Governance

Posters in Minibuses Provide Media Literacy for Moldovans On the Go

Moldova is the poorest country in Central Europe, and according to Transparency International, among the most corrupt. More than 80 percent of domestic television stations are owned by people affiliated with political parties. Moldova continues to face Russian dominance, including in the media space, and has been dealing with an avalanche of “fake news.” In February, before the parliamentary elections, Facebook removed 168 accounts, 28 pages, and eight Instagram accounts from its platforms after it was discovered they were targeting people in Moldova with misinformation and disinformation. This was a result of the efforts of journalism organizations in Moldova that are fighting the problem. Coming at the issue from another angle, in March, Internews launched a six-month media literacy campaign targeted at under-informed rural communities and aimed at arming citizens to identify truth in the media. The campaign provides on-the-go media literacy information to commuters and other people in transit by placing media literacy infographic posters on minibuses throughout the country. This form of public transport carries passengers between the capital and remote cities and villages as well as across all three regions (the northern, central, and southern parts) of the country. As part of a literacy media campaign in rural Moldova, posters were placed in minibuses used by commuters.Translation: Five Indications of Unbiased and Professional News 1. Answers the following questions: what? how? why? where? when? who? 2. Focused / short reporting on a fact or event 3. Presents something novel 4. Refers to at least two independent sources 5. Does not include the opinion of the journalistSome passengers welcomed the mini-bus initiative. Others questioned why media institutions that manipulate consumers haven’t suffered any legal consequences. Several young passengers mentioned that they had no time to read the posters as they were preoccupied with other activities like playing games or chatting on their smartphones. Internews' partner, the Advertising Agency Promotion Group, adapted and printed approximately 10,000 posters and infographics, which have been distributed and placed on the backs of seats of 111 minibuses in Moldova. The posters were designed by the Association of Independent Press, Internews partner Center for Independent Journalism, the STOP FALS platform, and the Association of Independent TV Journalists. Translation: How can we stop the spread of fake news? Is this website credible? Is it regularly updated? Did you verify who are the members of the team? Is the listed author a real person? What materials did he/she worked on so far? Is the title reflecting the content of the news? Is it unbiased and observes journalism ethics? Is the website a satire website, is this piece of news a joke? When was this piece of news made?• • • The Minibus Campaign was funded by USAID and UK Aid through Internews’ Media-M project.

Civil Society Tracks Trolls and Fakes, Prompts Facebook Action in Moldova

Last week, about two weeks before the February 24th scheduled parliamentary elections in Moldova, Facebook removed 168 Facebook accounts, 28 Facebook pages and eight Instagram accounts active in the country, for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” spreading fake and manipulative information. According to Facebook’s statement, some of the inauthentic activity could be traced to real Moldovan government employees. Facebook’s action, a result of their internal investigation, happened after Moldova’s trolless.com platform, developed with the support of Internews’ MEDIA-M project, reported close to 700 suspected fake accounts and pages to Facebook. Trolless – from hackathon to reality Team members receive a grant award at the 2016 media hackathon for developing the Trolless app. Credit Media AZIIn 2016, before Moldova’s last presidential election, a team of young enthusiastic people came to a media hackathon organized by Moldova’s Independent Journalism Center (IJC), an Internews partner, and Deutsche Welle Akademie, with a big idea – to create an application to let ordinary users identify trolls and fake accounts online. Moldova’s information space was drowning in misinformation at the time, and trolling was increasingly threatening real discourse. “We believed strongly that an app was not enough. We developed a demo version of the web platform trolless.com – which helps identify and isolate sources whose goal is to manipulate and misinform on a mass scale via the news media. Two years later, in 2018, we launched the platform, with a grant offered by IJC, within the MEDIA-M project,” says Trolless co-director Victor Spinu. The trolless.com platform helps users report and find specific information about profiles identified as trolling or fake accounts. Information, such as from whom the fake account stole an identity, what kind of information they are sharing, and what they are commenting on is available through Trolless. To promote the use of this platform, the Trolless team created a video tutorial and a Facebook page for interacting with users. Watch the video tutorial: After users download and install the Trolless Chrome extension and activate it within Facebook, each account that is determined by Trolless to be suspect appears with a red exclamation mark. In a simple way, the platform provides a visual cue that is the converse of Facebook and Twitter’s “verified” blue checkmark icons. The identification strengthens civil society efforts to prevent disinformation, manipulation, distraction of users’ attention from relevant subjects, use of hate speech, and public denigration, especially in election campaigns when fake profiles get a boost. Users can also report suspicious activity or material themselves through the Trolless platform – the Trolless team investigates these reports, using tools to verify if photos were taken from another source or manipulated, or if the activity of the suspect user is disinformation or hate speech, for example. Once it launched, Trolless users began to report suspect profiles and pages, stolen identities, falsified images and manipulative information. Disinformation is rampant, with observers noting that trolls even stole the identity of an official anti-fake news platform, STOP FALS. Moldova’s upcoming parliamentary election, originally scheduled for the fall, is contentious and will be watched closely, as Moldova is politically split between pro-Western and pro-Russian sides, and distrust runs deep among ruling and opposition parties. These elections are also introducing a new system: half of members of the parliament will be elected on party lists and the rest will be individuals voters can elect to represent their local interests. Getting unbiased information is very difficult for ordinary Moldovans, as the two major parties together control about 80% of the media, and TV channels have been found to give unequal access to political parties and candidates in elections. Removing false information An example of the fake or misleading posts, provided by Facebook.Spinu said the Trolless platform presented to Facebook in January a list with hundreds of fake accounts suspected of supporting different political parties through disinformation. A few weeks later, Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook, announced Facebook’s removal of more than 100 accounts or pages. About 54,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages and around 1,300 accounts followed at least one of the Instagram accounts, Facebook said. Some of the banned accounts were not fake, but real individuals pushing false information, and some of those real accounts belong to employees of the governing party. The government responded in a statement that more than 200,000 employees work in public institutions, and their individual behavior on the internet is not monitored: "These employees have different political options and opinions, and the state has the obligation to preserve the border between fighting the Fake News phenomenon and guaranteeing freedom of expression for citizens." According to Trolless, the most important weapon against disinformation is media literacy and civic involvement. The Trolless team says that their intent is non-partisan, not funded by political parties or beholden to commercial interests. The project has been funded by grants provided by the Center for Independent Journalism, Deutsche Welle Akademie, and the MEDIA-M project, implemented by Internews with the financial support of USAID. (Banner photo: View of the capital city Chisinau, Moldova. Credit: InspiredbyMaps)

A banner of the Internews Liberia project.

Voter Turnout Increased Through Debates, Media Coverage in Liberia

A forthcoming study provides evidence for the long-standing assumption that active participation in democratic elections increases when voters have increased access to high-quality candidate information. In Liberia, Harvard University researchers conducted research alongside Internews’ year-long effort to train media agencies and journalists to report on the 2017 elections and to run 126 public debates in every single district in Liberia – a first for the country. As a result of citizen exposure to the debates, the research found statistically significant increases in citizens’ political engagement, knowledge about candidates in the election, and ultimately turnout on Election Day, across the nation. Higher intensity of the debate initiative, through more radio rebroadcasting and higher candidate participation, caused a 2% increase in actual voter turnout. It additionally led citizens to change their vote choices towards candidates who better matched their policy priorities. Descriptively, 13% of survey respondents stated that the debates changed who they would vote for, and 6% stated they changed whether to vote at all. Internews ensured that women had an equal voice during the debates' question time. Credit: InternewsThe study by Harvard researchers Jeremy Bowles and Horacio Larreguy used a wide range of data sources, including a panel survey of over 4,000 citizens across the entire country, a survey of 600 candidates, and debate transcripts. Internews conducted 20 focus groups with more than 250 citizens and candidates. The researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial, varying components of the debates initiative, to provide rigorous evidence regarding its overall impact. Nationwide debates and lasting impact The world watched to see if the post-war nation of Liberia could achieve a peaceful transition in power for the first time in decades in the October 2017 contests to elect the President and House of Representatives. In the run-up, Internews trained local journalists and media houses to set up and conduct structured, moderated debates focusing on local community issues in each of Liberia’s 73 legislative districts. 584 legislative candidates attended the two-to-three-hour debates in front of their constituents in every district, reaching more than 23,000 citizens in person. The debates were broadcast live by media partners and then rebroadcast up to 10 times each, adding up to more than 500 re-broadcasts. A Community Radio Conference prepared journalists for reporting on the elections. Credit: InternewsAs many as 25% of the nation’s eligible voters, roughly 500,000 people, listened to these debates, according to the forthcoming study. Read more about the nation-wide debates. Beyond the impact of the debates on the 2017 electorate, the lasting impacts of the work include increased capacity of Liberian journalists to report accurately on elections process and increase government accountability. Liberian media, both urban and rural, now have the capacity to moderate and broadcast candidate debates that are fair, impartial, balanced and contribute to peaceful elections. Further, because the debates were issue-oriented, elected candidates now have a public record of promises and positions, to which local media and local electorates can hold them accountable. Citizens also reported more confidence in peaceful elections, after seeing the candidates appearing in person alongside their opponents, moderated peacefully in front of their constituents. Reporters from rural areas, which are often underserved in national elections and debate that focus on urban power centers, had a newly amplified voice in the election and news coverage. Members of Liberia’s rural network of journalists, Local Voices Liberia, saw their election-day coverage picked up by national and international media. “Before, our stories were only heard on our community radio station,’’ said Tenneh Kamara, a reporter at Radio Gee in Rivergee. ‘Now, people on the world wide web know what’s happening in our rural communities. This is a big advancement for journalism in Liberia.’’ “Internews is really building our capacity,’’ said Franklin Flomo, a reporter at Radio Life in Zorzor, Lofa County. “We are engaged with citizens, and our coverage has expanded.’’ • • • Internews’ work was conducted with support from USAID and in partnership with the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), Liberia Media Development Initiative (LMDI) and the Center for Media Studies and Peace Building (CEMESP), as well as in collaboration with 43 community radio stations.

A group of people smile and clap and wave their hands

“I can eat Tilapia again!”

With local elections recently completed and national elections approaching in April of 2019, political issues are a hot topic in Indonesia and rumors are flying. Disinformation and misinformation have become a serious problem. Indonesia’s population is among the top five users of Facebook and Twitter globally and, during the 2017 election period, political groups used hundreds of fake and anonymous accounts to churn up religious, ethnic, geographic and political divisions. Since early this year, Internews has been partnering with AJI and the Google News Initiative to improve the quality of news and information reaching citizens in Indonesia and to combat misinformation and “fake news,” especially leading up to the elections. Journalists participate in a workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia that provided training in using tools from the internet to verify information. Credit: Internews“From (this) January to March, there has been an increase of up to 300 percent of hoax information spread in the community, compared to 2016,” said Dian Lestari, Chairperson of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) chapter in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, during a hoax-busting and digital workshop for students and the general public. This rise, gathered from information from the West Kalimantan Police Cyber Crime Unit, is predicted to continue to increase during the period before Election Day. Reinardho Sinaga, the Secretary of AJI Pontianak and a Google-certified trainer, added, “All information or news should be verified first to determine if it is potentially a hoax or not. It is necessary to identify the content and the source.” Debunking misinformation Through the Google News Initiative project, journalists learn how to conduct online verification, find original content, debunk disinformation and misinformation, and protect their data. They also learn how to better communicate with their communities, delivering accurate, high-quality reporting and building trust. For example, an image of an invitation to an event where the Governor of Jakarta was supposedly going to announce his bid for the presidency was circulating through social media. It caused a stir because the invitation appeared to come from the Islamic Student Association Alumni Corp, which has declared itself nonpolitical (in 2017, hoaxes were used to stoke religious animosity). The image was debunked as a hoax by Edmiraldo Siregar, one of the Google News Initiative trainers who works for Liputan6.com, a participant in Cekfakta, a collaborative fact-checking and verification platform launched by Internews and its partners. Ika Ningtyas is a regional coordinator for AJI and a young journalist from East Java province who works freelance for several media outlets, including Tempo, an Indonesian news portal. She participated in the Training of Trainers hoax-busting workshop conducted in February 2018 and soon after began helping Tempo with their participation in Cekfakta. “I become involved when Tempo needed advanced verification using online tools. These tools are very useful, because not all hoax information can be solved by conventional verification,” says Ika. Most of the workshops are conducted in Bahasa Indonesia and led by local journalists. Credit Google News InitiativeIn Pontianak, another trainer from the Google News Initiative Training Network, Reinardho “Edho” Sinaga, trained a group of people in his town how to check and verify misinformation and disinformation. A participant asked if they could verify some information that she believed was true. She had heard that her favorite dish, the fish tilapia, was dangerous to eat because it causes cancer in humans. She had not eaten tilapia for the two years since she heard that rumor. Using tools provided by the Google News Initiative Training Network, Edho found that the story was false. As soon as the training was over, the participant went straight to the nearest restaurant to find tilapia. She sent a message to Edho, saying, “I can eat tilapia again!” Although this is a comical example, the effects of disinformation are no laughing matter. Disinformation in the health and humanitarian sectors can have serious consequences. Likewise, Indonesia has a long history of lynching and mob justice, and disinformation can have deadly consequences on social cohesion, as disruptors look to tear at the heart of the country’s rich social and cultural fabric. Local Sustainability and Collaboration To increase its effectiveness and reach, the project aims to train local journalists in all parts of Indonesia. To that end, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) will train 750 journalists and more than 1,000 bloggers, students, and researchers through the end of 2018. “I’ve never attended a workshop like this,” said a participant at a training in Denpasar, Bali. “For me it is a very crucial issue that should be discussing broadly, especially when we are consuming a lot of information from the Internet and social media. At least now I know what kind of information should be re-shared to my friends and minimize spreading hoaxes.” In May, Masyarakat Anti-Fitnah Indonesia (Mafindo), the Association of Indonesia Cyber Media (AMSI), the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), Internews, and Google News Initiative organized the Trusted Media Summit. At the summit, 22 respected national and local media outlets, in collaboration with Mafindo, launched CekFakta.com (or “FactCheck.com” in English), publicly committing to raise journalistic standards by not propagating misinformation. All hoaxes and rumors circulating in the public are reported and entered into the Cekfakta database and go through a verification process, the results of which can be accessed by participating media. “For the first time, the mainstream Indonesian cyber media collaborates,” said Wenseslaus Manggut, Chairman of the Indonesian Cyber Media Association. “We put aside competition for bigger things.” Restoring and maintaining public trust and confidence in media is a goal that we all share. Since the launch of the first Training of Trainers in Jakarta on January 27, 2018, the Google News Initiative Training Network has grown into a vast network of 50 trainers and 1,431 trainees in just seven months. The trainers were trained in two TOT events, and the trainees have participated in 42 Google News Initiative trainings and Google News Initiative half-day workshops across Indonesia Internews is also partnering with Google News Initiative in India to provide high-level training to 8000 journalists across English and six other Indian languages that include Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Kannada to fight against misinformation and fake news. (Banner photo: Participants of the Trusted Media Summit chant their commitment to fighting misinformation in Indonesia. Credit: Google News Initiative)

A group of people sit around tables in a room behind a glass wall that says, "Mexico.com"

Independence, and Support, Needed for Mexico’s Media

Earlier this year, I visited Mexico to get a better sense of the vast importance of independent media in the country. At a critical juncture, the media faces pressure and constraints from all sides. Security risks to journalists are all too real, which has the practical impact of suppressing investigative journalism. Financial constraints make it further difficult for journalists to build their technical and reporting skills. Recently our team had the opportunity to interview Mael Vallejo, a young journalist emblematic of the potential for journalism in the country, but also the risks and dangers. With luck and support, his vision could be the future of journalism in Mexico. From Internews’ decades of experience nurturing journalists just like Mael, I’m optimistic that change can come. ‘Something truly different’ After every single person he worked with at a prominent magazine was fired and the digital footprint of the story they had produced together was erased, Mael Vallejo started rethinking his career as a journalist. The magazine was Esquire Mexico, a subsidiary of the well-known American men’s lifestyle magazine owned by Mexican media giant Televisa. The story, published in June 2014, was a groundbreaking investigation of what police had labeled a shootout with gang members in the small town of Tlatlaya. In a major scoop that rocked the Mexican media and political worlds, the story found – and Mexico’s Human Rights Commission later confirmed – that there was no shootout. Mexican soldiers had gunned down 22 teenagers and young people, at least 12 execution-style. The explosive story shattered the facade of a competent campaign against drugs fostered by then-Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and catapulted Vallejo into the public consciousness – and out of a job. Televisa, dependent for its survival on a vast stream of advertising revenue from the highest levels of the Mexican government, distanced itself quickly from the story and the team of reporters and editors who brought it to light. The journalists had run directly into one of the biggest obstacles to quality journalism in Mexico: much of the media is so addicted to government advertising that it is co-opted by the institutions it covers. “Esquire was very successful, and working there had been a very smooth existence,” Vallejo said. “We had a lot of money to work with, but the problem was that it was not truly independent media. After what happened at Tlatlaya, well, that was the first time I thought, if I had an actual independent media outlet, one not dependent on the government, I could do something truly different.” That is exactly what Vallejo is trying to do right now. As editorial director of fledgling online media site, Mexico.com, the 33-year-old dynamo is trying the seemingly impossible in Mexico. In rented WeWork offices on the 36th floor of a high rise overlooking Mexico’s famous Angel of Independence monument and the hope it represents, Vallejo has ambitions of making money and producing great journalism at the same time. It won’t be easy. How to survive and stay independent Much is reported around the world about the dangers faced by Mexican journalists, as violent drug cartels have taken hold of Mexican life and have consistently targeted reporters. And those threats are perilously real. Forty-five journalists have been killed in Mexico for doing their jobs since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. But Mexico is a vast country. Violence towards journalists by drug traffickers and gangs have been concentrated along the U.S.-Mexico border and in the rural states where narcotics are grown and transported. In Mexico City, where the country’s farthest-reaching media companies are based, the most serious threats to quality journalism are financial. Working feverishly at computers crammed tightly together, Vallejo, 24 other journalists and four other staffers are trying to beat the odds. Their gambit is to balance hard-edged, investigative journalism designed to gain them readership with softer, lifestyle stories, which they hope will pay the bills. They are aiming to launch the website in September. On June 4 they launched a preliminary beta version. To get off the ground, Mexico.com secured major financial backing from some Mexican and Spanish entrepreneurs, and are seeking advertising from Mexico’s fashion, video game and restaurant industries. In contrast to traditional media companies in Mexico, who underpay their reporters leading some to turn to taking money from the institutions they cover, Vallejo is committed to paying his staff well. Vallejo says they will seek voluntary donations from readers and also offer some paid content. And in a calculated risk, given Vallejo’s aversion to government alliances, they plan to solicit advertising from Mexico’s federal and state tourism ministries. “Our goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Mexican censorship,” Vallejo said. “The challenge is implementing a business model that works. We know how to do journalism. We have really good reporters. The problem is how to make this financially stable, how to stay independent and at the same time earn money.” “For me, it’s important that young journalists start to take risks; that they graduate from universities and think not only about working for the big legacy media, but also about starting new media outlets. If what we are trying to do can be transmitted to other young journalists, that will be great.” “I don’t know if we are going to succeed,” Vallejo said. “But at least we have tried.”

A Student Exchange Takes Journalism beyond Borders

It was on a sweltering day on the U.S.-Mexico border, about an hour south of the manicured campus of the University of Arizona, that the three journalism students on an exchange program from Tunisia finally felt they had taught their American counterparts something. There they were, oceans and continents away from their North African home, set down for a week with so much to learn about even the basics of their chosen craft. Recording on a smartphone? Lighting? Ambient noise? Drones? For days they had been taking it all in - how modern journalistic techniques could help them spread truth back home - where a fragile democracy and press freedoms had taken hold only seven years ago. At times, they recalled, despite the kindness of their hosts, they felt they hardly knew anything. But staring at the high, imposing fence separating striving migrants from the country of their dreams, the Tunisian journalists knew just what to do. Thrusting their recorders in the spaces between the vertical slats of the barrier, calling out in broken English and a bit of Spanish one of them knew, they did what reporters, even from countries without fancy equipment and advanced training, are born for. They asked questions. They were unafraid. They asked some more. “We are accustomed in Tunisia to the idea that some people might want to shut down our voices, so I guess we feel we have to keep asking questions every chance we get,” said Manal Issa, at 23 the youngest student on the exchange program. “That scene at the border, it was quite sad. People want to come across so badly, some lose their lives. It is so hard. I just wanted to know what the people in Mexico think about the U.S. and about that border.” Journalism professor Mike McKisson led a drone-reporting workshop for the students. Photos by Seyf M'RabetThat sense of inquiry is what made the eight-day visit such a success. They made the most of their whirlwind eight days in the Arizona heat. They filled notebooks and audio files with information, learned to operate video cameras, visited newspapers and radio stations and class after class on reporting. They asked questions. They were unafraid. They asked some more. “The heart of the matter, they get right to it,” said April Lanuza, a graduate student in journalism and Latin American studies at the University of Arizona who spent days guiding the Tunisian students around. “It’s been an eye-opening experience for me in terms of what we have here, the resources ... Here I work with huge, sophisticated cameras, professional equipment. They don’t have access to that. They need to learn to use what they have. They are full of questions. They are eager. They are curious. And they are picking up everything fast.” The exchange included visits of professional media outlets, including the studios of Arizona Public Media. Photo by Seyf M'RabetIn Tunisia, it must seem like the world is spinning particularly fast these days. It was only in 2011 that Tunisian protesters threw off generations of autocracy, toppled a dictator and sparked the Arab Spring. Since then Tunisia has managed to mostly escape the kind of violent after-shocks seen in Libya, Egypt and Yemen, countries that followed it in toppling long-standing leaders. Its young democracy wrote a new constitution, forged a compromise between secular and Islamist parties and, despite sporadic terrorist attacks and a faltering economy, has held free elections and spawned a flourishing press culture. Journalists in Tunisia are by no means free of repression – they can still be prosecuted under pre-revolution legislation, or under new anti-terrorism laws – but they are largely free to debate political and social issues. Developing into reporters in that new world are Issa, an English student and budding radio journalist, along with her colleagues on the exchange, freelance photojournalist Seyf M’Rabet, and Basheer Aldhorai, a Yemeni student getting a masters degree in Tunisia in journalism. Student Manal Issa, left, on a visit to the department of Native American Student Affairs (NASA APASA) at the University. Photo by Seyf M'RabetFrom their rooms at the Sahara Hotel, ironically named for the desert that crosses their country, the three students set off each day of their visit to explore a place so different and at the same time so similar to their home. They shared with their hosts fears about the future of journalism, threats to press freedom, the difficulties of seeking out information from their governments. On a Facebook group established months before the exchange they posted photos, video and commentary of their experiences. They visited the newsroom of the Arizona Daily Star, went to a college basketball game, even interviewed students at a campus cafe. Even now, from home, the group is active with new posts. “This is the real meaning of exchange,” M’Rabet said. “To share cultures and to see how the world is really so small. Back in Tunisia we need to develop our profession using that we have learned here. This exchange has already changed my life completely. It has made me see how to open my own world.” At a farewell dinner at the end of their visit, the students gathered with their American counterparts in the apartment of a professor at the university. Over a meal of traditional Tunisian couscous, “We talked, we ate, we danced, we talked about the challenges in our countries and about their futures,” said Saoussen Ben Cheikh, Project Manager for Internews, who accompanied the Tunisian students. “We brought into that apartment the stereotype that American people have of us and we changed it. We were just like any other students, cooking together, listening to music. Breaking barriers. Making this crazy world more peaceful, less ignorant. That’s what this project is all about.” . . . Supported by the Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy in Tunisia, Internews’ Al-Jisr exchange project aims to improve understanding of the role of journalism in a democracy among Tunisian and American students. A special thanks to the Journalism School at the University of Arizona in Tucson for their enthusiasm for and engagement with this project. (Banner photo: Hall at the University of Arizona. Credit Seyf M'Rabet)

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