Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is vital to nation-building. It empowers Filipinos to make informed decisions by fostering critical thinking, strengthening media awareness and encouraging responsible digital use.

This call was echoed last week when United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and MediaQuest’s THINKaMuna campaign representatives came together for a small but meaningful gathering.

The event underscored their shared commitment, with discussions centering on projects to push MIL forward in the Philippines.

“Most young people today turn to social media as their first source of news,” said UNESCO Jakarta director Maki Katsuno-Hayashikawa.

“With AI making it harder to tell what’s fake from what’s true, it’s even more important for all generations to think critically and share information responsibly.”

They are making this happen in several ways.

Explainer videos
The UNESCO-THINKaMuna partnership has rolled out three of six digital episodes so far —  Cognitive Biases in July, Critical Thinking in August and Tech Addiction in September.

Each is short, visually appealing and easy to understand, perfect for audiences with short attention spans.

“Most MIL materials are very academic because they were made for schools,” shared MediaQuest corporate communications consultant Ramon Isberto.

“We want ours to be different — playful and something people can casually talk about in their neighbourhoods.”

This approach has brought the digital episodes closer to audiences, helping them reach nearly five million views.

“In the Philippines, MediaQuest is our first media partner piloting media literacy in different ways and integrating it,” added UNESCO Jakarta program specialist Ana Lomtadze.

“Our mission is really about reaching out in new, innovative ways and showing audiences how and why they should discern information and check their sources.”

Taking MIL to classrooms
While UNESCO provides guidance, Katsuno-Hayashikawa noted that implementation depends on local, on-the-ground initiatives.

THINKaMuna recognises this, which is why they are distributing 1000 MIL journals to schools across the country.

“A substantial percentage of grade school and high school students are not functional readers – they can read, but don’t fully understand what they’re reading,” explained Isberto.

To address this, the journals are filled with visuals to ensure the message comes across. Workshops for senior journalists and the MILCON 2025 are also in the works to complete the offline component of the collaboration.

“Society exists because we communicate and learn from each other,” Isberto said.

“Today, media and information literacy is our way of continuing that conversation.”

Anthea Grape is a Philippine Star reporter.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Recently, there was a serious revelation that some wire service reports were edited, without attribution, by an individual employee of our national broadcaster, RNZ.

Now, let’s examine the way I composed the above sentence.

I included the word “serious” to signal to readers that this news is of significant importance. The reason is that I believe there is already extensive frustration at media coverage of news — and therefore anything that erodes trust in our major media should be taken seriously.

Later in the sentence, I used the word “edited”. Initially, I had used the word “altered” but I made a conscious decision to change it to “edited”. I did this because I thought the word “altered” might suggest a higher type of wrongdoing — one that could be linked to fraud and criminality, such as being paid by a foreign agent to alter documents.

There is no evidence that this was the case at RNZ. The word “edited” suggests the use of some sort of journalistic judgment which, in this particular case, regardless of the factuality or falsehood of the edits, were clearly unethical because they were unauthorised and undeclared.

The reference to “an individual employee” was to ensure that other journalists at RNZ, and the organisation as a whole, were not implicated in the revelation. If I had thought RNZ was systematically biased in its reporting, I probably would have just written that RNZ had been found to be altering wire service news.

So my choice of words to form the first sentence of this column was informed by my personal perspectives, as well as the impression I hoped to create in the minds of those reading it.

The subject of this column isn’t about what happened at RNZ. We will be informed of this, in time, when the result of the ongoing inquiry is made public.

Unbiased reporting?
The question I intend to explore here is if there is such a thing as unbiased reporting.

I went back to university later in life to study journalism because it was important to me to understand how the news was produced. My course placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of objectivity and impartiality as ideal standards of news reporting, without much discussion about the limits of achieving such unrealistic standards.

News is produced by reporters and shaped by editors who cannot help but inject their own perspectives and personal experiences into the final product. Even when reporting live from the scene, journalists often have to form a judgment as to what is newsworthy, and so depending on who is reporting the story, the information we receive may alter.

In general, the idea of “unbiased”, “objective” or “neutral” reporting cannot be entirely divorced from the editorial guides journalists use to determine what information to report, and also what they believe is the truth.

Omitting context or the decision to exclude some key words can, in some instances, produce a misleading report.

For instance, my interest in the Palestinian cause has meant that I notice the journalistic language used in reporting on Palestine. I consider that Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) should always be referred to as “occupied Gaza” and “occupied West Bank” because this is their legal status under international law.

But in many articles about Palestine, the word “occupied” is often dropped even though its use matters because it gives relevant context to reporting of political and military events there.

#Mediawatch: Further #fallout as #RNZ takes out the ‘Kremlin garbage’ #CafePacific #AsiaPacificReport #rnznews #PacificMediaWatch #rnzinquiry #kremlingarbage #RussiaUkraineWar #media #mediacredibility #newsedits @USPWansolwara https://t.co/waIGzEUdwE pic.twitter.com/wfzDEFZjdi

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 18, 2023

Impartial presentation
Some journalistic codes refer to “balanced” and “fair” reporting. The idea here is that, where there is controversy, there should be an impartial presentation of all facts as well as all substantial opinions relating to it.

A fair report, it is said, should avoid giving equal footing to truths and mistruths and should provide factual context to any inaccurate or misleading public statement.

In recent years, The New York Times has used a series of articles known as Explainers to, as they describe it, “demystify thorny topics”.

Stuff’s Explained follows a similar format to help deconstruct topics that are complex and challenging to understand.

The notion of bias in news writing has become the most common criticism of the media.

Ultimately, the solution to increasing trust in journalism lies in transparency and disclosure of the standards, judgments and systems used to produce and edit news. It is therefore right that RNZ has announced an external review of its processes for the editing of online stories.

But there should also be a mind shift in our understanding of the notions of unbiased and objective reporting — namely that these notions have always existed and continue to operate within power dynamics that give privilege to certain perspectives.

The best approach, therefore, is to always allow for an element of doubt — and only believe something to be true just so long as our active efforts to disprove it have been unsuccessful.

Donna Miles-Mojab is an Iranian New Zealander interested in justice and human rights issues. She lives in Christchurch and works as a freelance journalist and a columnist for The Press. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz