Media pluralism – Evening Report

New deal for journalism – RSF’s 11 steps to ‘reconstruct’ global media

Asia Pacific Report — Sun, 04 May 2025 12:20:19 +0000

Australia (ranked 29th) and New Zealand (ranked 16th) are cited as positive examples by Reporters Without Borders in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index of commitment to public media development aid, showing support through regional media development such as in the Pacific Islands.

Reporters Without Borders

The 2025 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has revealed the dire state of the news economy and how it severely threatens newsrooms’ editorial independence and media pluralism.

In light of this alarming situation, RSF has called on public authorities, private actors and regional institutions to commit to a “New Deal for Journalism” by following 11 key recommendations.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

RSF slams ‘horrific conditions’ for journalists in Gaza in wake of fragile ceasefire

Asia Pacific Report — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 02:19:18 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

The Paris-based global watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has expressed support for Gaza’s media professionals and called on Israel to urgently lift the blockade on the territory.

It said the humanitarian catastrophe was continuing in Gaza and hampering journalists’ work on a daily basis.

The Israeli army had killed their colleagues and destroyed their homes and newsrooms, said RSF in a statement.

Gaza’s remaining journalists, who had survived 15 months of intensive bombardment, continued to face immense challenges despite the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect on 19 January 2025 with the first stage expiring last weekend.

Humanitarian aid, filtered by the Israeli authorities, is merely trickling into the blockaded territory, and Israel continues to deny entry access to foreign journalists, forbidding independent outlets from covering the aftermath of the war and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.

Exiled Palestinian journalists are also prevented from returning to the Gaza Strip.

“We urgently call for the blockade that is suffocating the press in Gaza to be lifted,” said RSF editorial director Anne Bocandé.

“Reporters need multimedia and security equipment, internet and electricity.

“Foreign reporters need access to the territory, and exiled Palestinian journalists need to be able to return.

“While the ceasefire in Gaza has put an end to an unprecedented massacre of journalists, media infrastructure remains devastated.

“RSF continues to campaign for justice and provide all necessary support to these journalists, to defend a free, pluralist and independent press in Palestine.”

Reporters face the shock of a humanitarian catastrophe

Working amid the rubble

“The scale of the destruction is immense, terrifying,” said Islam al-Zaanoun of Palestine TV.

“Life seems to have disappeared. The streets have become open-air rubbish dumps. With no place to work, no internet or electricity, I was forced to stop working for several days.”

Journalists must also contend with a severe fuel shortage, making travel within the country difficult and expensive. Like the rest of Gaza’s population, reporters have to spend long hours in queues every day to obtain water and food.

Israeli fire despite the ceasefire

“Entire areas are unreachable,” Al Jazeera correspondent Hani al-Shaer told RSF.

“The situation remains dangerous. We came under Israeli fire in Rafah.”

The journalist explained that due to an unrelenting series of crises, he was forced to choose which stories he covered.

“The destroyed infrastructure? The humanitarian crisis? Abandoned orphans?” he wondered.

Witnesses and targets: the double trauma of reporters

With at least 180 media professionals killed by the Israeli army in the course of 15 months of war, including at least 42 killed on the job, according to RSF figures, surviving journalists must face their trauma while continuing their news mission.

Gaza media sources put the journalist death toll at more than 200.

“We covered this tragedy, but we were also part of it. Often, we were the target,” stressed Islam al-Zaanoun.

“We still can’t rest or sleep. We’re still terrified that the war will start again,” adds Hani al-Shaer.

The suspended lives of exiled journalists

From Egypt to Qatar, journalists who managed to escape the horror continue to live with the consequences, unable to return to their loved ones and homes.

“My greatest hope is to return home and see my loved ones again. But the border is closed and my house is destroyed, like those of most journalists,” lamented Ola al-Zaanoun, RSF Gaza correspondent, now based in Egypt.

The Gaza bureau chief of The New Arab, Diaa al-Kahlout is one of many who watched the Israeli Army destroy his house.

“When they arrested me, they bombed and set fire to my house and car. I’ve lost everything I’ve earned in my career as a journalist, and I’m starting all over again,” he told RSF.

A refugee in Doha, Qatar, he is still haunted by the abuse inflicted by Israeli forces during his month-long detention in December 2023, following his arbitrary arrest at his home in Beit Lahya, a city in the north of the Gaza Strip.

“No matter how many times I tell myself that I’m safe here, that I’m lucky enough to have my wife and children with me, I have trouble sleeping, working, making decisions,” confided the journalist, whose brother was killed in the war.

“I’m scared all the time,” he added.

Asia Pacific Media Network’s Pacific Media Watch project collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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

Asia Pacific Report — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 22:17:52 +0000

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.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz