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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS