency to seek out and interpret information that confirms
what you already think.
 A new version of confirmation bias is “identity-protective cognition”, argues Dan
Kahan of Yale Law School. This says that people process information in a way that
protects their self-image and the image they think others have of them.
 For example, those who live surrounded by climate-change sceptics may avoid saying
anything that suggests humankind is altering the climate, simply to avoid becoming an
outcast. A climate sceptic encircled by members of Extinction Rebellion might do the
same thing in reverse. As people become more partisan, more issues are being taken
as markers of the kind of person you are.

The Global War on Truth

Richard Stengel. TIME. Sep 26, 2019
 We didn’t realize or even suspect it at the time, but this tsunami of Russian propaganda
and disinformation became a kind of test run for what they did here in the 2016 election.
In many ways, these were also the first salvos in the global information war we are
living in now.
 Today, we are all actors in a global information war that is ubiquitous, difficult to
comprehend and taking place at the speed of light. About 600,000 Facebook accounts are
compromised every day. More than 25 million data records are lost or stolen from
businesses each day. And all that doesn’t even take into account the rising tide of
disinformation, which is impossible to measure.
 It is a war without limits and boundaries, and one we still don’t know how to fight.
Governments, nonstate actors and terrorists are creating their own narratives that have
nothing to do with reality. These false narratives undermine our democracy and the ability
of free people to make intelligent choices.
 Studies show that more than a quarter of Americans recall seeing at least one false story
leading up to the 2016 election. The Russians were not “meddling” in our election–they
were staging an unprecedented attack against the very foundation of our democracy.
 While the Russians have pioneered election interference, they are no longer alone. In the
intelligence world, countries copy what works, and the FBI has already said China and
Iran are getting in on the game.
 Just this year, Facebook and Twitter have taken down hundreds of accounts and handles
affiliated with Iran influence operations. China has used online influence to counter the
Hong Kong protesters; it’s hard to imagine they won’t experiment against the U.S.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 20 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 But ultimately the problem is centered less on government or even platforms than on
users; that is, you and me. I’ve long thought that we don’t have a “fake news” problem,
we have a media-literacy problem. Millions of people just can’t tell the difference
between a made-up story and a factual one, and don’t know how to do so.
 People need to learn the provenance of information: what is an accepted fact and what is
not; what is a trusted source and what is not. At the same time, the media itself must
become radically transparent: publish the full text of interviews and reporters’ research.

How – and How Not – to Restore Trust in Media

Alexandra Borchardt. Project Syndicate. Jul 3, 2019
 In journalism, discerning quality is becoming increasingly complicated, not least because,
in the digital age, trusted brands like the BBC or The New York Times, which can be
expected to adhere to long-established journalistic standards, are vastly outnumbered by
upstart publications, blogs, and community reports.
 Not surprisingly, therefore, as claims of “fake news” have proliferated in recent years,
trust in news media – established and otherwise – has plummeted.
 According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2017, those who regularly
consume news do so with significant skepticism. Only about 50% of users trust the media
brands they choose to consume; far fewer trust outlets that they do not use. With too
many options and too little confidence in media, nearly one-third of people have given up
following the news altogether.
 But news journalism is not an expendable luxury. It is a critical public good, enabling
citizens to make informed decisions, while helping to hold those in power accountable.
 The first problem is that there is no clear definition of what constitutes quality journalism,
which raises the risk that the standard of “quality” will become a tool of censorship.
When Adolf Hitler wanted a book burned, he would assert that it did not meet the
“standards” of Nazi ideology. Similarly, a government today could cite quality issues to
attack critics’ credibility or to justify denying them journalistic credentials.
 Some organizations concerned with the future of the media are trying to circumvent this
danger by developing trust indicators. Most notably, the Journalism Trust Initiative, led
by Reporters Without Borders, is creating voluntary guidelines and a best-practice
framework that will evolve into an official certification process.
 Journalism will never be like, say, the airline industry, where strict standards and
procedures apply to every action and product. But, until recently, it didn’t need to be:
journalists adhered to codes of professional and ethical conduct, and were overseen by
bodies that took action in the event of a breach. Doing it right was the default – even
though the concept of “right” has always been open to interpretation.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 21 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 This is the status quo to which journalism must return. That means, first and foremost,
individual organizations taking responsibility for the quality of their content and adhering
to a set of rules, including oversight and editing, to ensure it. When this cannot be done
within the organization itself – say, when a citizen journalist is operating in an anti-
democratic environment – external bodies could do the job.
 In establishing such systems, lessons could be learned from collaborative reporting
projects like the one that covered the Panama Papers, in which researchers enjoyed
individual freedom – ensuring a plurality of voices and healthy competition – but had to
meet certain standards. As technology advances, automated fact-checking could also be
introduced, especially in less-resourced newsrooms.
 In an age of unprecedented access to information, true and otherwise, people of all ages
must improve their media literacy. But that does not let media organizations off the
hook. With the help of an aware and critical audience, they must monitor themselves
and one another, as they have done in the past.

Tackling the real issue of fake news

The Straits Time. Apr 9, 2018
 The lead-up to Brexit, the shock result of a 2016 referendum in which Britain voted to
leave the European Union, was seen to be rife with false claims from the "leave" camp,
such as Britain sending the EU £350million a week, or that Turkey would soon be
admitted to the EU and many of its largely Muslim citizens would head to Britain.
 A study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers found that false news was
about 70 percent more likely to be retweeted by people than true news. True stories took
about six times as long to reach 1,500 people than false stories did to reach the same
number of people.
 One often-cited example is what is called the "Pizzagate" conspiracy: In the US, a
rumour started in 2016 that US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and one of her top
advisers had used a pizza restaurant in Washington as a front for a paedophile ring. In
December that year, then 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, fuelled by his belief in the
rumour, walked into the s restaurant and fired off a round from his AR-15 rifle.
 In France, non-profit First Draft News last year launched CrossCheck, a collaborative
journalism project across newsrooms. In the weeks leading up to the May 2017 French
presidential election, 37 newsrooms in France and Britain fact-checked and reported on
false, misleading and confusing claims related to the election and candidates.
 In the US, the charity Newseum, which aims to increase understanding of the importance
of a free press and the country's First Amendment, launched a new exhibit examining the
role of fake news in the 2016 presidential election. It has been running media literacy
classes for students for about 20 years and, in March last year, it added Fighting Fake
News classes.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 22 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Germany passed a new law which kicked in from Jan 1 this year. The Network
Enforcement Act, also called NetzDG, applies to social media platforms with two
million or more users. These platforms can be fined €50 million for each post that is
deemed illegal and not removed within 24 hours of receiving a notification.
 Since 2013, the National Library Board has been running the Sure - which stands for
Source, Understand, Research, Evaluate - campaign that teaches the public how to search
for reliable sources of information and critically assess information.
 Laws in Singapore to deal with falsehoods:
o Defamation Act: This allows individuals or organisations who believe their reputation
has been harmed by falsehoods to take action against the source and to seek redress or
damages.
o Sedition Act: This covers a number of situations, including a tendency "to promote
feelings of ill will and hostility between different races or classes of the population
of Singapore".
o Telecommunications Act: Under this law, people who transmit a message known to
be false or fabricated can be prosecuted.
 A Select Committee was set up in January to look into how Singapore can tackle fake
news. Over eight days of public hearings, themes that emerged include how to define
falsehoods and who will decide what counts as falsehoods, the effects of new laws on free
speech, the role of technology and social media companies, and empowering the public
through media literacy education and a Freedom of Information Act (a law under which
citizens can request data from the Government).

The future of fake news, according to experts

The World Economic Forum. Nov 1, 2017
 The 2016 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the tumultuous U.S. presidential
election highlighted how the digital age has affected news and cultural narratives.
 New information platforms feed the ancient instinct people have to find information that
syncs with their perspectives: A 2016 study that analyzed 376 million Facebook users’
interactions with over 900 news outlets found that people tend to seek information that
aligns with their views.
 This makes many vulnerable to accepting and acting on misinformation. After fake news
stories in June 2017 reported Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin had died in a car crash
its market value was reported to have dropped by $4 billion.
 When BBC Future Now interviewed a panel of 50 experts in early 2017 about the “grand
challenges we face in the 21st century” many named the breakdown of trusted
information sources. “The major new challenge in reporting news is the new shape of
truth,” said Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine. “Truth is no longer dictated by
authorities, but is networked by peers.”

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 23 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 A Pew Research Center study conducted just after the 2016 election found 64% of adults
believe fake news stories cause a great deal of confusion and 23% said they had shared
fabricated political stories themselves – sometimes by mistake and sometimes
intentionally.

Mainstream media's epic fight against fake news

The Straits Times. Aug 21, 2017
 The latest Reuters Institute survey shows that even when people get their information
from established media sources, it comes to them through news aggregator platforms
such as Facebook and Google, and fewer than half of those reading such news actually
know what the original source was, so the brand names of established media networks are
being eroded.
 And the less money established media organisations gain, the less resources they can put
into their work, the higher the number of mistakes and the more the accusations of "fake
news"; this is a perfect example of a vicious circle.

THE BIG READ: In an era of fake news, the truth may not always be out there
Today. Jun 2, 2017
 A study by BBC Global News found that eight in 10 Singaporean news consumers are
concerned about fake news.
 A study by Blackbox Research found that 42 percent of Singaporeans “regularly wonder
if the news they read is fake”, with six in 10 saying the issue worries them.
 In 2015, several foreign news outlets, including American news network CNN and
Chinese broadcaster CCTV, wrongly reported that founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan
Yew - who was then in intensive care - had died, based on an announcement made by a
fake government website.
 The confirmation bias intrinsic in human nature makes the situation worse, as people
readily believe false information that confirms their existing beliefs or theories instead
of seeking the truth.
 Entrepreneurial Macedonian teenagers produced hoax articles that may have tipped the
US Presidential Election in Mr Trump’s favour. The articles, which were sensational and
often baseless, were posted to Facebook, and attracted scores of readers and earned fake-
news writers money from pay-per-click advertising.
 During Malaysia’s General Election in 2013, unsubstantiated allegations that the election
commission had conducted itself fraudulently went viral online.
 The Government has put in place several measures: Information literacy — including
the ability to discern the authenticity of digital information — is currently taught in
primary and secondary schools, as part of the Cyber Wellness syllabus.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 24 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

o The Media Literacy Council (MLC) runs an annual campaign to educate Internet
users, including outreach programmes targeted at those aged 15 to 35.
o The Government has set up a website, called “Factually”, which aims to clarify
widespread or common misperceptions of Government policy, or other matters of
public concern.
 The DSO National Laboratories is developing an artificial intelligence system to
determine the authenticity of news.
 The BBC has assembled a fact-checking team that calls out false stories shared on social
media and clarifies them on its Reality Check series.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 25 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

3 Media Freedom

3.1 Freedom of Speech

China Holds #MeToo Activist Who Wrote About Hong Kong Protests
The New York Times. Oct 24, 2019
 Huang Xueqin, a leading figure in China’s #MeToo movement who recently wrote in
support of the antigovernment protests in Hong Kong, was detained last week in the
southern city of Guangzhou.
 The authorities accused Ms. Huang of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a
vague accusation that is often used to silence activists who challenge the status quo.
 Ms. Huang helped dozens of women report cases of sexual assault and abuse online,
battling censors and a male-dominated culture. The movement took on professors,
television anchors, religious leaders and others.
 In June, she wrote an essay about her experience attending the first massive
demonstration in Hong Kong. Two months later, the police on the mainland confiscated
her passport and harassed her relatives.

Chinese Media’s Attacks on Apple and N.B.A. Help Inflame Nationalism

The New York Times. Oct 9, 2019
 The National Basketball Association faced the wrath of the Chinese public this week after
the general manager of the Houston Rockets briefly shared an image on Twitter that said,
“Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”
 Apple also faced a backlash in China, a vital market, with some internet users demanding
a boycott of iPhones because of an app that allows protesters in Hong Kong to track
police movements.
 The increasingly tough tone of the Chinese media is part of Beijing’s efforts to inflame
nationalism at home and intimidate multinational companies into toeing the party line,
analysts say. “The psychological cold war has really begun,” said one media specialist in
China.

A Filmmaker Explored Japan’s Wartime Enslavement of Women. Now He’s

Being Sued.
The New York Times. Sep 18, 2019
 A filmmaker, Miki Dizaki, set out to examine why a small group of conservatives
continues to deny the country’s wartime atrocities, particularly the sexual enslavement of
so-called comfort women.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 26 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 The people he interviewed have reaches at the highest levels of the Japanese government,
shaping the country’s cultural, political and social narrative. Now, five of them are suing
Mr. Dizaki for defamation.

Life in an Internet Shutdown: Crossing Borders for Email and Contraband SIM Cards
The New York Times. Sep 2, 2019
 More than a quarter of the world’s nations — mainly in Asia and Africa — have shut
down the internet at one point over the past four years to stifle dissent. In the first half of
this year alone, there were 114 shutdowns in 23 countries.
 The move often has far-reaching consequences, battering small businesses and economies
and disrupting the daily lives of ordinary citizens.
 Governments sometimes justify their actions as an attempt to stop the spread of “fake
news” or hate speech, or to keep students from cheating during exams. But these
explanations often mask the real motivation, said Berhan Taye, who leads research into
internet shutdowns at Access Now.
 “Internet throttling and internet shutdowns are an extension of traditional forms of
censorship,” Ms. Taye said. “This is not a unique phenomenon — it’s an extension of
what’s happening in countries where civil space is already shrinking.”

As societies polarise, free speech is under threat. It needs defenders

The Economist. Aug 15, 2019
 The outrages come so fast that it is easy to grow inured to them. The president of the
United States calls truthful journalism “fake news” and reporters “enemies of the people”.
 On the contrary, when Saudi Arabia blatantly murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington
Post contributor, in its consulate in Istanbul last year, Mr Trump was quick to reassure the
Saudi crown prince that this would not affect any oil or arms deals.
 As societies have grown more politically polarised, many people have come to believe
that the other side is not merely misguided but evil.
 These ideas are as harmful as they are wrongheaded. Free speech is the cornerstone not
only of democracy but also of progress. Human beings are not free unless they can
express themselves. Minds remain narrow unless exposed to different viewpoints. Ideas
are more likely to be refined and improved if vigorously questioned and tested. Protecting
students from unwelcome ideas is like refusing to vaccinate them against measles. When
they go out into the world, they will be unprepared for its glorious but sometimes
challenging diversity.
 The notion that people have a right not to be offended is also pernicious. Offence is
subjective. When states try to police it, they encourage people to take offence,
aggravating social divisions.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 27 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Laws criminalising “hate speech” are inevitably vague and open to abuse. This is why
authoritarian regimes are adopting them so eagerly. A new Venezuelan law, for example,
threatens those who promote hatred with 20 years in prison—and prosecutors use it
against those who accuse ruling-party officials of corruption.
 Governments should regulate speech minimally. Incitement to violence, narrowly
defined, should be illegal. So should persistent harassment. Most other speech should be
free. And it is up to individuals to try harder both to avoid causing needless offence, and
to avoid taking it.

3.2 Journalism and the War on Truth

The Journalist vs. the President, With Life on the Line

The New York Times. Oct 15, 2019
 President Rodrigo Duterte refers to journalists as “spies,” “vultures” and “lowlifes.” His
wish, he has said, is to “kill journalism” in the Philippines.
 Maria Ressa, the editor of the independent news site Rappler, has incurred much of the
president’s wrath, becoming the target of almost a dozen civil and criminal cases in the
past year and a half. “It’s a strange time,” she said. “It’s definitely existential.”

Media freedom is even more important in the world of today

South China Morning Post. May 2, 2019
 The killing of The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in
Istanbul last year shocked the world.
 In the Philippines, Maria Ressa, award-winning journalist and CEO of news website
Rappler, has been arrested several times in what is widely seen as an attempt to
suppress her organisation’s criticism of the government.
 Meanwhile, two Reuters reporters have spent 16 months behind bars in Myanmar for
breaching secrecy laws. Their jailing has been condemned around the world. They were
investigating killings by the country’s security forces, coverage that was recently awarded
the Pulitzer Prize.
 And in the United States, President Donald Trump has contributed to the problem by
branding mainstream media organisations “enemies of the people” and dismissing reports
he does not like as “fake news”.
 Action is being taken to regulate social media platforms. Some governments are passing
laws to combat “fake news”. Moves to prevent the proliferation of hate speech, such as
that associated with the appalling mass killings in Christchurch, are needed. But there is a
danger this will be used by some governments as an excuse to suppress legitimate
journalism or to silence critics. That must not be allowed to happen.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 28 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

Not Just Khashoggi: Reprisal Killings of Journalists Surged This Year

The New York Times. Dec 19, 2018
 The latest findings reinforced what press advocates have described as an increasingly
dangerous and repressive climate for journalists nearly everywhere. Reprisal killings of
journalists because of their work nearly doubled in 2018, bringing the total number of
journalists killed on the job to the highest point in three years.
 The October killing of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit
squad in Turkey may have been the most prominent case, but journalists were targeted for
death all over the world this year — including in the United States, where a gunman
killed five people in a Maryland newsroom.
 The group issued an annual tally of jailed journalists that showed at least 250 were
behind bars in 2018 for the third consecutive year. The group said the jailings reflected
an authoritarian response to critical news coverage that represented “the new
normal.”
 The increase in killings this year after two years of decline, combined with the data
on jailings, amounts to “a profound global crisis in press freedom,” the Committee
to Protect Journalists said in a statement.
 The group blamed the crisis partly on what it called a “lack of international leadership
on journalists’ rights and safety,” pointing to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi as a prime
example.
 Press advocates have repeatedly criticized Mr. Trump for his denunciations of coverage
he does not like as “fake news” and for his description of news organizations as the
“enemy of the people.” A number of prominent news executives, including from The
New York Times, have said that the president’s words put the physical safety of
journalists at risk.

Jailing Hundreds of Journalists Worldwide Is the ‘New Normal,’ Group Finds

The New York Times. Dec 13, 2018
 A jump in the number of journalists imprisoned in China, to 47 compared with 38
reported a year ago, reflected what the group described as China’s crackdown on the
Uighur ethnic minority in the Xinjiang region. United Nations human rights officials
have accused the Chinese authorities of detaining up to a million people in Xinjiang, an
accusation China has rejected.
 The committee also singled out Saudi Arabia, which is under intense scrutiny for the
killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, in October at the Saudi
Consulate in Istanbul. At least 16 Saudi journalists were imprisoned as of Dec. 1,
including four female journalists who had written about women’s rights, the group said.
 The report also criticized President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey over his treatment
of journalists whom his government considers subversive.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 29 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

Condemning Khashoggi’s Killers

Leon Willems. Project Syndicate. Dec 11, 2018
 Recent figures published by UNESCO show that in nine of ten cases, perpetrators are
never punished for murdering a journalist.
 Because impunity is the norm, Saudi authorities took the gamble that even if the killing
came to light, the consequences would be minor. And they were right: although
prosecutors in Saudi Arabia are seeking the death penalty for five of the suspects, the
international response has so far been meek.
 Despite global media coverage and condemnation by governments and human-rights
activists, Saudi officials’ murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has not led to any
meaningful sanctions. And such impunity is an important reason why the murder
happened in the first place.

Time Names Person of the Year for 2018: Jamal Khashoggi and Other Journalists
The New York Times. Dec 11, 2018
 Time magazine named a group of journalists, including the murdered Saudi dissident
Jamal Khashoggi, as its person of the year for 2018, honoring their dedicated pursuit
of the truth despite a war on facts and tremendous obstacles, including violence and
imprisonment.
 The choice was a nod to the spread of misinformation in the United States and abroad by
leaders who have sought to quash critical independent journalism.
 Besides Mr. Khashoggi, the honorees include the staff of the Capital Gazette
newspapers in Maryland, where five people were shot dead in June; Maria Ressa, the
founder of Rappler, a news start-up under attack by the authoritarian president of the
Philippines; and U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists imprisoned in
Myanmar after reporting the massacre of Muslim men.

TIME Person of the Year 2018: The Guardians and the War on Truth
TIME. Dec 11, 2018
 Jamal Khashoggi was a leading journalist in Saudi Arabia for decades before fleeing to
the U.S. in 2017. In columns for the Washington Post, he criticized Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman’s quest for total power and suppression of free speech. On Oct. 2,
Khashoggi was murdered by agents of the kingdom inside its Istanbul consulate, while his
fiancée waited for him outside.
 Maria Ressa co-founded the news site Rappler. It has relentlessly covered the brutal drug
war of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, including extrajudicial killings that have
alarmed human-rights advocates. Duterte has called Rappler “fake news” and banned its
reporters from presidential events. She faces a possible 10-year sentence. “I’ve been a
war-zone correspondent. That is easy compared to what we’re dealing with now.”

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 30 of
H1 General Paper Content
Notes

 Reuters journalists U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo had documented the regime’s ethnic
cleansing; their prosecution has been widely viewed as retribution. They were sentenced
in September to seven years in prison.

FOR PERSONAL USE

Page 31 of