Melissa Flemings tale om vigtigheden af frie medier til åbningsceremonien på World News Media Congress 2024

Melissa Fleming
World News Media Congress – Keynote Address
Monday 27 May 14:00 CET,
Tivoli Congress Center, Copenhagen

Last night, after dinner, I got back to my hotel room and turned on the news.

Breaking news reports were coming in that an air strike had hit a tent camp for displaced people in Rafah.

Palestinian medics were reporting at least 35 deaths. Women and children among the victims.

Footage from the scene – showing flames and charred bodies – was circulating on social media.

As the story developed overnight and into this morning, my colleagues at UNRWA raised the alarm.

This morning they were still trying to establish the facts – and communicate with staff on the ground in Rafah.

My thoughts are with them.

And my thoughts are with reporters all over the world, scrambling to verify the facts in real time.

Almost all of them doing so from afar.

As BBC veteran war correspondent Jeremy Bowen recently said, journalists are struggling to cover the story, quote: “because the main meat of it – which is what’s happening in Gaza, we can’t get close to.”

Reporting in Gaza is impossible for foreign correspondents, and deadly for local media.

There is a near-total ban on international journalists, while vast numbers of local media workers have been displaced or killed – more than 100 have paid with their lives.

We’ve heard disturbing reports of journalists being attacked despite being clearly identifiable as press.

Much of what we know and see is thanks to the heroic efforts of Palestinian journalists.

We also rely on exhausted and stretched UN staff on the ground to bring these stories to the world.

Our UN feeds now act as vital sources of accurate information for media outlets covering Gaza.

While this helps lift some of the fog of war, it is no substitute for the independent journalists who could and should be allowed to do their jobs freely and safely.

The UN stands firmly behind a free and independent media.

As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on World Press Freedom Day,

“Without press freedom, we won’t have any freedom. A free press is not a choice, but a necessity.”

Dear news executives, editors, journalists,

This is a gathering of people who deal in facts – so let’s face them.

Facts are the foundation on which we build our shared reality.

How do we build that reality – how do we bridge divides – if we can’t agree on the facts?

German philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote: “Freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute.”

As it stands now, in our toxic information ecosystems, the facts are very much in dispute.

This is impacting our efforts to make the world a better place.

At the UN, our vision is a world where we all can live in peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet.

My job is to lead our communications response – disseminating clear and reliable information.

Not only about wars – in Gaza, Sudan, or Ukraine – but also about all the other existential crises our world is facing.

Advocating for humane treatment for refugees, driving action on climate change, or tackling inequality and the solutions that can solve our problems.

But getting the UN’s messages heard in today’s post-fact era has become increasingly complex.

One of the reasons for that is because independent media is facing its own existential crisis.

We’re seeing journalism become more difficult, and more dangerous.

In Gaza and beyond, near record numbers of reporters were killed last year while bringing the world the facts.

Even more were imprisoned.

Reporters without Borders tells us that press freedom is under threat from the very people who should be its guarantors – political authorities.

Meanwhile journalists, especially women reporters, are subject to vicious online attacks to try to silence them.

And lasting financial strains linked to the rise of social media continue to drain newsrooms’ coffers.

This is a time when the world needs accurate information more than ever.

Yet overwhelmed audiences are turning away, with surveys showing mounting news avoidance and slumping trust in traditional media.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism tells us 30% of people get their news only from their social media feeds.

Platforms powered by algorithms designed to amplify sensational content.

And actively downrank reliable information from traditional news outlets – or from the UN.

In the news deserts beyond, people navigate a murky online world of rumor, conspiracy, and pseudo-science.

An information ecosystem poisoned with conspiracies and hate.

Those same algorithms that prioritize engagement have turned extremist views mainstream.

Normalizing antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, racism, and other hate speech.

And undermining trust – in institutions, democracy, climate science, and vaccines.

In short, trust in the facts.

All this as huge leaps in generative AI set off new alarm bells.

Alarm that traffic to news websites could disappear with new AI search tools that scrape and summarize journalism without paying.

And that generative AI tools are being deployed to create misleading content at scale.

Fake news sites, deep fakes – content that is so convincing, so personalized, that it is much harder to authenticate.

Challenging even seasoned journalists and fact-checkers to verify information in real time.

In our digital age, the facts are being lost in a swirling mist of unreliable information – the term for this, coined by WHO during the pandemic, is the ‘infodemic.’

No wonder many people are no longer sure what to believe.

But there are signs of hope.

Signs that more people may be seeking out reliable sources – checking back in on news websites, traditional radio and TV broadcasts.

Or tuning into news podcasts from established media organizations, reading long form analysis and commentary by trained journalists.

We’re seeing powerful solutions- and constructive journalism movements sweeping newsrooms.

And winning back audiences with rigorous reporting on ways to solve our most intractable problems. Giving people back their agency, and hope.

We are also seeing a surge of visitors to UN websites and social media channels by those seeking reference and inspiration.

Increasingly, people are no longer buying climate change denial peddled by fossil fuel companies – instead they are pointing to consensus science around climate change, and the promise of renewable energy.

We are also cheered by the launch of a new International Fund for Public Interest Media to help bolster struggling news outlets in low – and middle-income countries.

And by signs the news industry is coming together to demand AI developers pay fair value to the producers of original journalism used to train their products.

All this comes as people around the world are waking up to the need to restore trust in science and facts and return our information ecosystems to better health.

At the international level we will soon launch the UN Global Principles for Information Integrity – a set of recommendations for healthy information environments.

The principles are rooted in human rights, particularly freedom of expression and access to information.

They seek to hold all actors – accountable for creating a trustworthy online environment.

We will be urging platforms to ramp up efforts to enforce their own guardrails against the spread of harmful content and increase transparency around their business models.

In our two years of global consultations, one thing we heard loud and clear from people was that they were crying out for ethical, professional journalism that they can trust.

That’s why the principles lay out a vision of a robust fact-checking ecosystem, both within and outside of news organizations, and encourage schemes to boost public media literacy.

The recommendations firmly uphold the right of journalists and publishers to operate independently.

We’re confident that once the principles are launched this summer they will act as a powerful instrument for advocacy.

Bolstering the ranks of people striving for information integrity and building alliances between all those on the side of the facts.

And attracting funding for public interest media in places that need it most.

Securing a long-term future for this kind of journalism is one of the United Nations’ key priorities.

We are also actively working to protect journalists and reduce impunity for crimes against them.

And urging governments to do more to safeguard reporters and pushing all actors – including those in the private sector – to reaffirm their commitment to press freedom.

This lies at the heart of our and UNESCO’s efforts to renew and reinvigorate the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.

There is a long way yet to go. But let me close with this.

Our struggle may be existential, but we need not do battle alone.

All of us out there in search of accurate information about our troubled world and ways to make it better – whether we search on real battlefields or those we find online – are united in one key aspect.

We all share a debt to those who continue to bring us the facts, at great personal risk.

Reporters and media workers who deserve our highest recognition, respect, and solidarity.

Let’s not let them down.

Let’s use this time we have together.

Let’s seek ways to renew and strengthen our alliances.

And unite in service of the facts.

Thank you.