radiofree.asia

Category: Media Freedom

  • Tabloid Jubi journalist Victor Mambor ‘terrorised’ over Papua reports

    By Reza Gunadha and Chyntia Sami Bhayangkara in Jayapura

    Victor Mambor, journalist and editor of the Papua-based Tabloid Jubi, has become the target of a terrorist act this week.

    A car that he owns which was parked on the road near his home in the Papuan capital of Jayapura was vandalised by unknown individuals between 12 midnight and 2am on Wednesday, April 21.

    The windscreen of Mambor’s Isuzu Double Cabin DMax was smashed by a blunt object. The rear and left-side windows were also damaged by a sharp instrument.

    Victor Mambor
    Journalist Victor Mambor on a visit to New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre in 2014. Image: Del Abcede

    The left-side front and back doors were also spray painted with orange paint.

    The Jayapura branch of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) chairperson, Lucky Ireeuw, suspects that the vandalism act was committed over reporting by Tabloid Jubi which a “certain party” disliked.

    Tabloid Jubi and its website are known for consistently presenting the public with reports on human rights violations in Papua.

    “This act of terror and intimidation is clearly a form of violence against journalists and threatens press freedom in Papua and more broadly in Indonesia,” said Ireeuw in a press release on Thursday, April 22.

    ‘Terrorism suffered’
    “It is strongly suspected that the terrorism suffered by Victor is related to reporting by Tabloid Jubi which a certain party dislikes.”

    Prior to the vandalism of his car, Mambor has suffered a series of attacks.

    “Digital attacks, doxing, and disseminating a flyer on social media the content of which painted Tabloid Jubi and Victor Mambor in a bad light, playing people off against each other and threats of criminal attacks on the media and Victor personally,” Ireeuw said giving examples of the attacks.

    The incident has already been reported to the authorities and Ireeuw is calling on the police to immediately investigate and arrest the perpetrators.

    Ireeuw slammed the attack against Mambor and Tabloid Jubi and urged whoever committed it to stop such actions immediately.

    “We appeal to all parties to respect the work of journalists and respect press freedom in the land of Papua,” he said.

    Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Victor Mambor, Jurnalis Tabloid Jubi Papua Jadi Korban Aksi Teror”.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Tabloid Jubi journalist Victor Mambor ‘terrorised’ over Papua reports

    By Reza Gunadha and Chyntia Sami Bhayangkara in Jayapura

    Victor Mambor, journalist and editor of the Papua-based Tabloid Jubi, has become the target of a terrorist act this week.

    A car that he owns which was parked on the road near his home in the Papuan capital of Jayapura was vandalised by unknown individuals between 12 midnight and 2am on Wednesday, April 21.

    The windscreen of Mambor’s Isuzu Double Cabin DMax was smashed by a blunt object. The rear and left-side windows were also damaged by a sharp instrument.

    Victor Mambor
    Journalist Victor Mambor on a visit to New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre in 2014. Image: Del Abcede

    The left-side front and back doors were also spray painted with orange paint.

    The Jayapura branch of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) chairperson, Lucky Ireeuw, suspects that the vandalism act was committed over reporting by Tabloid Jubi which a “certain party” disliked.

    Tabloid Jubi and its website are known for consistently presenting the public with reports on human rights violations in Papua.

    “This act of terror and intimidation is clearly a form of violence against journalists and threatens press freedom in Papua and more broadly in Indonesia,” said Ireeuw in a press release on Thursday, April 22.

    ‘Terrorism suffered’
    “It is strongly suspected that the terrorism suffered by Victor is related to reporting by Tabloid Jubi which a certain party dislikes.”

    Prior to the vandalism of his car, Mambor has suffered a series of attacks.

    “Digital attacks, doxing, and disseminating a flyer on social media the content of which painted Tabloid Jubi and Victor Mambor in a bad light, playing people off against each other and threats of criminal attacks on the media and Victor personally,” Ireeuw said giving examples of the attacks.

    The incident has already been reported to the authorities and Ireeuw is calling on the police to immediately investigate and arrest the perpetrators.

    Ireeuw slammed the attack against Mambor and Tabloid Jubi and urged whoever committed it to stop such actions immediately.

    “We appeal to all parties to respect the work of journalists and respect press freedom in the land of Papua,” he said.

    Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Victor Mambor, Jurnalis Tabloid Jubi Papua Jadi Korban Aksi Teror”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Fiji health chief attacks ‘reckless’ reporting over covid outbreak

    The Pacific Newsroom

    Fiji’s Health Secretary Dr James Fong strongly attacked his country’s media for “reckless reporting” today, saying it could spark panic.

    He gave no evidence of this.

    Speaking at a press conference, Dr Fong announced tough measures to control the widening covid-19 community outbreak in Fiji.

    “We are still seeing media outlets bypassing official sources, publishing stories without the proper context and sparking panic among the public,” Dr Fong said.

    “That sort of reckless reporting can set back this entire containment strategy. It puts lives in danger, driving people to make bad decisions with bad information.”

    RNZ Pacific reports a third covid-19 case in the community in Fiji.

    Dr Fong’s statement followed an earlier attack on the media by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama who told the nation that unless covid information was on the Fiji government Facebook page, it was not accurate.

    Draconian powers
    Bainimarama’s government, since seizing power in a coup in 2006, has often adopted draconian powers to censor media and control journalists.

    Dr Fong told reporters that the Ministry of Health was holding daily briefings to give the best available information.

    “We don’t deal in rumours. We rely on facts, and the media must hold themselves to that same standard. Do not publish panicked nonsense for the sake of likes on Facebook or clicks on your website – the nation needs you to do better.”

    Dr Fong, who is a gynecologist, took exception to media questions, telling journalists not to ask questions he has already answered.

    “Some of you have been very insistent about asking questions we have already answered.

    “Please, let’s keep this focussed on new information the public does not already know.”

    Dr Fong’s often rambling presentation clearly raised the irritation of viewers as one widely circulated screen grab of his press conference illustrated.

    The Pacific Newsroom reports are republished with permission.

    Social media responses to Dr Fong's media conference.
    Social media responses to Dr Fong’s media conference. Image: TPN

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Fiji health chief attacks ‘reckless’ reporting over covid outbreak

    The Pacific Newsroom

    Fiji’s Health Secretary Dr James Fong strongly attacked his country’s media for “reckless reporting” today, saying it could spark panic.

    He gave no evidence of this.

    Speaking at a press conference, Dr Fong announced tough measures to control the widening covid-19 community outbreak in Fiji.

    “We are still seeing media outlets bypassing official sources, publishing stories without the proper context and sparking panic among the public,” Dr Fong said.

    “That sort of reckless reporting can set back this entire containment strategy. It puts lives in danger, driving people to make bad decisions with bad information.”

    RNZ Pacific reports a third covid-19 case in the community in Fiji.

    Dr Fong’s statement followed an earlier attack on the media by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama who told the nation that unless covid information was on the Fiji government Facebook page, it was not accurate.

    Draconian powers
    Bainimarama’s government, since seizing power in a coup in 2006, has often adopted draconian powers to censor media and control journalists.

    Dr Fong told reporters that the Ministry of Health was holding daily briefings to give the best available information.

    “We don’t deal in rumours. We rely on facts, and the media must hold themselves to that same standard. Do not publish panicked nonsense for the sake of likes on Facebook or clicks on your website – the nation needs you to do better.”

    Dr Fong, who is a gynecologist, took exception to media questions, telling journalists not to ask questions he has already answered.

    “Some of you have been very insistent about asking questions we have already answered.

    “Please, let’s keep this focussed on new information the public does not already know.”

    Dr Fong’s often rambling presentation clearly raised the irritation of viewers as one widely circulated screen grab of his press conference illustrated.

    The Pacific Newsroom reports are republished with permission.

    Social media responses to Dr Fong’s media conference. Image: TPN
    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Fiji drops three places in RSF press freedom index over gagging critics

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Fiji has dropped three places in the latest Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index and been condemned for its treatment of “overly critical” journalists who are often subjected to intimidation or even imprisonment.

    The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog has criticised many governments in the Asia-Pacific region for censorship and disinformation that has worsened since the start of the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic last year.

    “On the one hand, governments use innovative practices often derived from marketing to impose their own narrative within the mainstream media, whose publishers are from the same elite as the politicians,” says RSF.

    “On the other, politicians and activists wage a merciless war on several fronts against reporters and media outlets that don’t toe the official line.”

    Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Philippines are among the regional countries condemned for draconian measures against freedom of information. China was given a special panel for condemnation in a summary report.

    “Thanks to its massive use of new technology and an army of censors and trolls, Beijing manages to monitor and control the flow of information, spy on and censor citizens online, and spread its propaganda on social media,” says RSF.

    Independent journalism was also being fiercely suppressed in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and and Nepal.

    ‘Less violent repression’
    “A somewhat less violent increase in repression has also been seen in Papua New Guinea (down 1 at 47th), Fiji (down 3 at 55th) and Tonga (up 4 at 46th).” The Tongan “improvement” was due to the fall in other countries.

    In the country report for Fiji, reference is made to the “draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree, which was turned into a law in 2018, and under the regulator it created, the Media Industry Development Authority”, which is under direct government oversight.

    “Those who violate this law’s vaguely-worded provisions face up to two years in prison. The sedition laws, with penalties of up to seven years in prison, are also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship.

    “Sedition charges poisoned the lives of three journalists with The Fiji Times, the leading daily, until they were finally acquitted in 2018. It was the price the newspaper paid for its independence, many observers thought.”

    RSF also referred to the banning of Fiji Times distribution in several parts of the archipelago at the start of the covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.

    A year ago, RSF condemned an op-ed by a pro-government Fiji military commander in Fiji defending curbs on freedom of expression and freedom of the press in order to enforce the lockdown imposed by the government to combat covid-19.

    “In times of such national emergency such as this […] war against covid-19, our leaders have good reasons to stifle criticism of their policies by curtailing freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” Brigadier-General Jone Kalouniwai wrote in an op-ed in the pro-government Fiji Sun newspaper on 22 April 2020.

    ‘Enemy within’
    General Kalouniwai, the Republic of Fiji Military Forces chief-of-staff and who is regarded as close to Prime Minister Bainimarama, went on to voice “deep concerns about this enemy within, which have been fuelled by irresponsible citizens selfishly […] questioning the rationale of our leader’s decision to impose such restrictions.”

    “No authority, and certainly not a military officer, should be arguing in favour of placing any kind of curb on press freedom,” declared Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk at the time.

    “These comments recall the worst time of the Fijian military dictatorship from 2006 to 2014. We urge the Fijian government to do what is necessary to guarantee the right of its citizens to inform and be informed, which is an essential ally in combating the spread of the virus.”

    In late March, after the first coronavirus case was confirmed in the western city of Lautoka, police manning a roadblock outside the city prevented delivery of the Fiji Times, the country’s only independent daily.

    Its pro-government rival, the Fiji Sun, was meanwhile distributed without any problem.

    RSF noted “two other significant media actors that sustain press freedom” in the country – the Fiji Village news website and associated radio stations, and the Mai TV media group.

    PNG journalists ‘disillusioned’
    In Papua New Guinea, the ousting of Peter O’Neill by James Marape as prime minister in May 2019 was seen as an encouraging development for the prospects of greater media independence.

    However, “journalists were disillusioned” in April 2020 when the police minister called for two reporters to be fired for their ‘misleading’ coverage of the covid-19 crisis.

    “In addition to political pressure, journalists continue to be dependent on the concerns of those who own their media. This is particularly so at the two main dailies, the PNG Post -Courier, owned by US-Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which is above all focused on commercial and financial concerns, and The National, owned by the Malaysian logging multinational Rimbunan Hijau.”

    In contrast to the Pacific drops in the index, Timor-Leste rose seven places to 78th.

    “In 2020, journalists came under attack from the Catholic clergy, which is very powerful in Timor-Leste. A bishop [attacked] two media outlets that published an investigative article about a US priest accused of a sexual attack on a minor.

    “The Press Council that was created in 2015 plays an active role in defusing any conflicts involving journalists, and works closely with university centres to provide aspiring journalists with sound ethical training.

    “But the media law adopted in 2014, in defiance of the international community’s warnings, poses a permanent threat to journalists and encourages self-censorship.”

    ‘Press freedom models’
    In other regional developments, RSF said that the “regional press freedom models – New Zealand (up 1 at 8th), Australia (up 1 at 25th), South Korea (42nd) and Taiwan (43rd) – have on the whole allowed journalists to do their job and to inform the public without any attempt by the authorities to impose their own narrative”.

    In Australia, “it was Facebook that introduced the censorship virus.

    “In response to proposed Australian legislation requiring tech companies to reimburse the media for content posted on their social media platforms, Facebook decided to ban Australian media from publishing or sharing journalistic content on their Facebook pages.”

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Fiji drops three places in RSF press freedom index over gagging critics

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Fiji has dropped three places in the latest Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index and been condemned for its treatment of “overly critical” journalists who are often subjected to intimidation or even imprisonment.

    The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog has criticised many governments in the Asia-Pacific region for censorship and disinformation that has worsened since the start of the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic last year.

    “On the one hand, governments use innovative practices often derived from marketing to impose their own narrative within the mainstream media, whose publishers are from the same elite as the politicians,” says RSF.

    “On the other, politicians and activists wage a merciless war on several fronts against reporters and media outlets that don’t toe the official line.”

    Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Philippines are among the regional countries condemned for draconian measures against freedom of information. China was given a special panel for condemnation in a summary report.

    “Thanks to its massive use of new technology and an army of censors and trolls, Beijing manages to monitor and control the flow of information, spy on and censor citizens online, and spread its propaganda on social media,” says RSF.

    Independent journalism was also being fiercely suppressed in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and and Nepal.

    ‘Less violent repression’
    “A somewhat less violent increase in repression has also been seen in Papua New Guinea (down 1 at 47th), Fiji (down 3 at 55th) and Tonga (up 4 at 46th).” The Tongan “improvement” was due to the fall in other countries.

    In the country report for Fiji, reference is made to the “draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree, which was turned into a law in 2018, and under the regulator it created, the Media Industry Development Authority”, which is under direct government oversight.

    “Those who violate this law’s vaguely-worded provisions face up to two years in prison. The sedition laws, with penalties of up to seven years in prison, are also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship.

    “Sedition charges poisoned the lives of three journalists with The Fiji Times, the leading daily, until they were finally acquitted in 2018. It was the price the newspaper paid for its independence, many observers thought.”

    RSF also referred to the banning of Fiji Times distribution in several parts of the archipelago at the start of the covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.

    A year ago, RSF condemned an op-ed by a pro-government Fiji military commander in Fiji defending curbs on freedom of expression and freedom of the press in order to enforce the lockdown imposed by the government to combat covid-19.

    “In times of such national emergency such as this […] war against covid-19, our leaders have good reasons to stifle criticism of their policies by curtailing freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” Brigadier-General Jone Kalouniwai wrote in an op-ed in the pro-government Fiji Sun newspaper on 22 April 2020.

    ‘Enemy within’
    General Kalouniwai, the Republic of Fiji Military Forces chief-of-staff and who is regarded as close to Prime Minister Bainimarama, went on to voice “deep concerns about this enemy within, which have been fuelled by irresponsible citizens selfishly […] questioning the rationale of our leader’s decision to impose such restrictions.”

    “No authority, and certainly not a military officer, should be arguing in favour of placing any kind of curb on press freedom,” declared Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk at the time.

    “These comments recall the worst time of the Fijian military dictatorship from 2006 to 2014. We urge the Fijian government to do what is necessary to guarantee the right of its citizens to inform and be informed, which is an essential ally in combating the spread of the virus.”

    In late March, after the first coronavirus case was confirmed in the western city of Lautoka, police manning a roadblock outside the city prevented delivery of the Fiji Times, the country’s only independent daily.

    Its pro-government rival, the Fiji Sun, was meanwhile distributed without any problem.

    RSF noted “two other significant media actors that sustain press freedom” in the country – the Fiji Village news website and associated radio stations, and the Mai TV media group.

    PNG journalists ‘disillusioned’
    In Papua New Guinea, the ousting of Peter O’Neill by James Marape as prime minister in May 2019 was seen as an encouraging development for the prospects of greater media independence.

    However, “journalists were disillusioned” in April 2020 when the police minister called for two reporters to be fired for their ‘misleading’ coverage of the covid-19 crisis.

    “In addition to political pressure, journalists continue to be dependent on the concerns of those who own their media. This is particularly so at the two main dailies, the PNG Post -Courier, owned by US-Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which is above all focused on commercial and financial concerns, and The National, owned by the Malaysian logging multinational Rimbunan Hijau.”

    In contrast to the Pacific drops in the index, Timor-Leste rose seven places to 78th.

    “In 2020, journalists came under attack from the Catholic clergy, which is very powerful in Timor-Leste. A bishop [attacked] two media outlets that published an investigative article about a US priest accused of a sexual attack on a minor.

    “The Press Council that was created in 2015 plays an active role in defusing any conflicts involving journalists, and works closely with university centres to provide aspiring journalists with sound ethical training.

    “But the media law adopted in 2014, in defiance of the international community’s warnings, poses a permanent threat to journalists and encourages self-censorship.”

    ‘Press freedom models’
    In other regional developments, RSF said that the “regional press freedom models – New Zealand (up 1 at 8th), Australia (up 1 at 25th), South Korea (42nd) and Taiwan (43rd) – have on the whole allowed journalists to do their job and to inform the public without any attempt by the authorities to impose their own narrative”.

    In Australia, “it was Facebook that introduced the censorship virus.

    “In response to proposed Australian legislation requiring tech companies to reimburse the media for content posted on their social media platforms, Facebook decided to ban Australian media from publishing or sharing journalistic content on their Facebook pages.”

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF 2021 Index: Censorship and the disinformation virus hits Asia-Pacific

    Reporters Without Borders

    The Asia-Pacific region’s authoritarian regimes have used the covid-19 pandemic to perfect their methods of totalitarian control of information, while the “dictatorial democracies” have used it as a pretext for imposing especially repressive legislation with provisions combining propaganda and suppression of dissent.

    The behaviour of the region’s few real democracies have, meanwhile, shown that journalistic freedom is the best antidote to disinformation, reports the RSF World Press Freedom Index.

    Just as covid-19 emerged in China (177th) before spreading throughout the world, the censorship virus – at which China is the world’s undisputed specialist (see panel) – spread through Asia and Oceania and gradually took hold in much of the region.

    This began in the semi-autonomous “special administrative region” of Hong Kong (80th), where Beijing can now interfere directly under the national security law it imposed in June 2020, and which poses a grave threat to journalism.

    Vietnam (175th) also reinforced its control of social media content, while conducting a wave of arrests of leading independent journalists in the run-up to the Communist Party’s five-yearly congress in January 2021. They included Pham Doan Trang, who was awarded RSF’s Press Freedom Prize for Impact in 2019.

    North Korea (up 1 at 179th), which has no need to take lessons in censorship from its Chinese neighbour, continues to rank among the Index’s worst performers because of its totalitarian control over information and its population. A North Korean citizen can still end up in a concentration camp just for looking at the website of a media outlet based abroad.

    China (177th)

    In censorship’s grip

    Since he became China’s leader in 2013, President Xi Jinping has taken online censorship, surveillance and propaganda to unprecedented levels. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), an agency personally supervised by Xi, has deployed a wide range of measures aimed at controlling the information accessible to China’s 989 million Internet users. Thanks to its massive use of new technology and an army of censors and trolls, Beijing manages to monitor and control the flow of information, spy on and censor citizens online, and spread its propaganda on social media. The regime is also expanding its influence abroad with the aim of imposing its narrative on international audiences and promoting its perverse equation of journalism with state propaganda. And Beijing has taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to enhance its control over online information even more.


    Countries that block journalism
    At least 10 other countries – all marked red or black on the World Press Freedom map, meaning their press freedom situation is classified as bad or very bad – used the pandemic to reinforce obstacles to the free flow of information.

    Thailand (up 3 at 137th), Philippines (down 2 at 138th), Indonesia (up 6 at 113th) and Cambodia (144th) adopted extremely draconian laws or decrees in the spring of 2020 criminalising any criticism of the government’s actions and, in some cases, making the publication or broadcasting of “false” information punishable by several years in prison.

    Malaysia (down 18 at 119th) embodies the desire for absolute control over information. Its astonishing 18-place fall, the biggest of any country in the Index, is directly linked to the formation of a new coalition government in March 2020.

    It led to the adoption of a so-called “anti-fake news” decree enabling the authorities to impose their own version of the truth – a power that the neighbouring city-state of Singapore (down 2 at 160th) has already been using for the past two years thanks to a law allowing the government to “correct” any information it deems to be false and to prosecute those responsible.

    In Myanmar (down 1 at 140th), Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government used the pretext of combatting “fake news” during the pandemic to suddenly block 221 websites, including many leading news sites, in April 2020. The military’s constant harassment of journalists trying to cover the various ethnic conflicts also contributed to the country’s fall in the Index.

    The press freedom situation has worsened dramatically since the military coup in February 2021. By resuming the grim practices of the junta that ruled until February 2011 – including media closures, mass arrests of journalists and prior censorship – Myanmar has suddenly gone back 10 years.

    Pakistan (145th) is the other country in the region where the military control journalists. The all-powerful military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continues to make extensive use of judicial harassment, intimidation, abduction and torture to silence critics both domestically and abroad, where many journalists and bloggers living in self-imposed exile have been subjected to threats designed to rein them in.

    Although the vast majority of media outlets reluctantly comply with the red lines imposed by the military, the Pakistani censorship apparatus is still struggling to control social media, the only space where a few critical voices can be heard.

    Pretexts, methods for throttling information
    Instead of drafting new repressive laws in order to impose censorship, several of the region’s countries have contented themselves with strictly applying existing legislation that was already very draconian – laws on “sedition,” “state secrets” and “national security”. There is no shortage of pretexts. The strategy for suppressing information is often two-fold.

    On the one hand, governments use innovative practices often derived from marketing to impose their own narrative within the mainstream media, whose publishers are from the same elite as the politicians. On the other, politicians and activists wage a merciless war on several fronts against reporters and media outlets that don’t toe the official line.

    The way India (142nd) applies these methods is particularly instructive. While the pro-government media pump out a form of propaganda, journalists who dare to criticise the government are branded as “anti-state,” “anti-national” or even “pro-terrorist” by supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

    This exposes them to public condemnation in the form of extremely violent social media hate campaigns that include calls for them to be killed, especially if they are women. When out reporting in the field, they are physically attacked by BJP activists, often with the complicity of the police.

    And finally, they are also subjected to criminal prosecutions.

    Independent journalism is also being fiercely suppressed in Bangladesh (down 1 at 152nd), Sri Lanka (127th) and Nepal (up 6 at 106th) – the latter’s rise in the Index being due more to falls by other countries than to any real improvement in media freedom.

    A somewhat less violent increase in repression has also been seen in Papua New Guinea (down 1 at 47th), Fiji (down 3 at 55th) and Tonga (up 4 at 46th).

    Other threats
    In Australia (up 1 at 25th), it was Facebook that introduced the censorship virus. In response to proposed Australian legislation requiring tech companies to reimburse the media for content posted on their social media platforms, Facebook decided to ban Australian media from publishing or sharing journalistic content on their Facebook pages.

    In India, the arbitrary nature of Twitter’s algorithms also resulted in brutal censorship. After being bombarded with complaints generated by troll armies about The Kashmir Walla magazine, Twitter suddenly suspended its account without any possibility of appeal.

    Afghanistan (122nd) is being attacked by another virus, the virus of intolerance and extreme violence against journalists, especially women journalists. With no fewer than six journalists and media workers killed in 2020 and at least four more killed since the start of 2021, Afghanistan continues to be one of the world’s deadliest countries for the media.
    Antidote to disinformation

    A new prime minister in Japan (down 1 at 67th) has not changed the climate of mistrust towards journalists that is encouraged by the nationalist right, nor has it ended the self-censorship that is still widespread in the media.

    The Asia-Pacific region’s young democracies, such as Bhutan (up 2 at 65th), Mongolia (up 5 at 68th) and Timor-Leste (up 7 at 71st), have resisted the temptations of pandemic-linked absolute information control fairly well, thanks to media that have been able to assert their independence vis-à-vis the executive, legislature and judiciary.

    Although imperfect, the regional press freedom models – New Zealand (up 1 at 8th), Australia, South Korea (42nd) and Taiwan (43rd) – have on the whole allowed journalists to do their job and to inform the public without any attempt by the authorities to impose their own narrative.

    Their good behaviour has shown that censorship is not inevitable in times of crisis and that journalism can be the best antidote to disinformation.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RSF 2021 Index: Censorship and the disinformation virus hits Asia-Pacific

    Reporters Without Borders

    The Asia-Pacific region’s authoritarian regimes have used the covid-19 pandemic to perfect their methods of totalitarian control of information, while the “dictatorial democracies” have used it as a pretext for imposing especially repressive legislation with provisions combining propaganda and suppression of dissent.

    The behaviour of the region’s few real democracies have, meanwhile, shown that journalistic freedom is the best antidote to disinformation, reports the RSF World Press Freedom Index.

    Just as covid-19 emerged in China (177th) before spreading throughout the world, the censorship virus – at which China is the world’s undisputed specialist (see panel) – spread through Asia and Oceania and gradually took hold in much of the region.

    This began in the semi-autonomous “special administrative region” of Hong Kong (80th), where Beijing can now interfere directly under the national security law it imposed in June 2020, and which poses a grave threat to journalism.

    Vietnam (175th) also reinforced its control of social media content, while conducting a wave of arrests of leading independent journalists in the run-up to the Communist Party’s five-yearly congress in January 2021. They included Pham Doan Trang, who was awarded RSF’s Press Freedom Prize for Impact in 2019.

    North Korea (up 1 at 179th), which has no need to take lessons in censorship from its Chinese neighbour, continues to rank among the Index’s worst performers because of its totalitarian control over information and its population. A North Korean citizen can still end up in a concentration camp just for looking at the website of a media outlet based abroad.

    China (177th)

    In censorship’s grip

    Since he became China’s leader in 2013, President Xi Jinping has taken online censorship, surveillance and propaganda to unprecedented levels. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), an agency personally supervised by Xi, has deployed a wide range of measures aimed at controlling the information accessible to China’s 989 million Internet users. Thanks to its massive use of new technology and an army of censors and trolls, Beijing manages to monitor and control the flow of information, spy on and censor citizens online, and spread its propaganda on social media. The regime is also expanding its influence abroad with the aim of imposing its narrative on international audiences and promoting its perverse equation of journalism with state propaganda. And Beijing has taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to enhance its control over online information even more.


    Countries that block journalism
    At least 10 other countries – all marked red or black on the World Press Freedom map, meaning their press freedom situation is classified as bad or very bad – used the pandemic to reinforce obstacles to the free flow of information.

    Thailand (up 3 at 137th), Philippines (down 2 at 138th), Indonesia (up 6 at 113th) and Cambodia (144th) adopted extremely draconian laws or decrees in the spring of 2020 criminalising any criticism of the government’s actions and, in some cases, making the publication or broadcasting of “false” information punishable by several years in prison.

    Malaysia (down 18 at 119th) embodies the desire for absolute control over information. Its astonishing 18-place fall, the biggest of any country in the Index, is directly linked to the formation of a new coalition government in March 2020.

    It led to the adoption of a so-called “anti-fake news” decree enabling the authorities to impose their own version of the truth – a power that the neighbouring city-state of Singapore (down 2 at 160th) has already been using for the past two years thanks to a law allowing the government to “correct” any information it deems to be false and to prosecute those responsible.

    In Myanmar (down 1 at 140th), Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government used the pretext of combatting “fake news” during the pandemic to suddenly block 221 websites, including many leading news sites, in April 2020. The military’s constant harassment of journalists trying to cover the various ethnic conflicts also contributed to the country’s fall in the Index.

    The press freedom situation has worsened dramatically since the military coup in February 2021. By resuming the grim practices of the junta that ruled until February 2011 – including media closures, mass arrests of journalists and prior censorship – Myanmar has suddenly gone back 10 years.

    Pakistan (145th) is the other country in the region where the military control journalists. The all-powerful military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continues to make extensive use of judicial harassment, intimidation, abduction and torture to silence critics both domestically and abroad, where many journalists and bloggers living in self-imposed exile have been subjected to threats designed to rein them in.

    Although the vast majority of media outlets reluctantly comply with the red lines imposed by the military, the Pakistani censorship apparatus is still struggling to control social media, the only space where a few critical voices can be heard.

    Pretexts, methods for throttling information
    Instead of drafting new repressive laws in order to impose censorship, several of the region’s countries have contented themselves with strictly applying existing legislation that was already very draconian – laws on “sedition,” “state secrets” and “national security”. There is no shortage of pretexts. The strategy for suppressing information is often two-fold.

    On the one hand, governments use innovative practices often derived from marketing to impose their own narrative within the mainstream media, whose publishers are from the same elite as the politicians. On the other, politicians and activists wage a merciless war on several fronts against reporters and media outlets that don’t toe the official line.

    The way India (142nd) applies these methods is particularly instructive. While the pro-government media pump out a form of propaganda, journalists who dare to criticise the government are branded as “anti-state,” “anti-national” or even “pro-terrorist” by supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

    This exposes them to public condemnation in the form of extremely violent social media hate campaigns that include calls for them to be killed, especially if they are women. When out reporting in the field, they are physically attacked by BJP activists, often with the complicity of the police.

    And finally, they are also subjected to criminal prosecutions.

    Independent journalism is also being fiercely suppressed in Bangladesh (down 1 at 152nd), Sri Lanka (127th) and Nepal (up 6 at 106th) – the latter’s rise in the Index being due more to falls by other countries than to any real improvement in media freedom.

    A somewhat less violent increase in repression has also been seen in Papua New Guinea (down 1 at 47th), Fiji (down 3 at 55th) and Tonga (up 4 at 46th).

    Other threats
    In Australia (up 1 at 25th), it was Facebook that introduced the censorship virus. In response to proposed Australian legislation requiring tech companies to reimburse the media for content posted on their social media platforms, Facebook decided to ban Australian media from publishing or sharing journalistic content on their Facebook pages.

    In India, the arbitrary nature of Twitter’s algorithms also resulted in brutal censorship. After being bombarded with complaints generated by troll armies about The Kashmir Walla magazine, Twitter suddenly suspended its account without any possibility of appeal.

    Afghanistan (122nd) is being attacked by another virus, the virus of intolerance and extreme violence against journalists, especially women journalists. With no fewer than six journalists and media workers killed in 2020 and at least four more killed since the start of 2021, Afghanistan continues to be one of the world’s deadliest countries for the media.
    Antidote to disinformation

    A new prime minister in Japan (down 1 at 67th) has not changed the climate of mistrust towards journalists that is encouraged by the nationalist right, nor has it ended the self-censorship that is still widespread in the media.

    The Asia-Pacific region’s young democracies, such as Bhutan (up 2 at 65th), Mongolia (up 5 at 68th) and Timor-Leste (up 7 at 71st), have resisted the temptations of pandemic-linked absolute information control fairly well, thanks to media that have been able to assert their independence vis-à-vis the executive, legislature and judiciary.

    Although imperfect, the regional press freedom models – New Zealand (up 1 at 8th), Australia, South Korea (42nd) and Taiwan (43rd) – have on the whole allowed journalists to do their job and to inform the public without any attempt by the authorities to impose their own narrative.

    Their good behaviour has shown that censorship is not inevitable in times of crisis and that journalism can be the best antidote to disinformation.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF condemns Myanmar’s military junta for ‘eliminating’ independent media

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the restoration of media pluralism and unrestricted internet access in Myanmar, where the military, in the weeks since staging a coup d’état on February 1, has reasserted full control over news and information.

    The military has “engineering the disappearance of the last independent newspapers” and imposed tight curbs on online access, RSF says in a statement.

    There is no longer a free press in Myanmar, says RSF.

    The only print media have been official newspapers controlled by the military since  March 17, after the last independent daily in circulation, The Standard Time (San Taw Chain in Burmese), took the same decision as its four rivals and suspended its print edition, citing distribution problems since the coup.

    Ten days after the Information Ministry told media to stop using the terms “junta” and “coup d’état” or face sanctions, the Myanmar Times suddenly suspended operations on  February 21 “for three months,” according to the welcome message on its website.

    The website of the newspaper The Voice has not been updated since March 1.

    The military had to use stronger pressure to get two other newspapers, 7 Day News and Eleven, to stop publishing.

    It was only after the military authorities rescinded their licences on March 8 that they resigned themselves to stop publishing. The Eleven group nonetheless continues to post news on its website.

    News access endangered
    The military authorities have meanwhile been carrying our raids and seizing equipment – on March 8 at the offices of the Myanmar Now news agency and then, the next day, at the offices of the Mizzima News multimedia news group and the Kamayut Media video news website.

    The latter’s licence was not rescinded but two of its executives, Nathan Maung and Han Thar Nyein, have been arrested, preventing it from continuing to operate.

    Legal proceedings were initiated against the online media The Irrawaddy on March 14 under article 505 (a) of the penal code. This article has often been used to convict journalists critical of the military but this is the first time that an entire news organisation has been targeted.

    Ten journalists are currently facing up to three years in prison for covering the street protests against the coup.

    Other journalists have been the targets of reprisals for covering the protests against the military government. Two were abducted on March 19 while following the trial of Win Htein, one of the leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party whose government was brought down by the coup.

    One of the two, BBC correspondent Aung Thura, was released on March 22 after three days of interrogation and sleep deprivation. Like other reporters, he had to sign an undertaking to stop covering the events taking place in Myanmar.

    The other, Mizzima News journalist Than Htike Aung, is still being held. Of the at least 45 journalists arrested since the coup, 25 have been released. The others are still being held.

    Finally, the military authorities are now imposing drastic restrictions on access to the internet, which was the only way to see reliable, independent reporting.

    Fixed-line internet is disconnected every night, mobile internet has been blocked for the past 11 days, and access to public wi-fi networks has been reduced for the past week, according to the internet freedom watchdog NetBlocks.

    “The actions taken by the military junta to eliminate news pluralism and press freedom and to persecute those journalists trying against all odds to keep working have unfortunately succeeded and access to news and information has not been in such danger in Myanmar since its democratisation in 2011,” RSF editor-in-chief Pauline Adès-Mével said.

    “After targeting the newspapers, the military authorities led by General Min Aung Hlaing are now blocking the digital domain in order to prevent Myanmar’s people from keeping informed about the military’s bloody crackdown on demonstrators.

    “We urge them to immediately restore press freedom, restore internet networks and stop targeting the journalists still daring to report in the field.”

    Hide or flee
    Thein Zaw, an Associated Press journalist held for more than three weeks, was finally released yesterday after charges were dropped against him. He had been violently arrested while photographing policemen during a demonstration on February 27.

    Robert Bociaga, a Polish photo-journalist arrested nearly two weeks ago, was also released yesterday and is awaiting deportation.

    The only solution envisaged by most journalists to avoid arrest and police violence is to hide or flee to the remotest regions.

    According to The Irrawaddy, hundreds of journalists have chosen one or other of these options and, despite all the problems, some are continuing to work. Others have fled to regions that are rebel strongholds, such as the eastern state of Karen.

    Last week, RSF referred the military crackdown on media and journalists to the UN special rapporteurs on the human rights situation in Myanmar and on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

    Myanmar is ranked 139th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF condemns Myanmar’s military junta for ‘eliminating’ independent media

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the restoration of media pluralism and unrestricted internet access in Myanmar, where the military, in the weeks since staging a coup d’état on February 1, has reasserted full control over news and information.

    The military has “engineering the disappearance of the last independent newspapers” and imposed tight curbs on online access, RSF says in a statement.

    There is no longer a free press in Myanmar, says RSF.

    The only print media have been official newspapers controlled by the military since  March 17, after the last independent daily in circulation, The Standard Time (San Taw Chain in Burmese), took the same decision as its four rivals and suspended its print edition, citing distribution problems since the coup.

    Ten days after the Information Ministry told media to stop using the terms “junta” and “coup d’état” or face sanctions, the Myanmar Times suddenly suspended operations on  February 21 “for three months,” according to the welcome message on its website.

    The website of the newspaper The Voice has not been updated since March 1.

    The military had to use stronger pressure to get two other newspapers, 7 Day News and Eleven, to stop publishing.

    It was only after the military authorities rescinded their licences on March 8 that they resigned themselves to stop publishing. The Eleven group nonetheless continues to post news on its website.

    News access endangered
    The military authorities have meanwhile been carrying our raids and seizing equipment – on March 8 at the offices of the Myanmar Now news agency and then, the next day, at the offices of the Mizzima News multimedia news group and the Kamayut Media video news website.

    The latter’s licence was not rescinded but two of its executives, Nathan Maung and Han Thar Nyein, have been arrested, preventing it from continuing to operate.

    Legal proceedings were initiated against the online media The Irrawaddy on March 14 under article 505 (a) of the penal code. This article has often been used to convict journalists critical of the military but this is the first time that an entire news organisation has been targeted.

    Ten journalists are currently facing up to three years in prison for covering the street protests against the coup.

    Other journalists have been the targets of reprisals for covering the protests against the military government. Two were abducted on March 19 while following the trial of Win Htein, one of the leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party whose government was brought down by the coup.

    One of the two, BBC correspondent Aung Thura, was released on March 22 after three days of interrogation and sleep deprivation. Like other reporters, he had to sign an undertaking to stop covering the events taking place in Myanmar.

    The other, Mizzima News journalist Than Htike Aung, is still being held. Of the at least 45 journalists arrested since the coup, 25 have been released. The others are still being held.

    Finally, the military authorities are now imposing drastic restrictions on access to the internet, which was the only way to see reliable, independent reporting.

    Fixed-line internet is disconnected every night, mobile internet has been blocked for the past 11 days, and access to public wi-fi networks has been reduced for the past week, according to the internet freedom watchdog NetBlocks.

    “The actions taken by the military junta to eliminate news pluralism and press freedom and to persecute those journalists trying against all odds to keep working have unfortunately succeeded and access to news and information has not been in such danger in Myanmar since its democratisation in 2011,” RSF editor-in-chief Pauline Adès-Mével said.

    “After targeting the newspapers, the military authorities led by General Min Aung Hlaing are now blocking the digital domain in order to prevent Myanmar’s people from keeping informed about the military’s bloody crackdown on demonstrators.

    “We urge them to immediately restore press freedom, restore internet networks and stop targeting the journalists still daring to report in the field.”

    Hide or flee
    Thein Zaw, an Associated Press journalist held for more than three weeks, was finally released yesterday after charges were dropped against him. He had been violently arrested while photographing policemen during a demonstration on February 27.

    Robert Bociaga, a Polish photo-journalist arrested nearly two weeks ago, was also released yesterday and is awaiting deportation.

    The only solution envisaged by most journalists to avoid arrest and police violence is to hide or flee to the remotest regions.

    According to The Irrawaddy, hundreds of journalists have chosen one or other of these options and, despite all the problems, some are continuing to work. Others have fled to regions that are rebel strongholds, such as the eastern state of Karen.

    Last week, RSF referred the military crackdown on media and journalists to the UN special rapporteurs on the human rights situation in Myanmar and on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

    Myanmar is ranked 139th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Samoa Observer: AG should investigate her own management

    EDITORIAL: By the Samoa Observer Editorial Board

    In the past month, we have made a new pen pal: the Attorney-General of Samoa, no less, Savalenoa Mareva Betham-Annandale.

    The arrival of her latest piece of correspondence – which always takes the form of an open letter – is always the cause of much excitement in our office.

    That being said, we have to ask how much of this soap opera could have been avoided.

    Here is a condensed version of the story that led to these exchanges and which has been repeated several times in these pages. The Office of the Attorney-General had engaged a firm, Betham & Annandale Law, formerly Savalenoa’s, now solely her husband’s, on two ongoing projects.

    Because we are journalists we asked questions about this arrangement. Specifically, we wanted to know what was the Attorney-General Office’s process for handling matters which could raise a perceived conflict of interest.

    Asking questions is what journalists do. And officials in a democratic society answer them.

    Our first story, on February 27 (“A.G. silent on husband’s firm”) was a good story but not a great story; it ran on page 3.

    It would have almost certainly been further back if it weren’t for the utter contempt shown for this newspaper and its readers by both the Attorney-General and her husband, Lauki Jason Annandale. Both declined to answer our simple questions; the latter simply hung up the phone.

    And so began the saga of our correspondence with the nation’s principal legal officer. The letters are full of mystery, outrage, spite, and self-sabotage (the Samoa Observer also wrote some rather boring questions along the way).

    Something that never seems to have been apprehended by Savalenoa is that the public has a right to know what is going inside its own government.

    Savalenoa consistently refused to reply, except in the form of press releases written in response to our stories, written in the tone of someone who evidently does not see themselves as a public servant.

    Crucially, while frequently insulting our journalists at no stage did she ever see fit to answer the question we had asked from the outset.

    Perhaps Savalenoa found some sport in these exchanges – who knows? Providing a simple reply weeks ago could have ended a matter that has now blown into calls for a police investigation.

    But the story kept going and growing. And not just because we refuse to let not answering questions put a stop to our work.

    Our questions began after we received a 12-page draft retainer document showing her husband’s firm had been contracted to represent the government in a matter involving the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment.

    We then discovered that Savalenoa’s former firm had been paid to review the government’s plans to upend this country’s legal system and amend its constitution by creating an autonomous Land and Titles Court (LTC).

    When asked in September last year if her former firm had been appointed to conduct this external $100,000 review of the laws she point-blank denied it to one of our reporters.

    The story became curious and curiouser.

    Information continued to roll in, including a variation to the review signed by the Assistant Attorney-General in November last year – well after her July appointment.

    The Samoa Observer, as newspapers have done for centuries, reported on the information because it is in the interest of the Samoan people, the Attorney-General’s ultimate employers.

    After we suggested to Savalenoa on our editorial page last week that the public deserved an answer to our question, our pen pal buckled.

    Or perhaps erupted is a better word.

    In a statement released by the Attorney-General’s Office on Saturday, we received a response to the question which we had been asking for three weeks.

    The Assistant Attorney-General advised they had taken charge of all processes relating to Betham & Annandale Law engagements and the Attorney-General was removed from the discussion of all work relating to the matter.

    There we had it. Simple stuff, really. But then we got a whole lot more than we had asked for.

    Not for the first time, the Office commented on the “concerning” nature of our journalism.

    But it was never material printed in this newspaper to which the Office of the Attorney-General raised objections.

    “It is baffling then that there is an assumption the legal retainer should have been tendered,” the statement said.

    We think it’s more baffling that the Samoa Observer has never once printed a suggestion that the contracts in question should have been put out to tender.

    The statement continued.

    “The fact that the Attorney General did not respond, that in itself [was] taken as confirmation that the Attorney General did not adhere to the [Public Service Commission] Guidelines on Managing Conflicts of Evaluation Panels,” it read.

    Well, no.

    If you’ll recall what was printed on these pages last week, we said precisely the opposite:

    “Let us make this clear: we make no allegations of impropriety against Savalenoa Mareva Betham-Annandale since her elevation to the position of Attorney-General last July.

    “We believe her explanation entirely. We have never made any suggestions, inferences, or imputations to the contrary that a conflict of interest may have influenced the awarding of these contracts.”

    Our issue was a question of principle, not impropriety: we believed the Attorney-General, like all public servants, should be transparent.

    It strains our credulity that an office staffed with lawyers could have somehow misinterpreted the above as accusations.

    But Savalenoa has previously batted away accusations that have not been made against her. She has repeatedly stated that her husband’s firm was engaged before she was made Attorney-General in July last year. This is something this newspaper has said from its very first article.

    The Attorney-General’s Office went on to make an accusation of its own: that the documents we obtained for our story were the result of illegal “hacking”.

    “Initial internal assessment suggests that the said documents could only have been obtained by hacking our email systems,” the statement said.

    This newspaper does not nor has it ever engaged in “hacking” nor have we ever written stories based on “hacking”. This is not Fleet Street and we are not owned by Rupert Murdoch.

    The very implication is not only defamatory but it provides an insight into how far the Attorney-General’s understanding of the world is separate from reality.

    People have, for decades, been providing the Samoa Observer with internal Government material because they want to address a lack of transparency or believe the public should know something. Sources are people with noble motives who take risks for the sake of their moral beliefs. Material being sent to a newspaper is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a sign of a grand conspiracy; for a judicious leader it is a signal to pause to reflect.

    But on the question of “hacking”, the Samoa Observer has been reporting on this nation for 43 years. The Attorney-General was appointed last July. We will stake our reputation against hers on any day of the week and let our readers decide.

    The Attorney-General’s Office further called for a full-blown police investigation into the release of confidential government documents to the Samoa Observer.

    This newspaper has reported on a rash of resignations from the Attorney-General’s Office during her tenure there, something she partly attributed to staff “attitude problems”.

    The public relies on the Office of the Attorney-General to pursue justice in the name of the people of Samoa; having a functional office, then, is essential to Samoa’s judicial system.

    Our humble advice to our pen-pal is to remember a, slightly adapted, old adage. If you run into an unpleasant person one morning then you have our sympathies. But if you find yourself running into unpleasant people all day then perhaps it might be time to reflect on your own behaviour.

    Rather than pointing fingers, Savalenoa, it’s time to look in the mirror.

    The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) expresses solidarity with journalists at the Samoa Observer who are under pressure by the Samoan government’s attempts to silence press freedoms and threats to journalists. Asia Pacific Report also expresses solidarity.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF protests over 11 journalists held in Myanmar coup military crackdown

    Asia Pacific Report

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is dismayed by the sudden intensification of the ruling junta’s crackdown on journalists during the past three days, one month after the military coup in Myanmar on February 1, and warns the junta of its responsibility in the eyes of history.

    In all, at least 28 journalists have been arrested in the course of the past month of pro-democracy street protests, against which – after hesitating for weeks – the junta suddenly began making much wider use of deadly force last weekend.

    But, whereas reporters covering past protests were quickly released after being arrested, things have changed radically in the past few days, and at least 11 journalists were in detention, said the RSF statement.

    The latest to be arrested was Kaung Myat Naing (aka Aung Kyaw) of the Democratic Voice of Burma news agency, who livestreamed police coming to arrest him at his home in the far south city of Myeik at around 10:30 pm on Tuesday.

    You can hear him ask the police if they have a warrant, to which they respond with shouts and gunfire.

    “We call on Myanmar’s government to order the immediate and unconditional release of all the journalists currently detained, and to drop the charges against them,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

    “It is absolutely crucial that reporters should be able to cover this dramatic moment in Myanmar’s history. The generals who took power must realise that the world is looking at them and that history will judge them.”

    Badly beaten
    The 11 journalists currently detained include Chinland Post reporter Salai David, who was arrested on Tuesday morning in Hakha, the capital of the western state of Chin.

    Monywa Gazette reporter Lay Min Soe was arrested yesterday in Monywa, in the central region of Sagaing, but was released later in the day after sustaining injuries in the beating he received from the police.

    A Chinese reporter for the Xinhua news agency was meanwhile hit by rubber bullets while covering a protest in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, in the south of the country.

    Six journalists were arrested in various parts of the country on February 28.

    YamaNya Taing reporter Lin Tun was released the next day after being arrested in the southern city of Mawlamyine. 74 Media website reporter Paung Lan Taung was released later the same day after being arrested in the northern city of Myitkyina.

    Ye Yint Tun, a journalist with the Than Taw Sint newspaper, was jailed after being arrested in the southwestern city of Pathein.

    Chun Journal editor Kyaw Nay Min was taken to Inn Sein prison after being arrested in Yangon. Freelance reporter Soe Yarzar Tun suffered the same fate.

    The sixth journalist to be arrested on February 28 was Shin Moe Myint, a Yangon-based psychology student who was covering the protests as a freelancer. Two witnesses told RSF she was badly beaten before being bundled into a police van and taken in the direction of Inn Sein prison.

    She was finally released on Tuesday.

    Multiple arrests
    Six reporters were arrested on February 27 while covering protests in their respective cities. Associated Press photographer Thein Zaw and Myanmar Pressphoto Agency photographer Ye Myo Khant were briefly arrested in Yangon’s Hle Dan district.

    Myanmar Now reporter Kay Zon Nwe was livestreaming the crackdown on a protest at Yangon’s Myaynigone Junction when the police arrested her and took her away. Freelance editor Banyar Oo was also arrested and sent to Inn Sein prison.

    In the central region of Sagaing, the staff of the Monywa Gazette reported on Facebook that their CEO Kyaw Kyaw Win was badly beaten by plainclothes police on February 27 before being taken away in a police van.

    He was released the next day. Hakha Times CEO Par Pwie was also released the next day after being arrested while livestreaming a protest in the western state of Chin.

    Myay Latt newspaper’s Zar Zar was arrested in the central city of Magway. She was released the same day.

    Two years in jail
    According to the information obtained by RSF, which has not been confirmed by the authorities, the 11 journalists currently being detained are to be charged under article 505 (a) of the penal code with spreading false information, which carries a possible two-year jail sentence.

    Those close to Ye Myo Khant, one of the photographers arrested on February 27, said they shared this fear.

    On February 26, before this wave of arrests, RSF posted a video of Yuki Kitazumi, a Japanese reporter and documentary filmmaker, being arrested in Yangon. He was released the same day.

    Wai Yan, a Chinese photojournalist working for the Xinhua news agency, was also briefly arrested on February 26.

    Two Monywa-based reporters, Tin Mar Swe of MCN TV News and Khin May San of The Voice magazine, were quickly released after being arrested on February 25 but have been charged under article 505 (a) of the penal code.

    The February 1 coup cut short a transition to democracy in Myanmar and has set press freedom back 10 years, back to when prior censorship was the rule and independent media were constantly persecuted.

    Myanmar is ranked 139th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Facebook news ban turns attention to tech giants’ impact on journalism

    By Kalinga Seneviratne in Sydney

    The tech juggernaut Facebook’s shock decision to block all news feeds from Australian media outlets this week in response to a proposed new Media Bargaining law, that will force social media giants to pay for news content that is posted on their platforms, has created fury among Australians.

    But it is also turning attention to the impact of Facebook – and Google – on Australian journalism.

    Facebook banned Australian users from accessing news in their feeds on the morning of Thursday, February 18, as the government pursues laws that would force it to pay publishers for journalism that appears in people’s feeds.

    The legislation was introduced to Parliament in Canberra in December 2020. The House of Representatives passed it earlier this week.

    The bill that has wide political support in Australia is now under review by a Senate committee before it is presented for a vote in the upper house.

    In a lengthy statement issued by Facebook on February 18, the company revealed that it would bar Australian news sites from sharing content on the platform.

    Within moments of the announcement being made public, Australian news organisations, media commentators, interest groups and local consumers of Facebook that runs into millions, began voicing their fury.

    ‘Go directly to source’
    National broadcaster ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) immediately posted a notice on their news pages on the website calling on Australians to “go directly to the source” by downloading from their own news application.

    Facebook’s head of policy for Asia-Pacific, Simon Milner was unrepentant during an interview on the ABC network, arguing that they disagree with the broad definition of news in the new legislation.

    “One of the criticisms we had about the law that was passed by the House of Representatives [on February 16] is that the definition of news is incredibly broad and vague,” he said

    Facebook has said earlier that the proposed laws fundamentally misunderstood the relationship between their platform and publishers who used it to share news content.

    In fact, Facebook has been arguing for a long time that they are a publisher that provides a free platform for news organisations.

    But many media organisations and scholars argue that they are bleeding out revenue from the Australian media running advertising on these pages, which otherwise used to go to the media companies and their platforms such as newspapers and TV stations.

    A first of its kind, the success or otherwise of the Australian legislation is closely watched by other countries, especially in Europe.

    US government pressure
    Interestingly, according to an ABC report on January 18, the US government had tried to pressure the Australian government to drop the proposed legislation.

    According to the ABC, a document with the letterhead of the Executive Office of the President has said: “The US government is concerned that an attempt, through legislation, to regulate the competitive positions of specific players … to the clear detriment of two US firms may result in harmful outcomes.”

    The Australian government, however, sees the new legislation as designed to ensure these media companies are fairly remunerated for the use of their content on search engines and social media platforms.

    Google has begun signing deals with publishers in response, but Facebook has chosen to follow through on its threat and remove news for Australian users.

    In an interview on ABC Radio on February 18, Glen Dyer of popular Crikey! media that uses Facebook extensively to reach their audiences described Facebook’s behaviour as “resembling China’s (Community Party)”.

    He argued that in the past year China has been imposing trade restrictions literally overnight on spurious grounds inconveniencing Australians at the behest of China’s leader, and Mark Zuckerberg is also behaving in a similar high-handed way.

    “It [Facebook] has a management structure that is controlled by a small group headed by Mark Zuckerberg,” he noted.

    Boycott Facebook
    “Australian advertisers should boycott Facebook”.

    However, Dyer added that they would not have the guts because “most of these Australian companies are controlled offshore and the local executives would not risk their bonuses”.

    Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, speaking on ABC TV’s flagship current affairs programme 7.30 Report on February 18, argued strongly for an across the board tax on advertising revenue designed in such a way that both local and foreign companies operating in Australia cannot avoid it.

    “The real question is that the revenue model for media has moved into other platforms like Facebook and Google. There is less revenue support for journalism and that has been a worry for some time,” said Turnbull, who was a merchant banker before moving into politics.

    “Government will be better off imposing a tax on advertising revenue across the board …. take that revenue from Facebook and Google and make the money available to support public interest journalism,” he recommended.

    Turnbull believes that government has lost the plot because they are saying to companies like Facebook and Google, “you have to pay money to those [media companies] who put contents on your site [even though] you are not stealing it or breaching copyrights, you have to pay”.

    Thus, he appealed to Australians to go directly to Australia media news platforms and applications – like that offered by the ABC – without using Facebook.

    Digital threat to democracy
    Chris Cooper, executive director of Reset Australia, a global initiative working to counter the digital threat to democracy has also condemned Facebook’s action.

    “Facebook is telling Australians that rather than participate meaningfully in regulatory efforts, it would prefer to operate a platform in which real news has been abandoned or de-prioritised, leaving misinformation to fill the void,” he argued.

    Reset Australia had made a submission to the government during the legislation’s drafting stage arguing that the true impact of the legislation should be changes to the news, media and journalism landscape in Australia, that should ensure promoting greater diversity and pluralism within the Australian media landscape.

    Cooper argues that Facebook does not care about Australian society nor the functioning of democracy.

    “Regulation is an inconvenient impost on their immediate profits – and the hostility of their response overwhelmingly confirms regulation is needed,” he says.

    Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg blasted Facebook’s decision to block access to pages like 1800Respect, the WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services and the Bureau of Meteorology.

    Speaking on ABC he said that this was done at a time that a bushfire emergency in Western Australia depended on this information, and also when Australia is about to roll out the covid-19 vaccines where people needed access to reliable information.

    Frydenberg noted that this heavy-handed action will damage its reputation.

    “Their decision to block Australians’ access to government sites — be they about support through the pandemic, mental health, emergency services, the Bureau of Meteorology — was completely unrelated to the media code, which is yet to pass through the Senate,” he said.

    “What today’s events do confirm for all Australians, is the immense market power of these digital giants.”

    Kalinga Seneviratne is a media analyst and author. This article was first published on IDN-InDepth News and is republished with the permission of the author.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Facebook news ban turns attention to tech giants’ impact on journalism

    By Kalinga Seneviratne in Sydney

    The tech juggernaut Facebook’s shock decision to block all news feeds from Australian media outlets this week in response to a proposed new Media Bargaining law, that will force social media giants to pay for news content that is posted on their platforms, has created fury among Australians.

    But it is also turning attention to the impact of Facebook – and Google – on Australian journalism.

    Facebook banned Australian users from accessing news in their feeds on the morning of Thursday, February 18, as the government pursues laws that would force it to pay publishers for journalism that appears in people’s feeds.

    The legislation was introduced to Parliament in Canberra in December 2020. The House of Representatives passed it earlier this week.

    The bill that has wide political support in Australia is now under review by a Senate committee before it is presented for a vote in the upper house.

    In a lengthy statement issued by Facebook on February 18, the company revealed that it would bar Australian news sites from sharing content on the platform.

    Within moments of the announcement being made public, Australian news organisations, media commentators, interest groups and local consumers of Facebook that runs into millions, began voicing their fury.

    ‘Go directly to source’
    National broadcaster ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) immediately posted a notice on their news pages on the website calling on Australians to “go directly to the source” by downloading from their own news application.

    Facebook’s head of policy for Asia-Pacific, Simon Milner was unrepentant during an interview on the ABC network, arguing that they disagree with the broad definition of news in the new legislation.

    “One of the criticisms we had about the law that was passed by the House of Representatives [on February 16] is that the definition of news is incredibly broad and vague,” he said

    Facebook has said earlier that the proposed laws fundamentally misunderstood the relationship between their platform and publishers who used it to share news content.

    In fact, Facebook has been arguing for a long time that they are a publisher that provides a free platform for news organisations.

    But many media organisations and scholars argue that they are bleeding out revenue from the Australian media running advertising on these pages, which otherwise used to go to the media companies and their platforms such as newspapers and TV stations.

    A first of its kind, the success or otherwise of the Australian legislation is closely watched by other countries, especially in Europe.

    US government pressure
    Interestingly, according to an ABC report on January 18, the US government had tried to pressure the Australian government to drop the proposed legislation.

    According to the ABC, a document with the letterhead of the Executive Office of the President has said: “The US government is concerned that an attempt, through legislation, to regulate the competitive positions of specific players … to the clear detriment of two US firms may result in harmful outcomes.”

    The Australian government, however, sees the new legislation as designed to ensure these media companies are fairly remunerated for the use of their content on search engines and social media platforms.

    Google has begun signing deals with publishers in response, but Facebook has chosen to follow through on its threat and remove news for Australian users.

    In an interview on ABC Radio on February 18, Glen Dyer of popular Crikey! media that uses Facebook extensively to reach their audiences described Facebook’s behaviour as “resembling China’s (Community Party)”.

    He argued that in the past year China has been imposing trade restrictions literally overnight on spurious grounds inconveniencing Australians at the behest of China’s leader, and Mark Zuckerberg is also behaving in a similar high-handed way.

    “It [Facebook] has a management structure that is controlled by a small group headed by Mark Zuckerberg,” he noted.

    Boycott Facebook
    “Australian advertisers should boycott Facebook”.

    However, Dyer added that they would not have the guts because “most of these Australian companies are controlled offshore and the local executives would not risk their bonuses”.

    Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, speaking on ABC TV’s flagship current affairs programme 7.30 Report on February 18, argued strongly for an across the board tax on advertising revenue designed in such a way that both local and foreign companies operating in Australia cannot avoid it.

    “The real question is that the revenue model for media has moved into other platforms like Facebook and Google. There is less revenue support for journalism and that has been a worry for some time,” said Turnbull, who was a merchant banker before moving into politics.

    “Government will be better off imposing a tax on advertising revenue across the board …. take that revenue from Facebook and Google and make the money available to support public interest journalism,” he recommended.

    Turnbull believes that government has lost the plot because they are saying to companies like Facebook and Google, “you have to pay money to those [media companies] who put contents on your site [even though] you are not stealing it or breaching copyrights, you have to pay”.

    Thus, he appealed to Australians to go directly to Australia media news platforms and applications – like that offered by the ABC – without using Facebook.

    Digital threat to democracy
    Chris Cooper, executive director of Reset Australia, a global initiative working to counter the digital threat to democracy has also condemned Facebook’s action.

    “Facebook is telling Australians that rather than participate meaningfully in regulatory efforts, it would prefer to operate a platform in which real news has been abandoned or de-prioritised, leaving misinformation to fill the void,” he argued.

    Reset Australia had made a submission to the government during the legislation’s drafting stage arguing that the true impact of the legislation should be changes to the news, media and journalism landscape in Australia, that should ensure promoting greater diversity and pluralism within the Australian media landscape.

    Cooper argues that Facebook does not care about Australian society nor the functioning of democracy.

    “Regulation is an inconvenient impost on their immediate profits – and the hostility of their response overwhelmingly confirms regulation is needed,” he says.

    Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg blasted Facebook’s decision to block access to pages like 1800Respect, the WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services and the Bureau of Meteorology.

    Speaking on ABC he said that this was done at a time that a bushfire emergency in Western Australia depended on this information, and also when Australia is about to roll out the covid-19 vaccines where people needed access to reliable information.

    Frydenberg noted that this heavy-handed action will damage its reputation.

    “Their decision to block Australians’ access to government sites — be they about support through the pandemic, mental health, emergency services, the Bureau of Meteorology — was completely unrelated to the media code, which is yet to pass through the Senate,” he said.

    “What today’s events do confirm for all Australians, is the immense market power of these digital giants.”

    Kalinga Seneviratne is a media analyst and author. This article was first published on IDN-InDepth News and is republished with the permission of the author.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Facebook’s Australia ban threatens to leave Pacific without key news source

    By Sheldon Chanel in Suva

    Facebook’s ban on Australian news will cut off a vital source of authoritative information for the Pacific region, government and industry analysts have warned.

    Across the Pacific, thousands have found their access to news blocked, or severely limited, after the tech giant wiped all news on the platform in Australia in response to proposed legislation that would require Facebook to pay for content from media groups.

    The ban’s impact is especially acute in Australia’s region.

    Across the Pacific, thousands of people are on pre-paid data phone plans which include cheap access to Facebook. Those on limited incomes can get news through the social network, but cannot go to original source websites without using more data, and spending more money.

    The region’s largest telco provider, Digicel, with a presence in Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu, offers affordable mobile data plans with free or cheap access to Facebook.

    In Australia, news from Pacific sites also appeared to be blocked, a significant impediment for diaspora communities and seasonal workers.

    From Australia, The Guardian visited the Samoa Observer, Vanuatu Daily Post, The Fiji Times, and Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier. None had visible posts.

    Significant expatriate communities
    Samoa, Vanuatu, Fiji and PNG all have significant expatriate communities in Australia.

    Samoa Observer FB
    The Samoa Observer newspaper’s Facebook page has been blocked in Australia as part of Facebook’s ban on news on its platform in that country Image: The Guardian

    Dr Amanda Watson, a research fellow at the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, and a researcher in digital technology use in the Pacific, said there was widespread confusion across the Pacific about the practical ramifications of Facebook’s Australian news ban.

    “There has not been any clear, accessible and accurate information put out for Facebook users or anything particularly targeted at Facebook users in the Pacific that has explained parameters of this decision,” she said.

    Watson said that for many in the Pacific, Facebook was the entry point to, and even the extent of, the internet.

    “Facebook is the primary platform, because a number of telco providers offer cheaper Facebook data, or bonus Facebook data. Many Pacific Islanders might know how to do some basic Facebooking, but it’s questionable if they would be able to open an internet search engine and search for news, or go to a particular web address.

    “There are technical confidence issues, and that’s linked to education levels in the Pacific, and how long people have had access to the internet.”

    Bob Howarth, country correspondent for Timor-Leste and PNG for Reporters Sans Frontières media freedom watchdog, and the former managing director and publisher of PNG’s Post-Courier, said “the Facebook ban on Australian news pages will have a significant impact on Pacific users, especially many regional news providers”.

    Sharing breaking news
    “As someone who regularly checks literally dozens of Facebook pages, especially in PNG and Timor-Leste, many use the Australian pages for sharing breaking news and a source of ideas and angles for their own news reporting.”

    Articles reposted from Australian news sources are often used in the Pacific to rebut misinformation being spread on Facebook, Dr Watson and Howarth said.

    “One very popular page in PNG seems to attract more than its fair share of long-longs [an ill-informed person in pidgin] opposing vaccination as the covid pandemic quietly spreads daily,” Howarth said.

    The founder of The Pacific Newsroom, Sue Ahearn, told The Guardian the internet had revolutionised communications across the Pacific – historically a region where communication had been difficult – and enabled the instantaneous sharing of news and information that had previously taken weeks or months.

    “Facebook and social media are not the be all and end all but they are vital as sources of information. Radio and TV and newspapers remain important, but technology has really woken up the Pacific.

    “People are able to share material right around the region and Facebook is the key platform for that.”

    Ahearn said the dissemination of accurate and impartial news was vital to countering misinformation across the region.

    Misinformation in PNG
    “For instance, there is so much misinformation in PNG on covid – people say ‘I don’t believe Melanesians can catch covid’ or ‘I don’t believe what the government says about vaccines’. It’s really important that that misinformation can be countered, and articles from Australian sources are valuable for that.”

    Ahearn said the Pacific Newsroom Facebook page had been “overwhelmed” with responses to the Facebook Australian news ban.

    “From people all around the world: Fijians in South Sudan, Tongans in Utah, Pacific Islanders are everywhere, and they are telling us they are not seeing anything out of Australia.”

    Australia’s Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Zed Seselja, has labelled Facebook’s actions “disappointing”, and argued the tech giant was “impeding public access to high-quality journalism in Australia and across the Pacific”.

    “In many Pacific countries Facebook is the primary avenue to access legitimate Australian news content, and for many Pacific Islanders, Australian news is a key source of reliable, fact-checked, balanced information,” he said.

    William Easton, the managing director of Facebook Australia and New Zealand, said Australia’s proposed media bargaining law had misunderstood the nature of the relationship between the platform and news publishers, and had forced the tech company into restricting news in Australia.

    He said the company had chosen to block news “with a heavy heart”.

    “Unfortunately, this means people and news organisations in Australia are now restricted from posting news links and sharing or viewing Australian and international news content on Facebook. Globally, posting and sharing news links from Australian publishers is also restricted.”

    Sheldon Chanel is a Suva-based journalist reporting for The Guardian’s Pacific Project supported by the Judith Nielson Institute. This article was first published by The Guardian here and it has been republished with the author and The Guardian’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Facebook’s Australia ban threatens to leave Pacific without key news source

    By Sheldon Chanel in Suva

    Facebook’s ban on Australian news will cut off a vital source of authoritative information for the Pacific region, government and industry analysts have warned.

    Across the Pacific, thousands have found their access to news blocked, or severely limited, after the tech giant wiped all news on the platform in Australia in response to proposed legislation that would require Facebook to pay for content from media groups.

    The ban’s impact is especially acute in Australia’s region.

    Across the Pacific, thousands of people are on pre-paid data phone plans which include cheap access to Facebook. Those on limited incomes can get news through the social network, but cannot go to original source websites without using more data, and spending more money.

    The region’s largest telco provider, Digicel, with a presence in Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu, offers affordable mobile data plans with free or cheap access to Facebook.

    In Australia, news from Pacific sites also appeared to be blocked, a significant impediment for diaspora communities and seasonal workers.

    From Australia, The Guardian visited the Samoa Observer, Vanuatu Daily Post, The Fiji Times, and Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier. None had visible posts.

    Significant expatriate communities
    Samoa, Vanuatu, Fiji and PNG all have significant expatriate communities in Australia.

    The Samoa Observer newspaper’s Facebook page has been blocked in Australia as part of Facebook’s ban on news on its platform in that country Image: The Guardian

    Dr Amanda Watson, a research fellow at the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, and a researcher in digital technology use in the Pacific, said there was widespread confusion across the Pacific about the practical ramifications of Facebook’s Australian news ban.

    “There has not been any clear, accessible and accurate information put out for Facebook users or anything particularly targeted at Facebook users in the Pacific that has explained parameters of this decision,” she said.

    Watson said that for many in the Pacific, Facebook was the entry point to, and even the extent of, the internet.

    “Facebook is the primary platform, because a number of telco providers offer cheaper Facebook data, or bonus Facebook data. Many Pacific Islanders might know how to do some basic Facebooking, but it’s questionable if they would be able to open an internet search engine and search for news, or go to a particular web address.

    “There are technical confidence issues, and that’s linked to education levels in the Pacific, and how long people have had access to the internet.”

    Bob Howarth, country correspondent for Timor-Leste and PNG for Reporters Sans Frontières media freedom watchdog, and the former managing director and publisher of PNG’s Post-Courier, said “the Facebook ban on Australian news pages will have a significant impact on Pacific users, especially many regional news providers”.

    Sharing breaking news
    “As someone who regularly checks literally dozens of Facebook pages, especially in PNG and Timor-Leste, many use the Australian pages for sharing breaking news and a source of ideas and angles for their own news reporting.”

    Articles reposted from Australian news sources are often used in the Pacific to rebut misinformation being spread on Facebook, Dr Watson and Howarth said.

    “One very popular page in PNG seems to attract more than its fair share of long-longs [an ill-informed person in pidgin] opposing vaccination as the covid pandemic quietly spreads daily,” Howarth said.

    The founder of The Pacific Newsroom, Sue Ahearn, told The Guardian the internet had revolutionised communications across the Pacific – historically a region where communication had been difficult – and enabled the instantaneous sharing of news and information that had previously taken weeks or months.

    “Facebook and social media are not the be all and end all but they are vital as sources of information. Radio and TV and newspapers remain important, but technology has really woken up the Pacific.

    “People are able to share material right around the region and Facebook is the key platform for that.”

    Ahearn said the dissemination of accurate and impartial news was vital to countering misinformation across the region.

    Misinformation in PNG
    “For instance, there is so much misinformation in PNG on covid – people say ‘I don’t believe Melanesians can catch covid’ or ‘I don’t believe what the government says about vaccines’. It’s really important that that misinformation can be countered, and articles from Australian sources are valuable for that.”

    Ahearn said the Pacific Newsroom Facebook page had been “overwhelmed” with responses to the Facebook Australian news ban.

    “From people all around the world: Fijians in South Sudan, Tongans in Utah, Pacific Islanders are everywhere, and they are telling us they are not seeing anything out of Australia.”

    Australia’s Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Zed Seselja, has labelled Facebook’s actions “disappointing”, and argued the tech giant was “impeding public access to high-quality journalism in Australia and across the Pacific”.

    “In many Pacific countries Facebook is the primary avenue to access legitimate Australian news content, and for many Pacific Islanders, Australian news is a key source of reliable, fact-checked, balanced information,” he said.

    William Easton, the managing director of Facebook Australia and New Zealand, said Australia’s proposed media bargaining law had misunderstood the nature of the relationship between the platform and news publishers, and had forced the tech company into restricting news in Australia.

    He said the company had chosen to block news “with a heavy heart”.

    “Unfortunately, this means people and news organisations in Australia are now restricted from posting news links and sharing or viewing Australian and international news content on Facebook. Globally, posting and sharing news links from Australian publishers is also restricted.”

    Sheldon Chanel is a Suva-based journalist reporting for The Guardian’s Pacific Project supported by the Judith Nielson Institute. This article was first published by The Guardian here and it has been republished with the author and The Guardian’s permission.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Kasun Ubayasiri: How will ruthless billionaire posturing by Rupert and Zuckerberg help robust journalism?

    COMMENT: By Kasun Ubayasiri in Brisbane

    It has indeed been a few strange days for Australian news media. Apparently, monopolies are bad if they are not NewsCorp.

    This week, Facebook came through on its threat to ban all news from its service, in retaliation against the Australian Federal government’s proposed new media code, that could see the tech giant paying news producers for content they willingly share on the Facebook platform.

    Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp rather predictably ran a story accusing Facebooks’ messenger platform of aiding and abetting paedophiles. A remarkable display of mutual chestbeating.

    But it is news media diversity and independent journalism routinely pillaged by Murdoch that will be the real victims of ScoMo trying to extort one billionaire at the behest of another.

    Queensland’s independent press, for example, is just beginning to lift its head after Rupert ruthlessly destroyed a whole swathe of rural and regional newspapers of record. I wonder how this posturing between two billionaires will affect those independent newspapers that are slowly beginning to show promise in that desolate landscape.

    Sure, there needs to be funding for good journalism, and the tech-giants should pitch in, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, of a rather long “to do list” to ensure a robust and independent news media that includes ensuring media diversity and the public’s access to fact-verified public interest journalism irrespective of petty party politics.

    In this respect it’s hard to see this whole fiasco as anything but a half-baked idea built on a NewsCorp orchestrated lie.

    Holding readers hostage
    News organisations could have easily blocked Google searches listing their content. They could also have stopped putting their content on Facebook pages, explored micro-payments or some such innovative solution, instead of holding readers hostage with archaic subscription models.

    Is Australian journalism suffering because of Google and Facebook? What of the media monopolies that have systematically destroyed diversity and independence of the press through concentration of ownership unparalleled in the Western world?

    What of the three-decade long devaluing of journalism, and training an entire generation to get free news on vanity websites while simultaneously selling the same content in printed papers, only to then retreat behind paywalls?

    What about forcing journalists to pimp their stories by linking KPIs to journalists’ capacity to secure subscriptions and assessing the value of stories on the basis of clicks?

    What of the ruthless stripping of journalists’ rights that has created a precariat work force?

    And what of the armies of media pundits who jumped on the Dan Gillmor bandwagon and vigorously claimed we didn’t need professional journalists because we were now all citizen journalists?

    What of the media educators who have conflated journalism with media, normalised native advertising and created a grey slurry of content where fact and fiction is indistinguishable and ethics non-existent?

    Championed social media
    And then there are the media theorists who have championed social media as a great equaliser.

    A “town square” where ideas flow freely, or as Mark Zuckerberg calls it a “digital living room” instead of seeing it for what it really is – a privately owned advertising platform hell bent on creating a global monopoly.

    Let’s say we manage to force Facebook to pay for content. I wonder exactly how the dollars Zuckerberg doles out to Newscorp will flow onto the journalists and the gutted newsrooms who everyone is suddenly concerned for.

    Shouldn’t the money be directly invested in public interest journalism instead of becoming just another version of that wonderfully Liberal idea of trickle-down economics filtered through Rupert’s pockets.

    Dr Kasun Ubayasiri is a senior lecturer and journalism programme director at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. An earlier version of this piece was originally a Facebook posting and this been revised and contributed to Asia Pacific Report as a column.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Kasun Ubayasiri: How will ruthless billionaire posturing by Rupert and Zuckerberg help robust journalism?

    It is news media diversity and independent journalism routinely pillaged by Murdoch that will be the real victims of ScoMo trying to extort one billionaire at the behest of another. Image: MediaNews4U

    COMMENT: By Kasun Ubayasiri in Brisbane

    It has indeed been a few strange days for Australian news media. Apparently, monopolies are bad if they are not NewsCorp.

    This week, Facebook came through on its threat to ban all news from its service, in retaliation against the Australian Federal government’s proposed new media code, that could see the tech giant paying news producers for content they willingly share on the Facebook platform.

    Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp rather predictably ran a story accusing Facebooks’ messenger platform of aiding and abetting paedophiles. A remarkable display of mutual chestbeating.

    But it is news media diversity and independent journalism routinely pillaged by Murdoch that will be the real victims of ScoMo trying to extort one billionaire at the behest of another.

    Queensland’s independent press, for example, is just beginning to lift its head after Rupert ruthlessly destroyed a whole swathe of rural and regional newspapers of record. I wonder how this posturing between two billionaires will affect those independent newspapers that are slowly beginning to show promise in that desolate landscape.

    Sure, there needs to be funding for good journalism, and the tech-giants should pitch in, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, of a rather long “to do list” to ensure a robust and independent news media that includes ensuring media diversity and the public’s access to fact-verified public interest journalism irrespective of petty party politics.

    In this respect it’s hard to see this whole fiasco as anything but a half-baked idea built on a NewsCorp orchestrated lie.

    Holding readers hostage
    News organisations could have easily blocked Google searches listing their content. They could also have stopped putting their content on Facebook pages, explored micro-payments or some such innovative solution, instead of holding readers hostage with archaic subscription models.

    Is Australian journalism suffering because of Google and Facebook? What of the media monopolies that have systematically destroyed diversity and independence of the press through concentration of ownership unparalleled in the Western world?

    What of the three-decade long devaluing of journalism, and training an entire generation to get free news on vanity websites while simultaneously selling the same content in printed papers, only to then retreat behind paywalls?

    What about forcing journalists to pimp their stories by linking KPIs to journalists’ capacity to secure subscriptions and assessing the value of stories on the basis of clicks?

    What of the ruthless stripping of journalists’ rights that has created a precariat work force?

    And what of the armies of media pundits who jumped on the Dan Gillmor bandwagon and vigorously claimed we didn’t need professional journalists because we were now all citizen journalists?

    What of the media educators who have conflated journalism with media, normalised native advertising and created a grey slurry of content where fact and fiction is indistinguishable and ethics non-existent?

    Championed social media
    And then there are the media theorists who have championed social media as a great equaliser.

    A “town square” where ideas flow freely, or as Mark Zuckerberg calls it a “digital living room” instead of seeing it for what it really is – a privately owned advertising platform hell bent on creating a global monopoly.

    Let’s say we manage to force Facebook to pay for content. I wonder exactly how the dollars Zuckerberg doles out to Newscorp will flow onto the journalists and the gutted newsrooms who everyone is suddenly concerned for.

    Shouldn’t the money be directly invested in public interest journalism instead of becoming just another version of that wonderfully Liberal idea of trickle-down economics filtered through Rupert’s pockets.

    Dr Kasun Ubayasiri is a senior lecturer and journalism programme director at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. An earlier version of this piece was originally a Facebook posting and this been revised and contributed to Asia Pacific Report as a column.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Facebook has pulled the trigger on news content — and possibly shot itself in the foot

    Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg … The social media giant claims news publishers derive more value from news sharing than Facebook does. Image: Michael Reynolds/AAP/The Conversation

    ANALYSIS: By Diana Bossio, Swinburne University of Technology

    Facebook this week made good on its threat to block Australians from accessing or posting news content. The ban includes blocking links to Australian and overseas news publishers.

    Facebook said the ban was a direct response to the federal government’s news media code legislation, which is expected to become law soon and would require digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay news media companies whose content they host.

    The move is either a last-ditch attempt to gain concessions in the legislation, or a simple cut-and-run by Facebook.

    The social media giant claims news publishers derive more value from news sharing than Facebook does. This is plausible, as news content makes up only 4 percent of sharing on the platform, whereas many news sites gain a large fraction of their traffic from Facebook referrals.

    But this is probably more about flexing some muscle. Facebook may be demonstrating to the Federal government that if it does not like the rules, it can damage national interests.

    Collateral damage
    Australians will feel some short-term negative impacts of Facebook’s flex.

    Certain government Facebook pages, such as those belonging to the Bureau of Meterology and some health department sites, have been caught up in the ban. Facebook says this is due to the wording of the legislation, stating:

    As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted.

    While Facebook says it will restore non-news pages, the action will put pressure on the government to define more clearly what it means by news content.

    In the meantime, the move will affect Australians’ access to vital information related to emergencies and the covid pandemic. Without a concerted effort to ensure online behaviour change from users, this could be dangerous.

    Misinformation risk
    We can also expect to see a short-term proliferation of misinformation as Facebook’s news feed will have a vacuum of professionally sourced and fact-checked news.

    A significant number of Australians discuss news on Facebook, both via their newsfeed and in groups. Being able to source factual information from news sites is part of the everyday political and social participation that social media platforms facilitate.

    The democratic impact of Facebook’s ban will be felt – and is counter to Facebook’s stated principle of connecting people and its recent pledge to tackle misinformation.

    Will it hurt Facebook?
    The impact of this action against the legislation on Facebook itself is yet to be seen.

    The reputational damage from blocking important sites that serve Australia’s public interest overnight – and yet taking years to get on top of user privacy breaches and misinformation – undermines the legitimacy of the platform and its claimed civic intentions.

    Facebook’s actions may send a message to the government, but they will also send one to their Australian users.

    Readers are likely to find other ways to get their news. If we learn from the experience of Google’s news ban in Spain, we can see that after an initial dip in traffic, most major news organisations in Spain regained much of their web traffic after about a year.

    Surfing social waves
    Tools such as Facebook are only useful if people want to use them. And for some existing users, the lack of news might be a dealbreaker.

    Facebook already faces a long-term problem of an ageing user demographic, as under-25s turn to Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok for news and information.

    Young people may have Facebook profiles, but they are less likely to be active users.

    News organisations are already following their lead. For example, The Conversation Australia has 325,735 Facebook followers and will probably feel the impact of the loss of engagement there.

    But it also has more than 21,000 Instagram followers and counting. It is increasingly making visual news “tiles” to cater for the younger demographic of users who source news from other platforms. It has also been working to reach readers directly via regular email newsletters, which one in five US readers now say is their primary way of accessing news.

    News organisations have already learned how to pivot fast. When Facebook changed its algorithms in 2018 to deprioritise news publishers, many took action to reduce their reliance on Facebook’s traffic, analytics or digital advertising dollars.

    What now?
    Larger news organisations will be OK in the long run. But Australia’s smaller outlets, including local publishers and non-profits that produce public interest journalism, will need protection.

    The long-term task for news organisations and journalists is to convince the public – especially young people – that it’s worthwhile to actively seek out professional news and journalism as part of their daily online lives, rather than simply reading whatever comes across their feed.

    As for Facebook, going back to its original purpose of facilitating personal connection and social networking, rather than posing as a forum for public information, may not be a bad thing. But the reputational damage and publisher exodus will eventually damage its core business: digital advertising revenue.The Conversation

    Dr Diana Bossio is a lecturer in Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Facebook has pulled the trigger on news content — and possibly shot itself in the foot

    ANALYSIS: By Diana Bossio, Swinburne University of Technology

    Facebook this week made good on its threat to block Australians from accessing or posting news content. The ban includes blocking links to Australian and overseas news publishers.

    Facebook said the ban was a direct response to the federal government’s news media code legislation, which is expected to become law soon and would require digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay news media companies whose content they host.

    The move is either a last-ditch attempt to gain concessions in the legislation, or a simple cut-and-run by Facebook.

    The social media giant claims news publishers derive more value from news sharing than Facebook does. This is plausible, as news content makes up only 4 percent of sharing on the platform, whereas many news sites gain a large fraction of their traffic from Facebook referrals.

    But this is probably more about flexing some muscle. Facebook may be demonstrating to the Federal government that if it does not like the rules, it can damage national interests.

    Collateral damage
    Australians will feel some short-term negative impacts of Facebook’s flex.

    Certain government Facebook pages, such as those belonging to the Bureau of Meterology and some health department sites, have been caught up in the ban. Facebook says this is due to the wording of the legislation, stating:

    As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted.

    While Facebook says it will restore non-news pages, the action will put pressure on the government to define more clearly what it means by news content.

    In the meantime, the move will affect Australians’ access to vital information related to emergencies and the covid pandemic. Without a concerted effort to ensure online behaviour change from users, this could be dangerous.

    Misinformation risk
    We can also expect to see a short-term proliferation of misinformation as Facebook’s news feed will have a vacuum of professionally sourced and fact-checked news.

    A significant number of Australians discuss news on Facebook, both via their newsfeed and in groups. Being able to source factual information from news sites is part of the everyday political and social participation that social media platforms facilitate.

    The democratic impact of Facebook’s ban will be felt – and is counter to Facebook’s stated principle of connecting people and its recent pledge to tackle misinformation.

    Will it hurt Facebook?
    The impact of this action against the legislation on Facebook itself is yet to be seen.

    The reputational damage from blocking important sites that serve Australia’s public interest overnight – and yet taking years to get on top of user privacy breaches and misinformation – undermines the legitimacy of the platform and its claimed civic intentions.

    Facebook’s actions may send a message to the government, but they will also send one to their Australian users.

    Readers are likely to find other ways to get their news. If we learn from the experience of Google’s news ban in Spain, we can see that after an initial dip in traffic, most major news organisations in Spain regained much of their web traffic after about a year.

    Surfing social waves
    Tools such as Facebook are only useful if people want to use them. And for some existing users, the lack of news might be a dealbreaker.

    Facebook already faces a long-term problem of an ageing user demographic, as under-25s turn to Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok for news and information.

    Young people may have Facebook profiles, but they are less likely to be active users.

    News organisations are already following their lead. For example, The Conversation Australia has 325,735 Facebook followers and will probably feel the impact of the loss of engagement there.

    But it also has more than 21,000 Instagram followers and counting. It is increasingly making visual news “tiles” to cater for the younger demographic of users who source news from other platforms. It has also been working to reach readers directly via regular email newsletters, which one in five US readers now say is their primary way of accessing news.

    News organisations have already learned how to pivot fast. When Facebook changed its algorithms in 2018 to deprioritise news publishers, many took action to reduce their reliance on Facebook’s traffic, analytics or digital advertising dollars.

    What now?
    Larger news organisations will be OK in the long run. But Australia’s smaller outlets, including local publishers and non-profits that produce public interest journalism, will need protection.

    The long-term task for news organisations and journalists is to convince the public – especially young people – that it’s worthwhile to actively seek out professional news and journalism as part of their daily online lives, rather than simply reading whatever comes across their feed.

    As for Facebook, going back to its original purpose of facilitating personal connection and social networking, rather than posing as a forum for public information, may not be a bad thing. But the reputational damage and publisher exodus will eventually damage its core business: digital advertising revenue.The Conversation

    Dr Diana Bossio is a lecturer in Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • China formally charges Australian journalist Cheng Lei – half year after being detained

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The Chinese government has formally charged Australian journalist Cheng Lei with “illegally supplying state secrets overseas”, almost half a year after she was first detained, reports ABC News.

    Lei has been held since August last year under a form of detention that allows Chinese police to imprison and question a suspect for up to six months without access to lawyers.

    Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Chinese authorities advised Australia late last week that they had formally charged Lei, meaning an official investigation into her conduct would now begin.

    “We have consistently raised concerns [about Cheng Lei] regularly at the most senior levels,” Payne said.

    “We have made a number of consular visits to her as part of our bilateral consular agreement – the most recent of those was on the 27th of January – and we continue to seek assurances of her being treated appropriately, humanely and in accordance with international standards, and that will continue to be the case.”

    Lei was working as a high profile anchor for China’s state-run English language news service CGTN.

    Payne said the charges against Lei were “broad” and she expected the investigation to continue for months.

    When asked if the Australian government believed the allegations against Lei were baseless, she said Australia was “seeking further advice in relation to the charges”.

    Lei has two young children living with her family in Melbourne.

    Last year, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Lei was “suspected of carrying out criminal activities endangering China’s national security”, but did not provide any further details.

    In September, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom watchdog and other press freedom groups urged the release of Cheng Lei, who had been detained incommunicado and without charge since 14 August 2020.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF condemns Google for dropping Australian media searches in ‘tests’

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the arbitrary and opaque experiments that Google is conducting with its search engine in Australia, with the consequence that many national news websites are no longer appearing in the search results seen by some users.

    The Australian, ABC, Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Guardian Australia and The Sydney Morning Herald are among the media outlets that have not appeared in the search results of around 1 percent of Australian users since January 13, the date on which Google admits that it began its “experiments”.

    The experiments are supposedly intended to measure the correlation between media and Google search and are due to end at the start of February.

    Neither the media outlets nor Google search users were notified in advance of the consequences of the experiments, namely that they would be deprived of their usual access to many news sources.

    “The platforms must stop playing sorcerer’s apprentice in a completely opaque manner,” said Iris de Villars, the head of RSF’s Tech Desk.

    “Most Australians use Google to find and access online news, and these experiments confirm the scale of the power that platforms like Google exercise over access to online journalistic content, and their ability to abuse this power to the detriment of the public’s access to information.

    “They have a duty to be transparent and to inform their users, a duty that is all the greater in the light of the impact that the current and future experiments can have on journalistic pluralism.”

    Thousands of tests every year
    Google conducts tens of thousands of tests on its search engine every year.

    The experiments that Google and other platforms carry out usually test design changes, algorithmic modifications or new functionalities on some of their users in order to study how they behave and to guide future changes.

    This is not the first time one of these experiments has impacted on journalistic pluralism.

    Facebook, for example, tested a new functionality called “Explore” in six countries – Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka – from October 2017 to March 2018.

    This experiment, in which independent news content was quarantined in a not-very-accessible secondary location, had a disastrous impact on journalistic pluralism in these countries, with traffic to local media outlets falling dramatically.

    In Cambodia, many citizen-journalists lost a large chunk of their readers, with the result they had to pay to restore traffic to their sites.

    Google’s experiments in Australia have come at a time of tension between the platforms and the Australian government, which has a proposed new law, called the News Media Bargaining Code, under which platforms such as Google and Facebook would have to share advertising money with media companies.

    The two tech giants have reacted to the proposal with hostility. Facebook has said it would prevent Australian media outlets and users from sharing journalistic content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, while Google has added a pop-up message to its search results warning Australian users that “your search experience will be hurt by new regulation”.

    When asked about the details of these experiments, their purpose and about transparency towards media outlets and users, Google just referred RSF to an existing, general press release.

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RSF condemns Google for dropping Australian media searches in ‘tests’

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the arbitrary and opaque experiments that Google is conducting with its search engine in Australia, with the consequence that many national news websites are no longer appearing in the search results seen by some users.

    The Australian, ABC, Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Guardian Australia and The Sydney Morning Herald are among the media outlets that have not appeared in the search results of around 1 percent of Australian users since January 13, the date on which Google admits that it began its “experiments”.

    The experiments are supposedly intended to measure the correlation between media and Google search and are due to end at the start of February.

    Neither the media outlets nor Google search users were notified in advance of the consequences of the experiments, namely that they would be deprived of their usual access to many news sources.

    “The platforms must stop playing sorcerer’s apprentice in a completely opaque manner,” said Iris de Villars, the head of RSF’s Tech Desk.

    “Most Australians use Google to find and access online news, and these experiments confirm the scale of the power that platforms like Google exercise over access to online journalistic content, and their ability to abuse this power to the detriment of the public’s access to information.

    “They have a duty to be transparent and to inform their users, a duty that is all the greater in the light of the impact that the current and future experiments can have on journalistic pluralism.”

    Thousands of tests every year
    Google conducts tens of thousands of tests on its search engine every year.

    The experiments that Google and other platforms carry out usually test design changes, algorithmic modifications or new functionalities on some of their users in order to study how they behave and to guide future changes.

    This is not the first time one of these experiments has impacted on journalistic pluralism.

    Facebook, for example, tested a new functionality called “Explore” in six countries – Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka – from October 2017 to March 2018.

    This experiment, in which independent news content was quarantined in a not-very-accessible secondary location, had a disastrous impact on journalistic pluralism in these countries, with traffic to local media outlets falling dramatically.

    In Cambodia, many citizen-journalists lost a large chunk of their readers, with the result they had to pay to restore traffic to their sites.

    Google’s experiments in Australia have come at a time of tension between the platforms and the Australian government, which has a proposed new law, called the News Media Bargaining Code, under which platforms such as Google and Facebook would have to share advertising money with media companies.

    The two tech giants have reacted to the proposal with hostility. Facebook has said it would prevent Australian media outlets and users from sharing journalistic content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, while Google has added a pop-up message to its search results warning Australian users that “your search experience will be hurt by new regulation”.

    When asked about the details of these experiments, their purpose and about transparency towards media outlets and users, Google just referred RSF to an existing, general press release.

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Assange wins. The cost – the crushing of press freedom

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in CounterPunch

    The unexpected decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny a US demand to extradite Julian Assange, foiling efforts to send him to a US super-max jail for the rest of his life, is a welcome legal victory, but one swamped by larger lessons that should disturb us deeply.

    Those who campaigned so vigorously to keep Assange’s case in the spotlight, even as the US and UK corporate media worked so strenuously to keep it in darkness, are the heroes of the day.

    They made the price too steep for Baraitser or the British establishment to agree to lock Assange away indefinitely in the US for exposing its war crimes and its crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    But we must not downplay the price being demanded of us for this victory.

    A moment of celebration
    We have contributed collectively in our various small ways to win back for Assange some degree of freedom, and hopefully a reprieve from what could be a death sentence as his health continues to deteriorate in an overcrowded Belmarsh high-security prison in London that has become a breeding ground for covid-19.

    For this we should allow ourselves a moment of celebration. But Assange is not out of the woods yet. The US has said it will appeal the decision. And it is not yet clear whether Assange will remain jailed in the UK – possibly in Belmarsh – while many months of further legal argument about his future take place.

    The US and British establishments do not care where Assange is imprisoned – be it Sweden, the UK or the US. What has been most important to them is that he continues to be locked out of sight in a cell somewhere, where his physical and mental fortitude can be destroyed and where he is effectively silenced, encouraging others to draw the lesson that there is too high a price to pay for dissent.

    The personal battle for Assange won’t be over till he is properly free. And even then he will be lucky if the last decade of various forms of incarceration and torture he has been subjected to do not leave him permanently traumatised, emotionally and mentally damaged, a pale shadow of the unapologetic, vigorous transparency champion he was before his ordeal began.

    That alone will be a victory for the British and US establishments who were so embarrassed by, and fearful of, Wikileaks’ revelations of their crimes.

    Rejected on a technicality
    But aside from what is a potential personal victory for Assange, assuming he doesn’t lose on appeal, we should be deeply worried by the legal arguments Baraitser advanced in denying extradition.

    The US demand for extradition was rejected on what was effectively a technicality. The US mass incarceration system is so obviously barbaric and depraved that, it was shown conclusively by experts at the hearings back in September, Assange would be at grave risk of committing suicide should he become another victim of its super-max jails.

    One should not also discard another of the British establishment’s likely considerations: that in a few days Donald Trump will be gone from the White House and a new US administration will take his place.

    There is no reason to be sentimental about president-elect Joe Biden. He is a big fan of mass incarceration too, and he will be no more of a friend to dissident media, whistleblowers and journalism that challenges the national security state than was his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Which is no friend at all.

    But Biden probably doesn’t need the Assange case hanging over his head, becoming a rallying cry against him, an uncomfortable residue of the Trump administration’s authoritarian instincts that his own officials would be forced to defend.

    It would be nice to imagine that the British legal, judicial and political establishments grew a backbone in ruling against extradition. The far more likely truth is that they sounded out the incoming Biden team and received permission to forgo an immediate ruling in favour of extradition – on a technicality.

    Keep an eye on whether the new Biden administration decides to drop the appeal case. More likely his officials will let it rumble on, largely below the media’s radar, for many months more.

    Journalism as espionage
    Significantly, Judge Baraitser backed all the Trump administration’s main legal arguments for extradition, even though they were comprehensively demolished by Assange’s lawyers.

    Baraitser accepted the US government’s dangerous new definition of investigative journalism as “espionage”, and implied that Assange had also broken Britain’s draconian Official Secrets Act in exposing government war crimes.

    She agreed that the 2007 Extradition Treaty applies in Assange’s case, ignoring the treaty’s actual words that exempt political cases like his. She thereby opened the door for other journalists to be seized in their home countries and renditioned to the US.

    Baraitser accepted that protecting sources in the digital age – as Assange did for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, an essential obligation on journalists in a free society – now amounts to criminal “hacking”. She trashed free speech and press freedom rights, saying they did not provide “unfettered discretion by Mr Assange to decide what he’s going to publish”.

    She appeared to approve of the ample evidence showing that the US spied on Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy, both in violation of international law and his client-lawyer privilege – a breach of his most fundamental legal rights that alone should have halted proceedings.

    Baraitser argued that Assange would receive a fair trial in the US, even though it was almost certain to take place in the eastern district of Virginia, where the major US security and intelligence services are headquartered. Any jury there would be dominated by US security personnel and their families, who would have no sympathy for Assange.

    So as we celebrate this ruling for Assange, we must also loudly denounce it as an attack on press freedom, as an attack on our hard-won collective freedoms, and as an attack on our efforts to hold the US and UK establishments accountable for riding roughshod over the values, principles and laws they themselves profess to uphold.

    Even as we are offered with one hand a small prize in Assange’s current legal victory, the establishment’s other hand seizes much more from us.

    Vilification continues
    There is a final lesson from the Assange ruling. The last decade has been about discrediting, disgracing and demonising Assange. This ruling should very much be seen as a continuation of that process.

    Baraitser has denied extradition only on the grounds of Assange’s mental health and his autism, and the fact that he is a suicide risk. In other words, the principled arguments for freeing Assange have been decisively rejected.

    If he regains his freedom, it will be solely because he has been characterised as mentally unsound. That will be used to discredit not just Assange, but the cause for which he fought, the Wikileaks organisation he helped to found, and all wider dissidence from establishment narratives. This idea will settle into popular public discourse unless we challenge such a presentation at every turn.

    Assange’s battle to defend our freedoms, to defend those in far-off lands whom we bomb at will in the promotion of the selfish interests of a western elite, was not autistic or evidence of mental illness. His struggle to make our societies fairer, to hold the powerful to account for their actions, was not evidence of dysfunction. It is a duty we all share to make our politics less corrupt, our legal systems more transparent, our media less dishonest.

    Unless far more of us fight for these values – for real sanity, not the perverse, unsustainable, suicidal interests of our leaders – we are doomed. Assange showed us how we can free ourselves and our societies. It is incumbent on the rest of us to continue his fight.

    Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). This article was first published by CounterPunch. His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RSF hails UK court blocking of US bid to extradite Julian Assange

    Scenes of jubilation near the Old Bailey courthouse in London as protester greet judge’s ruling to block US extradition bid. Image: David Robie/APR/AJ screenshot

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved by the January 4 ruling of UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser to block the United States’ attempt to extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

    However, it is extremely disappointed by the court’s failure to reject the substance of the case, leaving the door open to further prosecutions on similar grounds, RSF says in a statement today.

    Although Judge Baraitser decided against extradition, the grounds for her decision were strictly based on Assange’s serious mental health issues and the conditions he would face in detention in the US.

    On the substantive points in the case – in which the US government has pursued Assange on 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – the judge’s decision was heavily in favour of the prosecution’s arguments, and dismissive of the defence.

    “We are immensely relieved that Julian Assange will not be extradited to the US. At the same time, we are extremely disappointed that the court failed to take a stand for press freedom and journalistic protections, and we disagree with the judge’s assessment that the case was not politically motivated and was not centred on journalism and free speech,” said RSF’ Director of International Campaigns, Rebecca Vincent.

    “This decision leaves the door open for further similar prosecutions and will have a chilling effect on national security reporting around the world if the root issues are not addressed.”

    The US government has indicated that it intends to appeal against the extradition decision.

    Detained on remand
    Assange remains detained on remand in high-security Belmarsh prison, pending the judge’s consideration of his bail application on January 6.

    RSF has called again for his immediate release, and will continue to monitor proceedings.

    Despite extensive difficulties securing access – including refusal by the judge to accredit NGO observers and threats of arrest by police on the scene – RSF monitored the January 4 hearing at London’s Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey).

    It has been the only NGO to monitor the full extradition proceedings against Assange.

    The UK and US are respectively ranked 35th and 45th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

    Asia Pacific Report’s Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF in Paris.

    Julian AssangeJulian Assange … still detained on remand at high-security Belmarsh prison. Image: RSF

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RSF protests over arrest of Filipina journalist for ‘planted firearms’

    Lady Ann “Icy” Salem is seen during her arrest on 10 December 2020. Image: Altermidya/RSF

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demands the immediate and unconditional release of Lady Ann Salem, a Manila-based alternative journalist who was arrested on a firearms charge at the end of a raid on her home in which the police planted the evidence.

    The co-founder of the alternative media network Altermidya and editor of the Manila Today news site, Salem – also known as “Icy” Salem – is now facing up to 20 years in prison on a trumped-up charge of illegal possession of firearms and explosives, a charge that does not allow release on bail.

    When the police arrived at her home in a Manila suburb at around 9 am on December 10, they refused to let her contact her lawyer and made her turn her face to the wall while they carried out a search.

    “While I was forced to turn my back for an hour, they planted the evidence,” she managed to tell another journalist as she was being led away to a police vehicle.

    The police claim they found four .45 pistols and four grenades during the search.

    “The police clearly planted the evidence to incriminate ‘Icy’ Salem in an utterly shameless manner,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

    “In view of their shocking methods, we demand this journalist’s immediate and unconditional release. This latest attack on independent media by the Philippine authorities just discredits President Rodrigo Duterte’s government on the international stage.”

    ‘Red-tagging’
    The police used exactly the same method when they arrested Frenchie Mae Cumpio, the editor of the Eastern Vista news website in the eastern city of Tacloban on February 7. Police officers planted firearms in her home when carrying out her arrest.

    Like Manila Today, Eastern Vista is part of the Altermidya network of alternative media outlets that are committed to independent journalism and to defending the most marginalised sectors of Philippine society.

    As a result, they are routinely branded as communist by the authorities, a process known as “red-tagging.”

    A hangover from the Cold War and, before that, from when the country was a US colony, “red-tagging” is a typically Philippine practice under which dissenting individuals or groups, including journalists and media outlets, are identified to the police and paramilitaries as legitimate targets for arbitrary arrest or, worse still, summary execution.

    Relentless war
    During a parliamentary hearing on December 1, the government-run National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) formally labelled members of the Altermidya network as violent communist activists without presenting a “shred of evidence” in support of this claim.

    Altermidya is the latest victim of the Duterte administration’s relentless war against independent media. Its targets include Maria Ressa, the founder and CEO of the independent news website Rappler, who had to post bail and appear in court on December 4 as a result of a new warrant for her arrest on a charge of online criminal defamation.

    Ressa is currently the subject of at least eight different cases by various government agencies.

    Last July, the irascible and authoritarian president’s supporters in congress drove the final nails into the coffin of the country’s biggest radio and TV network, ABS-CBN, by refusing to give it a new franchise, after previously refusing to extend its 25-year franchise when it expired in May.

    The Philippines is ranked 136th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Hong Kong police charge Apple Daily founder Lai with ‘foreign collusion’

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The Hong Kong police force has charged media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, founder of Next Digital Limited, which owns the Apple Daily newspaper, with collusion with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s controversial new national security law, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists.

    It is a charge that carries up to life in prison if convicted, according to the Apple Daily and news reports.

    “Charging Jimmy Lai under Hong Kong’s new national security law marks a dangerous escalation in China’s attacks on Hong Kong’s independent media,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia programme coordinator, in Washington, DC.

    “China appears intent on crushing what remains of Hong Kong’s much vaunted tradition of press freedom. Lai should be freed at once, and all the charges he is facing should be dropped,” he said.

    Lai has been in custody since police detained him and two Apple Daily executives on a fraud charge on December 2, as CPJ documented at the time.

    He is expected to remain in jail at least until a court hearing on April 16, 2021, as a court rejected his bail bid on December 3, according to news reports.

    Lai’s collusion charge will enter court proceedings tomorrow at the West Kowloon Courts, according to those reports.

    The Hong Kong Police Force did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.