Journalism is being battered by propaganda and increasingly sophisticated fakes, aided by artificial intelligence (AI) software and a failure of oversight from tech companies, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said yesterday.
Overall, the environment for journalists was rated as “bad” in 70 percent of the 180 countries in the non-governmental organization’s annual ranking, and “good” in just eight countries.
Norway and North Korea remain best and worst respectively, for press freedom, according to the 21st annual report, which was published on World Press Freedom Day.
Photo: AFP
This year, RSF focused on the myriad forms of misinformation that are “drowning out” trustworthy news — a problem compounded by the rapid evolution of AI.
“It is the tech industry that allows disinformation to be produced, distributed and amplified,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.
“Reliable information is drowned in a deluge of disinformation,” Deloire added. “We are less and less able to perceive the differences between the real and the artificial, the true and the false.”
A prime example was Elon Musk, who took over Twitter late last year, he said.
The report criticizes his new paid-for verification system, saying Musk was pushing “an arbitrary, payment-based approach to information to the extreme.”
The report used the example of Midjourney, an AI program that generates high-quality images that are “feeding social media with increasingly plausible and undetectable fake ‘photos,’” such as those of former US president Donald Trump being manhandled by police and a comatose Julian Assange in a straitjacket that recently went viral.
Traditional forms of political interference are also gaining ground in many countries, RSF said.
About two-thirds of countries have political actors who are “often or systematically involved in massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns,” it said, highlighting the cases of Russia, India and China.
They are assisted by a vast disinformation industry.
RSF recently supported a consortium of investigative journalists working on “Forbidden Stories,” a project which uncovered the activities of Israeli firm “Team Jorge,” which specializes in producing disinformation.
The worst countries in the new ranking, apart from North Korea, were Vietnam, “which has almost completed its hunt of independent reporters and commentators,” and China, “the world’s biggest jailer of journalists.”
India fell from “problematic” to “very bad,” thanks to “media takeovers by oligarchs close to Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi”, and also in Turkey, where the government “has stepped up its persecution of journalists in the run-up to elections scheduled for 14 May.”
The US fell three places to 45th, in part due to a deteriorating security situation for journalists. The biggest drops were Peru (down 33 places to 110), Senegal (down 31 to 104) and Haiti (down 29 to 99th). Brazil, rose from 18 places to 92 thanks to the departure of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
The Middle East and North Africa remain the most dangerous region for journalists, while Europe remains the safest, although attacks on journalists in Germany led it to fall five places, RSF said.
The ranking is compiled by combining data on abuses committed against journalists with hundreds of surveys sent to journalists, academics and human rights activists.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS