National Federation Party president Parmod Chand has described Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry as a “self-professed champion of the poor” and criticised him over “hallucinating” about the country.

Chand made the comment when responding to remarks made by Chaudhry during FLP’s Annual Delegates Conference in Nadi on Saturday.

Chaudhry described Fiji’s coalition government leadership as self-serving and lacking integrity, transparency and accountability.

“As the un-elected Finance Minister in the regime of Frank Bainimarama after the 2006 coup, [Chaudhry] famously stated that people must learn to live with high prices of basic food items essentials,” said Chand.

“The coalition government has been for the past 23 months re-establishing the foundation for genuine democracy, accountability, transparency and good governance dismantled firstly by the regime that Chaudhry was an integral part of for 18 months”.

“The likes of Mahendra Chaudhry can continue hallucinating”.

The current Coalition Finance Minister is Professor Biman Prasad, who is leader of the NFP.

Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Dr Gavin Ellis

Integrity is the most valued element of a news organisation’s reputation. Without it, it cannot expect its audience to lend credence to what it publishes or broadcasts. So, The New Zealand Herald has dealt itself an awful blow.

Its admission that it used generative AI to scrape content and then create an editorial about the All Blacks came only after it was caught out by Radio New Zealand. RNZ’s subsequent revelation that it may have found another three robot editorials in The Herald was met with sullen silence.

All the country’s largest newspaper will say its that it should have employed more “journalistic rigour”.

That is not good enough. It does not explain why the paper made the bizarre choice to employ Gen AI to create what should be its own opinion. It does not explain why there was no disclosure of its use (although to do so on an editorial should raise more red flags than a North Korean Workers Party anniversary). It does not tell us how widespread the practice is within publications owned by NZME (The Herald editorial was reprinted in its regional titles).

It does not explain why even the most basic subediting was not applied to an obviously deficient piece of writing when editorials have previously been checked and rechecked to prevent the most minor of errors. And it does not reveal what went wrong in the editorial chain of command to allow all or any of the foregoing to occur…or not.

RNZ Mediawatch’s Hayden Donnell did an excellent job in “outing” The Herald’s practice. I admit that when I read the All Blacks editorial my reaction was that it was a particularly badly written leader that had been shoved into the paper unedited. That would have been bad enough, but it never occurred to me that it might be the scribbles of a robot hand.

Donnell had the insight to put it through AI detection software and, like the Customs Service’s First Defender against drugs on Border Patrol, it returned a positive reading. It indicated it was most likely the product of Gen AI. His finding was revealed on Mediawatch last Wednesday. A follow-up fronted by Colin Peacock on Sunday’s Mediawatch revealed a further three editorials — all on sporting subjects — had returned similar readings to the first.

Peacock told listeners the publisher had declined to comment.

AI-created editorials: What in HAL’s name was the Herald thinking?

The Herald’s own disclosure of the issue to its readers was buried in Shayne Currie’s Media Insider column. Headed “AI and that NZ Herald editorial”, it was the fourth item after an interminable piece on TVNZ’s ongoing fight with former Breakfast host Kamahl Santamaria, TVNZ’s CEO paying her own way to the Olympics, and the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter held in Moscow on fabricated charges.

The item about itself assumed everyone had already caught up with the RNZ story and simply began by saying newsroom staff had been called to a meeting “to discuss use of artificial intelligence (AI), following a case in which NZME says it should have applied more “journalistic rigour” in the way AI was used to help create a recent NZ Herald editorial”.

It quoted Herald editor-in-chief (and NZME’s chief content officer-publishing) Murray Kirkness setting out the general principles on which The Herald and other publishers used artificial intelligence. He went on to say:

“I’m keen to hold another of our regular All Hands meetings next week, which will include discussion about our use of AI now and into the future.
“As always, trust and credibility are vitally important to us and will be part of the discussion.
“Next week’s session will be an opportunity for us to talk further about our use of AI and the standards we need to maintain as we use it.”

That does not signal to me — or to other Herald readers — that he accepts there is a major issue facing him and his editorial department. Much as NZME might like to minimise what has happened, this is a serious matter that requires no small amount of damage control.

That daily column headed “We say” is more than just one of the many opinion columns peppered throughout the paper. To my way of thinking, it was supposed to be the considered, intellectually rigorous view of the masthead, one from which the public might form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions.

It was also the place from which the powerful could be called to account. As such it always played a significant role in determining the integrity of the masthead and the trust that readers resided in it. That is why its production each day was the direct responsibility of the editor or deputy editor.

I have been both an editorial writer and an editor. I know, from direct experience, the rigour that must be applied to the processes in its production — from robust discussion of the subject, to determining a justified point of view, and ensuring its accuracy and quality. I have felt the weight of responsibility in its publication each day, a weight that is the greater when calling people to account. Our editorials were unsigned because they represented the view of the masthead. The editor took direct responsibility for what it said.

My mentor, and one of my predecessors as editor of The New Zealand Herald, John Hardingham, wrote in the Manual of Journalism about the delegating nature of the editorial structure. He added the following:

One duty, however, is never delegated. That is the expression of the newspapers’ opinions through its leading articles or editorials. The editor, or the deputy editor, personally chooses the daily topics for comment, defines the approach in consultation with the specialist leader writers, and sub-edits the completed work.

That signalled the significance attached to the editorial column. Even if its readership level is low compared with other parts of the newspaper, that significance is not lost on those in power, and they have learned over time that they ignore editorials at their peril. What is said in the name of the masthead may be the touchpaper that ignites a crowd.

Shayne Currie informed readers on Saturday: “Once upon a time, The Herald had a dedicated team of editorial writers, or at least senior editors who had a special focus to consider the newspaper’s opinion on daily issues. Now, the responsibility falls on a wide cross-section of staff, including journalists who might be specialists in particular areas.”

I sense this is yet another indication of NZME’s laser focus on its digital content. The print edition is a legacy medium which, like a geriatric, is offered palliative services while the real effort is devoted to those with the promise of longer life. The fact the editorial is now written by a “wide cross section” suggests (along with the truncation of letters and addition of forgettable photographs) that the company is unwilling to devote resources to the page that was once the most direct link between paper and public.

That would not be lost on staff who could then be forgiven for regarding the editorial writing assignment as a chore rather than a privilege. Using AI to write the editorial may be a manifestation of that attitude. Sadly, all of this ignores the fact that the editorial also appears in digital form and should be accorded the same status it used to enjoy in print.

Shayne Currie used an unfortunate turn of phrase in the paragraph reproduced above. He said “responsibility falls”. The duty may fall to that wide cross-section but responsibility continues to sit where it has always been — with the person at the top of the editorial tree.

As such it falls to Murray Kirkness to fix what is a deepening problem that has been created not only for The Herald and its fellow NZME publications but for the wider media as well.

The AI generated editorial disclosure is a gift from the gods for those who seek to undermine news media and other institutions. I can hear the repeated refrain: “Don’t believe what they say: It is written by a robot”.

Doubtless, it will be extrapolated to embrace the entire content of the paper: “There aren’t any reporters: It’s written by robots.” Sound implausible? If people believed the claim the country’s reporters and editors had been bribed by the Public Interest Journalism Fund, anything is possible.

The editor-in-chief will have to deal with two related issues.

The first is integrity. I have no doubt that AI can be a useful tool in researching the subject of an editorial but never in writing one. The view of the newspaper must be created by the women and men who know and understand the intrinsic values that cannot be scraped from existing data.

Murray Kirkness must give readers an ironbound guarantee that Gen AI-written editorials have stopped, and will not happen again.

The second is transparency. Artificial intelligence has an undoubted place in the future of journalism where it can have immense benefits in, for example, the “digesting” of vast amounts of data and the processing of information. However, its use must be carefully proscribed by a publicly accessible AI code of conduct, which must also set out standardised forms of guaranteed disclosure of when and how it is employed. Failure to follow the code should be a disciplinary offence that could lead to dismissal.

The Herald must show that it is putting its house in order. It is always ready to hold others accountable. It did so last year over an RNZ staff member’s “Russia-friendly edits” of stories on the war in Ukraine, and did so this year over TVNZ’s missteps with redundancies.

It’s time to hang out its own laundry and show that it intends to be whiter-than-white.

There is a lot riding on the “regular All Hands meeting” at NZME tomorrow. If it minimises or ignores the damage done, it could reap the product of a seed unintentionally sown at the top of the first New Zealand Herald editorial on 13 November 1863. It was a quotation:

“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Sage advice, true, but we should also not lose sight of the fact that the quotation is from Act 1 Scene 3 of Hamlet – one of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Is it just me or is it not more than a little odd that coverage of current events in New Caledonia/Kanaky is dominated by the inconvenience of tourists and rescue flights out of the Pacific paradise.

That the events are described as “disruption” or “riots” without any real reference to the cause of the actions causing inconvenience. The reason is the armed enforcement of “order” is flown into this Oceanic place from Europe.

I guess when you live in a place called “New Zealand” in preference to “Aotearoa” you see these things through fellow colonialist eyes. Especially if you are part of the dominant colonial class.

How different it looks if you are part of an indigenous people in Oceania — part of that “Indigenous Ocean” as Damon Salesa’s recent award-winning book describes it. The Kanaks are the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia.

The indigenous movement in Kanaky is engaged in a fight against the political structures imposed on them by France.

Obviously there are those indigenous people who benefit from colonial rule, and those who feel powerless to change it. But increasingly there are those who choose to resist.

Are they disrupters or are they resisting the massive disruption which France has imposed on them?

People who have a lot of resources or power or freedom to express their culture and belonging tend not to “riot”. They don’t need to.

Not simply holiday destinations
The countries of Oceania are not simply holiday destinations, they are not just sources of people or resource exploitation until the natural resources or labour they have are exhausted or no longer needed.

They are not “empty” places to trial bombs. They are not “strategic” assets in a global military chess game.

Each place, and the ocean of which they are part have their own integrity, authenticity, and rights, tangata, whenua and moana. That is only hard to understand if you insist on retaining as your only lens that of the telescope of a 17th or 18th century European sea captain.

The natural alliance and concern we have from these islands, is hardly with the colonial power of France, notwithstanding the apparent keenness of successive recent governments to cuddle up to Nato.

A clue — we are not part of the “North Atlantic”.

We have our own colonial history, far from pristine or admirable in many respects. But we are at the same time fortunate to have a framework in Te Tiriti which provides a base for working together from that history towards a better future.

Those who would debunk that framework or seek to amend it to more clearly favour the colonial classes might think about where that option leads.

And when we see or are inconvenienced by independence or other indigenous rights activism in Oceania we might do well to neither sit on the fence nor join the side which likes to pretend such places are rightfully controlled by France (or the United States, or Australia or New Zealand).

Rob Campbell is chancellor of Auckland University of Technology (AUT), chair of Ara Ake, chair of NZ Rural Land and former chair of Te Whatu Ora. This article was first published by The New Zealand Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear Full many a floww’r is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air

— Thomas Gray , “Elegy”, 1751

Jai Ram Reddy, former Fiji statesman, judge and international jurist, has died in Auckland aged 85.

In his passing, Fiji has lost one of its most distinguished sons of the 20th century.

We mourn his passing but, in truth, we mourn for ourselves, for he has left the silken bonds of this earth to find rest and respite in the company of Fiji’s immortals. He is now one for the ages.

This gifted man will continue to shine as a beacon for those who fight for fairness and justice and a higher purpose in life, and for a decent country to live in.

The words of Urdu Laureate Allama Iqbal are apposite: Bade Mushkil se Hote Hain Chaman men Deedawar paya.

Men of great clarity of vision are born rarely on this earth. Jai Ram Reddy exemplified the finest traits and traditions of his people.

He was born on May 12, 1937, the eldest child in a humble, hardworking family in the heart of Fiji’s cane country.

Transcended the limits
But he transcended the limits and limitations of his time and place and circumstance to reach the highest pinnacles of his profession in law and in international jurisprudence, with a distinguished record of public service in his native country.

Reddy graduated in law from Victoria University of Wellington in 1961. After several years at the law firm of the legendary lawyer AD Patel, he joined the Crown Law Office.

Declining the offer of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution from Chief Justice Sir John Nimmo while still in his early 30s, he joined the law firm of Stuart and Company where he remained for the rest of his legal career.

Law was his passion, he used to say, and what made all the difference was that he was so good at it.

He was the finest criminal barrister of his generation. After a short, ill-fated stint as Fiji’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in 1987, he accepted appointment as President of Fiji’s Court of Appeal, to the great delight of Sir Timoci Tuivaga, the Chief Justice, and Qoriniasi Bale, the Attorney-General, who counted Reddy as one of his two heroes in the law, the other being the judicial titan Justice Ghana Mishra.

Reddy’s judicial career reached its pinnacle as a Permanent Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, ICTAR, in Arusha, Tanzania, where his judicial acumen and integrity won him accolades as a “consummate judge” respected for his “wisdom, fairness and sense of justice”.

‘A sheer privilege’
The president of ICTAR, Justice Eric Morse of Norway, wrote that it was “a sheer privilege to sit with judge Reddy on the bench”.

From law into politics which he entered in 1972 as a senator and the House of Representatives in April 1977. In Parliament he remained a commanding performer, never bested in debate, quick on his feet, withering in response, one of the best he had seen, said Dr Apenisa Kurusiqila, the Speaker.

“The Parliament will not be the same without you, Jai,” he said when Reddy left after his electoral defeat in 1999. His early years in politics were unproductive ones for him and for the people he represented, caught in the quagmire of communal wrangling, hobbled by division and disunity, and drifting.

But to his everlasting credit, he transcended that in the second phase of his career to become an honoured elder statesman, respected across the communities for his vision and essential, transparent fairness and “sincerity of purpose”.

The political reconciliation he achieved with his once arch political nemesis Sitiveni Rabuka in the teeth of rancorous opposition and deep skepticism on all sides, will remain one of the shining moments of 20th century Fijian history.

And Reddy’s evolution from a communal politician to a venerable statesman is a story for the pages of history books, too. Jai Ram Reddy was a “reluctant politician”, his critics charged. And they were right although for the wrong reason.

A vehicle for social service
Jai Ram was not in the thrall of politics, making small talk, trimming the truth, mixing easily with the crowds, glad handling. He readily acknowledged his essential shyness in public spaces. Politics for Jai Ram Reddy was a vehicle for social service, not a path to personal enrichment and accumulation.

Swami Rudananda’s influence on him was profound. Reserved and shy in public, Jai could be great fun in private. His laughter was infectious. He loved music and was a social singer in his early years.

We could talk endlessly about the Hindi movies of the 1950s, the songs and the actors he remembered. He was fond of horses and once owned one he impishly named Shabana Azmi, after the great Indian actress.

But all these private passions gave way as public duties increasingly came to consume his time. Jai Ram was an intellectual who believed in the power of ideas to change society and to enable sustainable social reform.

His enlarging vision saw a unity of purpose and common space for all the people of Fiji. “We are fellow human beings travelling in the same canoe,” he used to say.

“This country is big enough for all of us,” he said to a soldier who told him menacingly in Nadi in September 1987: “In this country, Mr Reddy, you take what we give you, no more.”

That Jai Ram refused to allow such taunts and provocations to derail or define him spoke volumes about the man. In one of the defining speeches of Fiji’s 20th century history, Jai Ram shared the deepest fears of his people with the Great Council of Chiefs in 1997: He spoke movingly of history and the making of history, of truth and destiny, words the chiefs collectively had heard for the first time from an Fijian of Indian descent leader.

“Indians of Fiji brought to these shores as labourers did not come to conquer or colonise.

“We, their descendants, do not seek to usurp your ancient rights and responsibilities. We never have. We have no wish, no desire, to separate ourselves from you.

“Fiji is our home. We have no other. We want no other.”

It was a majestic moment of truth and reconciliation, none better.

At his finest, eloquent
It was Jai Ram Reddy, the statesman, at his finest, eloquent and truthful in his thoughts. We all basked in the glory of his great achievement. But it was not to last long. He was gone soon afterwards. And we can only ponder what might have been had his vision succeeded.

“What might have been” must be among the saddest words in the English language. Jai Ram Reddy was a complex man. He had a very short fuse as some of us close to him knew well. He suffered fools badly. But no-one minded. We knew he was a person of complete, unimpeachable integrity.

He said in private what you heard from him in public. Often, he spoke from the heart.

“I have said what I felt,” he often said. Transparency of purpose defined him. He had a fine mind. He could cut through clutter in a canter. He readily won respect; he was a man who could be trusted to keep his word, as Sitiveni Rabuka has often said.

That, I think, lay at the heart of his life in politics and in public. Trust and integrity will be two words most closely associated with Reddy in the long years to come. In one of my last extended conversations with him in Auckland before his ailment claimed him.

He asked me how things looked in the country to which he had given the best years of life. I replied with the words of Firaq Gorakhpuri: Suraj ke nikalne men zara der lagegi. (The sun will take a little while longer to come out.) Is raat ko dhalne men zara der lagegi. (The night will take a little longer to fade away.)

Jai looked at me wordless for a while as if to say he understood.

We are grateful
And now he is gone. We are grateful and give thanks for the gift of his life which enriched us all. Jai Ram Reddy will not be forgotten.

His words and deeds will not die, nor allowed to perish on the silent shores of Fiji’s public memory.

We bow our heads in silence and respect as Mr Reddy embarks on his final journey.

May the angels light his way to Amar Lok, that sacred place of eternal rest for humanity’s immortals. Goodbye Jai, Goodbye Mr Reddy, goodbye sir.

The late Professor Brij Lal is the author of In the Eye of the Storm. Jai Ram Reddy and the politics of postcolonial Fiji (ANU Press, 2009) and most recently of Girmitiyas: Making of their Memory Keepers (New Delhi, 2021). He and his wife Padma were banned from Fiji for life. Professor Lal wrote this tribute before he died in exile on Christmas Day in 2021. Republished with permission from The Fiji Times.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The ABC has soundly condemned the Solomon Islands Office of the Prime Minister for a series of “factual errors” in a statement released which criticised the Four Corners investigative report Pacific Capture: How Chinese money is buying the Solomons.

In a rare statement defending its independent journalism, it said today the ABC “stood by the accuracy and integrity” of the reporting in this programme.

It said about the programme broadcast on August 4:

The ABC wishes to correct the following factual errors in the press release issued by the Solomon Islands Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet regarding the Four Corners report Pacific Capture, which examined the impact of China’s growing presence across Solomon Islands.

At no point did the program rely on “misinformation and distribution of pre-conceived prejudicial information”.

It was not our intention to “cause division between the governments of Australia and Solomon Islands”, rather to highlight issues of concern to all Solomon Islanders.

We completely reject the offensive notion of “racial profiling that is bordering racism and race stereotyping”. In fact, we were determined to tell the story from the perspective of Solomon Islanders and the program reflected their concerns. Its main interviews were with two eminent Solomon Islanders, rather than relying on “foreign experts” as is often the case. The ABC rejects the idea that we were “putting words into the mouths of the interviewees” and sees this as insulting to the Solomon Islanders who appeared in the program.

On the issue of Kolombangara, the ABC did not say that the “shareholders have made a decision to sell off the company to a Chinese firm”. Rather, the program accurately reported that the issue had been discussed at board level and that the Australian directors were so concerned about a potential sale to a Chinese state-owned company that they twice wrote to the Federal Government expressing concerns that the purchase could be used by Beijing to establish a base under the cover of a commercial enterprise. Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s office confirmed it was aware of the issue. Her office has also not ruled out intervening. The ABC also notes that the plantation on Kolombangara is owned 85 per cent by the Nien Family of Taiwan and 15 percent by the government of the Solomon Islands, not the 60/40 split claimed in the press release.

It is incorrect to claim that the program did not acknowledge that Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare “repeatedly reaffirmed to Solomon Islanders and the Pacific region that there will be no military or naval base in Solomon Islands”.

The program said: “At a meeting in Fiji, Sogavare assured the new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that Beijing won’t be allowed to establish a military base in the Solomons.” It went on to say that one of the main concerns was that a commercial enterprise controlled by Beijing could one day be used to house military assets.

The ABC stands by the accuracy and integrity of the reporting in this program.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Madang MP Bryan Kramer, who held the police, justice and later immigration portfolios in the outgoing givernment, is no stranger to publicity stunts.

Yesterday, he “ambushed” Chief Ombudsman Richard Pagen in the State Function Room of the National Parliament during the new MPs’ induction process.

Last week, the Deputy Chief Justice Ambeng Kandakasi had announced the appointment of a leadership tribunal to investigate allegations of misconduct in office against Kramer.

As Pagen was speaking to the new MPs on their roles and responsibilities and the work of the Ombudsman Commission, Kramer found it an opportune time to pick a “verbal spat’ with Pagen.

After Pagen had finished his presentation, Kramer asked several questions that “pickled” the integrity and reputation of Pagen and the Ombudsman Commission.

Kramer told Pagen that the commission had lost many leadership tribunal cases and that his [Pagen’s] own integrity was also in question when a staff member had raised allegations against him and he was still holding office.

The Chief Ombudsman told Kramer that he was at the Parliament induction programme to talk to collective Members of Parliament and not to debate with him.

‘I don’t want to argue’
“Member for Madang, I’m addressing a crop of leaders and I don’t want to argue with you. Do not raise conflict of interest questions here. Your leadership (tribunal) is coming,” he told Kramer.

Pagen said he was not appointed to be a “briefcase carrier” but to perform his constitutional duties and he performed his duty without fear or favour.

“We are here to work with the leaders. If you fear us then, it is because you have done something wrong,” he said.

The Chief Ombudsman said that as a constitutional office holder his job was not to “carry a whip around” and hunt for leaders to be punished.

He said he made sure that there were prima facie cases to refer members of Parliament to the Leadership Tribunal and so far four cases had been thrown out.

“I have done my job to refer people. We are not here to fight anyone. We are here to support service delivery for the 9 million [people in the country]. We are technical people here to give you advice,” he said.

Pagen said they were there to help make sure the leaders perform their duties of serving the people honestly and transparently.

MPs told to be ‘transparent’
In a separate news story, the Post-Courier reports that Pagen urged MPs to be transparent and not to be involved in actions that would question their integrity and of the office they occupied.

Pagen told new MPs and those who were continuing that the office they held now was for the people and their position must not be demeaned by their actions.

He said the integrity of the office and the position they occupied as leaders must be maintained at all times.

“The integrity of the country must also be preserved,” Pagen said.

“We must not use the office for personal gain.

“In the Melanesian society, we have come from a wider family connection and relations and it is essential that the relationship does not creep into the office.”

Jeffrey Elapa is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Journalist and publisher Maria Ressa has called on tech and social media giants to practise “enlightened self-interest” amid a global call for platforms to step up in the fight against disinformation.

“The world that you’ve created has already shown that we must change it. I continue to appeal for enlightened self-interest,” said Ressa, chief executive and founder of Rappler, in an online lecture for the Facebook and the Big Lie series.

Ressa, a veteran journalist and Nobel Peace laureate who will be receiving the award this Friday, has been studying, reporting on, and sounding the alarm against the use of social media platforms as a means to spread lies and hate.

The Rappler boss herself has been the subject of harassment online and of legal cases against her in the Philippines.

Platforms like Facebook, said Ressa, give the same weight on posts, whether it is a lie or a fact, in a bid to increase user engagement.

While it has meant more revenue for the platforms, it also means that posts that spark emotion — whether or not they are based on fact — gain the most traction online.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen had earlier revealed that the algorithm for instances, puts weight on “angry” reactions more than regular likes.

‘Moderate the greed’
“In the Philippines, we say ‘moderate the greed.’ [These platforms] are part of our future, that’s why we’re partners,” she explained.

The stakes are even higher in countries like the Philippines, which will be electing a new president in May 2022.

“Why we must fight disinformation. It weakens, and ultimately subverts, democracy, by undermining the factual basis of reality, by denying the standards of truth.”

— #FightDisinfo

“We cannot not do anything because we in the Philippines have elections on May 9. If we do not have integrity of facts, we won’t have integrity of elections,” warned Ressa.

Platforms, after all, are anything but clueless and helpless.

Facebook, for instance, put more weight on “news ecosystem quality” or NEQ after employees found that election-related information were spreading on the platform in the days following the US elections in 2021.

The NEQ, according to The New York Times, is a “secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.”

The lies asserted that the elections were rigged and that Donald Trump, then US president, was the true winner.

The ‘big lie’ persists
he “big lie,” as it has since been called, persists to this day.

Ressa said she woud be asking Facebook “behind the scenes and in front,” via Rappler’s partnerships, to turn up the NEQ locally.

Increasing the weight of the NEQ, at least in the US, meant that for a while, mainstream media accounts — The New York Times, CNN, and NPR — were more prominent on the Facebook feed than hyperpartisan pages.

“The foundational problem is that facts and lies are treated equally, which is what has poisoned the information ecosystem,” added Ressa.

Duterte, who won the 2016 elections by a wide margin in a plurality, is among the first national candidates to effectively use social media in a Philippine election.

Social media hasn’t just changed how regular citizens act and candidates campaign, it has also changed sitting leaders’ tactics.

“Leaders in the past that would take over, their first challenge is always how to unite people. Now, with social media because of the incentive schemes, we’re seeing leaders awarded if they divide,” said Ressa.

More manipulation tools
“Illiberal governments have gotten more tools to manipulate people,” she added. Rappler investigations later found that pro-Duterte networks used fake accounts to spread lies and disinformation well into his term as president.

Rappler started out as a Facebook page in mid-2011 and has since grown to be among the leading news sites in the Philippines. The news organisation faces at least seven active pending cases before different courts in the Philippines.

These are on top of online attacks over its reporting on the Duterte administration, including its bloody “war on drugs” and allegations of corruption among the President’s allies.

Ressa and a former researcher were convicted in June 2020 for a cyber libel law that hadn’t even been legislated when the article first came out.

Ressa is the first Filipino individual awardee of the Nobel Peace Prize and is the only woman in this year’s roster of laureates.

Ressa won the Peace Prize alongside Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.

They won the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

Republished from Rappler with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Alexandra Wake of RMIT University

Australia’s news landscape, and the ability of citizens to access quality journalism, has been dealt a major blow by the announcement the Australian Associated Press is closing, with the loss of 180 journalism jobs.

Although AAP reporters and editors are generally not household names, the wire service has provided the backbone of news content for the country since 1935, ensuring every newspaper (and therefore every citizen) has had access to solid reliable reports on matters of national significance.

All news outlets have relied on AAP’s network of local and international journalists to provide stories from areas where their own correspondents could not go, from the courts to parliament and everywhere in between.

READ MORE: Media Files: What does the Nine Fairfax merger mean for diversity and quality journalism?

Despite a shrinking number of journalists in recent years and a rapid decrease in funding subscriptions, AAP continued to stand by its mission to provide news without political partisanship or bias. Speed was essential for the agency, but accuracy was even more important.

But AAP has struggled in recent years as newspapers and radio and television stations have sought to cut costs and started sourcing content for free from the internet, thanks to global publishing platforms, such as Google.

When AAP shut down its New Zealand newswire in 2018, it said subscribers were under pressure and asking for lower fees.

Media mergers, such as that of Nine and Fairfax, have also been bad for AAP, as companies consolidated their subscriptions. Sky News also gave up its AAP subscription to use News Limited in 2018.

The mantra within AAP had long been, if a major shareholder sneezes, the wire agency catches a cold.

Independence and integrity
In the opening to the book, On the Wire: The Story of Australian Associated Press, published in 2010 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of AAP, John Coomber wrote about the value of the wire service:

So much has changed in the news industry since AAP was formed by Keith Murdoch in 1935. Back then, it took a staff of only 12 people, with bureaus in London and New York, to bring overseas news into Australia.

But even in its earliest days, as an amalgamation of two agencies, the Australian Press Association and the Sun Herald Cable Service, it was set up to save money.

With the cost of cables, which were charged by the word, the pooling of resources was significant at the time. The AAP journalists were therefore required to create concise Australian-focused reports for local papers.

Although AAP reports were sometimes drawn together from other news sources, the agency’s reporters sometimes did their own original reporting. This led to wordage blowouts on major events, such as Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Austria in 1938, which set a record for the AAP’s wordage for the year.

The second world war was an unlikely boost to AAP as senior journalists from Australian papers were seconded to war zones as AAP special representatives.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Ray Maley, later Prime Minister Robert Menzies’ press secretary, was sent to Singapore. His story of the first clash between Australian and Japanese troops was widely used in newspapers in Britain and the US, as well as Australia.

Winston Turner, “our man in Batavia” (now Jakarta), was one of the last AAP journalists to get out of the region, escaping the invading Japanese by the narrowest of margins.

Award-winning journalism
AAP’s glory days weren’t just confined to the past. It has published numerous, award-winning stories in recent years, such as Lisa Martin’s report on Peter Dutton’s au pair scandal.

Long-time readers of Fairfax newspapers might remember the federal budget in 2017 when AAP filled the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age because Fairfax reporters had gone on strike. The copy written by Fairfax’s skeleton staff was sloppy, while AAP’s stories shone with the agency’s emphasis on accuracy.

AAP photographers, too, have captured moments of Australian history, such as Lukas Coch’s Walkley Award-winning picture of Linda Burney in blue high heels in the air celebrating the passage of the marriage equality law in 2017.

Coch also took the famous photo of then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the arms of an AFP officer when she lost a shoe while exiting a Canberra restaurant surrounded by protesters.

Rich training ground lost
One of the saddest parts of the closure of AAP is the loss of fantastic training opportunities for young reporters starting out in journalism.

AAP has produced some big names in journalism, including Kerry O’Brien, the PNG correspondent in the 1960s, and SMH editor Lisa Davies and Joe Hildebrand, who both started as AAP cadets.

AAP has solidly taken in four or five cadets each year for the past decade, and in recent years, a small group of editorial assistants. Over 12 months, the AAP cadets have been taught to write fast and accurately while also learning shorthand, video skills, ethics and media law.

During the global financial crisis in the 2000s, AAP took four cadets, while The Age took on none, and the Herald Sun only two.

As news of the AAP’s closure spreads across the country, it will be seen as yet another blow to public interest journalism in Australia.

Australia needs more sources of news, not fewer. The loss of AAP should be mourned not just by news men and women across the country, but by every single person who cares about democracy and the valuable work journalists do in keeping the public informed and the powerful to account.

By Dr Alexandra Wake, programme manager, journalism, RMIT University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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