the lack of human dignity of any individual regardless of the prime in this case obviously journalism under a journalist being under attack is something that should concern all of us especially those of us in a democracy where people aren't admitting it so i don't think that that's that's an issue what i think is problematic from where i sit is that. the society of professional journalism is code of ethics actually says that journalists should should welcome criticism of their stories and what i have found at least more i said is that any questioning of any story is then sort of an attack on a journalist and i think that that's part of the problem as well is that when you see stories for example the other day i landed in hong kong the front page of the usa today said in the lead article former white house chief of staff john kelly that is demonstrably false he is still the white house chief of staff and so there is a lack of accountability that i think has a gig zigs existing within journalism now and so that any attack is deemed as an

attack on journalism as opposed to inviting criticism or it acknowledging their own mistakes so i was the editor in chief of orders for many years i had a long career with waiters and i would say that one of the things that marks a professional news organization is the willingness to correct it quickly and transparently all all organizations make mistakes there's no question about that we try not to but we make mistakes what marks a professional if you correct those mistakes i made clear to me and no one no one in the journalistic community argues with a legitimate criticism of stories or legitimate pointing out of errors i think what we do object to is being labeled an enemy of the people when we are not what you are doing here and let me let me finish what journalists are doing is exposing facts to light darkness is the friend of the rats who scramble around doing their

dirty work under the cover but journalists are trying to do is help society by the shedding light and sending those rats scurrying back and clamping down on corruption clamping down on malfeasance and exposing that that is not being an enemy of the people that is be a true friend. and of the people sean spicer just to go back to what your job used to be. when you used to go out into what used to be the underground swimming pool with richard nixon at the white house and walk up to that podium every day and talk to the press did you ever think to yourself i am going to propagate fake news or i'm going to manipulate the media all i'm just going to react to whatever the questions are because they won't there were times during your tenure when with all due respect to you sir you looked utterly dumbfounded by the questions that you were on the receiving end of yeah i mean there's look i think it is job of any p.r. person to go and give their spin as to what that that's that's just the reality of

what what p.r. professionals do. there were days when clearly i would be asked a question where i knew the journalist knew the answer or knew that i couldn't answer a question because of some legality sometime down the line let me answer the question and then went to a point is nice is that what you want to slow you times are when you were in the job you lawyer and you'll coldly just let me finish your colleague kellyanne conway she told lawyers as well with all due respect i've made mistakes i've been very clear about the that there are days and things that i did that i wish i could have either known more at the time but for you to sit there and say i've lied i've made mistakes there are days when i wish i could have had more information i could have answered a question more holistically or more accurately but i never ever got up and knowingly lied in for you to sit here and make that accusation i think is exactly part of the problem ok you know with all due respect i take he said here today and i will tell

you i've made mistakes i've answered questions that i thought i could have answered better but to the point that i just made to david countless stories after countless stories had some mistaken i'm if you're going to test sell me and david just got to her and said everyone makes mistakes and yet a good journalist will get up there and say hey i've made this i need to correct it or i need to enhance it i'm not here saying the exact same thing that i've made mistakes but for you to sit here and say that when i make a mistake it's a lie when a journalist make a mistake that's part of doing business it's exactly part of the problem ok point number one you talked about a terror attack in atlanta you talked about it on television i've made a mistake hold out what you want to hear hold on you talked about a terror attack in atlanta you talked about it on television on radio and in print it took you twenty four hours to say actually and i think to paraphrase what you said at the time thought what you said was oh sorry i was actually talking about what happened at the polls night club in orlando your colleague and metaphorically

you were in the room with kelly caught i'm. she made up a terror attack the bowling green massacre it was a hashtag it was trending it's never happened and to donald trump's base kind of suggests to you that all it takes is for someone like you or a kellyanne conway to talk about something that gets traction via fox and friends mr trump watches it between five and six in the morning washington time and it feeds on itself ok i'm going to say is one more time you just pointed out something that i will sit here in today and yes i mistook the location of an event i apologize for i will continue to say i made a mistake therefore but but if you're going to sit here and go through every critique that i've made i have an entire list i can go through of every publication from reuters to c.n.n. to usa today that have equally made mistakes but if you're going to hold one side accountable then hold the other side accountable and that's part of the problem you

only want to look at one side of the ledger if you're going to make this discussion better and this is where i think part of the fabric has broken down is that every journalist can get on and become a pundit on television tweet out every thought that they have make every mistake in the world and there's no accountability when i make a mistake it's you lied this is the problem. i think you in the way that you've brought this up is exactly what the problem is you hold one side of the ledger accountable and you ignore the other can i jump in just a little so i think the difference is that the con tract between power and the journalist has been broken in because of this anger and if we look at the way robin wright just talked with the iranian foreign minister that was a that was holding each other that was holding to account and i think part of what's happened in the united states in the philippines is that power holds so much

power journalists don't have that power and when when you attack in the same way that this has become so contentious so fast there's no place to go and rationally right i don't you don't savvy that but but again just look at the current we were up here trying to have a civil discussion about the state of where things are and that's the that's the point is that i don't think this comes back to power comes back to town respect and civility and you can't look at one side of the ledger and say this is your to blame because that's what that's how this conversation started i am willing and i i think i've now said it eight times just say that myself and others can create a better environment working with the press i look at it as a two way street and i think you're absolutely right but i think that when you look particular in the case of the united states ninety two percent of the coverage by one standard is negative against the president noted states harvard's done a study hughes don't pugh's done another study at some point i think as an industry

and a professionalism there's a degree of accountability we sit back and say is that an accurate representation of the policies and coverage of this administration which compared to all past administrations is largely out of massive whack and so if we're going to have a discussion and you actually want to improve the. relationship then you can't start off with one side violently attacking the other and saying oh you can't question me that's the problem exactly the way this conversation started is exactly why we are what we are now i don't think any journalist would say you can't question me i think journalists welcome question and i think where the breakdown occurs is when you have power in this case the president of united states and you are representing calling journalists the enemy of the people this then gets picked up by strong men and women around the world and this is then becomes a license actually a license to kill a license to kill a license to harass

a license to threaten a license to intimidate and that i think is bad for society and if i can i would just say that with respect to the term that you brought up i'm not a fan of it i believe that every industry. every profession has good and bad and it is much more effective to call out the bad in new praise the good if you want to change behavior when i wrote a i wrote a book i literally went out a book excuse me when i'm on the way to name reporters that i necessarily didn't agree with as examples of top notch professionals because what i wanted to show to readers to your point about having an effect is to say look you don't have to agree with them reporters are fair and tough you're not there to be your friends they're there to uncover the truth and to pursue the facts but if they treat you fairly and professionally that's all you can ask for so i actually agree with you on that but i think that at some point there is a reflection that journalists have to have back and say are you a journalist or your television pundit in a twitter and that's the problem is that where is that line today is it i get to be

a c.n.n. m.s.n. b c cable host where i get to go on and then when i write my story in the washington post or wherever reuters will ignore what i said about my personal beliefs and thoughts and that's where i think that you've lost a lot of distinction about but but the last point that i would make is i agree with you that it is not a synonymous power present united states and reporter alan right but please don't underestimate the power of a story in saying if it goes into c.n.n. because i've had enough stories where it started in a prominent respected news organization and it goes viral and when i don't give you an example the first moment that you want to talk about where this administration actually started five o'clock on january twenty eighth after being sworn in donald trump has his first pool spray we invite all the journalists in to cover him starting signing these does that kind of actions is part of his commitment to moving his agenda forward and what's the first thing that gets reported out. falsely that is remove the bust of martin luther king out of the oval office and

what was the reporter's answer oh well somebody was blocking me now stop for a moment and think about the mentality that's going through that journalist head here's the president united states signing all of this stuff here's all the people in the room and what's the journalist thinking where can i get this guy ok not what's happening where can i get you ok let's move it on a little bit because in fairness to you show him lest you think that everyone is national have a go sean spicer day which honestly is not. let's move it on to the appropriation of the term fake news because it wasn't donald trump it wasn't the republicans it was the democrats but there is an overlap isn't there maria between the strength of character all of you use the phrase david hog men leaders hard men presidents will prime ministers maria you're at ground zero you're on the other end of the equation that shawn is trying to define for us what's it like for you working in that environment so i'll take it up from what shawn said and i understand where you're

coming from it's that tension between power and those who hold power to account has always been there but us again we saw earlier in the panel before us it is possible for that to be very civil and to be very constructive right the problem today is that as that is going on as the as in the real world you already you also have information warfare on social media and that information warfare is directed directed against in the philippines in particular i'll talk about that against the journalist there was we've catalogued and there we have the data to prove from july twenty six thousand to august twenty sixth seen exponential lies that hit journalists in particular anyone who questioned the drug war then you take that where lies are used to pound the fracture lines of society and to incite hate. against the people whose jobs are supposed to be to tell the truth once you

incite hate against them you see this kind of violence on line there's fear from other from real people who are afraid to jump in in this case on the drug war and then the lies compound then you add a president on top who then repeats the lies that are under that or on social media and you have an entire ecosystem that looses what fact is it's not the fault of power alone it's not the fault of the information warfare i'll also hold social media to account for that because they are allow fact and fiction to exist simultaneously and allow fiction to spread faster allow the lies to spread fast very specifically just interrupt you for a second david. just hold a thought david please very specifically sean mentioned the pew organization they say that in the united states only twenty percent of people get their news on

a regular daily and singular basis from social media so that means that eighty percent of consumers of news still going to traditional trustworthy media organizations it may just be the n.b.c. nightly news but they are trustworthy media organizations when your president assumed the top job it was something like thirty percent occupancy rates on facebook is now ninety seven percent that's is their own only source of news for people who are internet enabled in your country that's an astonishing change this amos is a very very happy as are his advertisers but what is it about your country that went from twenty five thirty percent to ninety seven percent it's just the push of well by its connectivity going forward it's the fact that we have free basics it's we get facebook is free on your cell phone and when you get a cell phone. you automatically get facebook writes the same in many developing

emerging economies myanmar is another one strain of the global south so we have indonesia also has free basics so that is the truth but you know please don't. in the united states the amount of americans the number of americans percentage is over sixty nine percent who get their news from facebook in the philippines you quoted ninety seven percent right i think the biggest problem we have now is that facebook unites two point three billion people around the world you no longer have boundaries of nation states allies seated in one country reaches all of us and one great example of that is the demonization of george soros i mean the phrase anti-semitism doesn't really exist in the philippines and yet george soros has been used to attack rappler has nothing to do with rappler who cares about the facts right but that's part of our problem today so what the us what the white house

about what sean says alternate reality also impacts us in the philippines and i think that that's the whole ecosystem we need to look at it's power it's journalism it's real people it is social media ok david on that particular point of an ecosystem before donald trump was any place near the white house your former us president barack obama wanted to cure rate the internet because he saw this is a common problem because he saw the potential for the line of connection between fake news and journalists being attacked nobody was interested in the idea of curating it went no place why not. the idea of curation you immediately have to ask who curates and the that power i think they're giving any institution or any person that powers is quite frightening and so we haven't really come to grips with that but there is a real. issue there not only the issue the maria just described about lice issued

in one place being propagated all over but the other thing about social media platforms is the great democratization of publishing that they've created that for a long time we thought was in arguably unequivocally a wonderful thing actually turns out not to be if everyone can be a reporter everyone can be his or her own publisher then there is really nothing that separates the professional from the amateur and no reason to protect maria any more than to protect the person sitting in row sixty eight i think the when we go from describing what we have now to thinking about what can be done in the future and this i think picks up on sean's point i think journalists have to go back and really really evaluate professionalism and transparency i think the only thing that makes a professional a professional is if there are clearly agreed rules and standards within the

profession and the profession holds itself to account if you just look at doctors and lawyers doctors have organizations that strike other doctors off if they do something it's wrong doers get disbarred by their bar association if they do something wrong but journalists we do make corrections yes but as a profession we never actually say. ok save institution since considering getting it wrong for which i apologize because here on this inside story special it's time for us to take a short break for a quick summary of the world news. this is al jazeera i'm studying obligato with a check on your world headlines police have arrested more than one hundred people at yellow vests protest around the french capital paris an estimated three thousand people turned out in the city center far fewer than previous weeks burnet spent has

this update. is peaceful demonstrators moving around the numbers are down but of course their presence is still disruptive because we've had shops closed you can roads closed off the metro system many metro stops are closed as well and people are put off from coming into central paris affecting businesses so there are protesters the numbers are down it's peaceful but disruptive on the yellow vest protesters still managing to make that point palestinian president mahmoud abbas has ordered the reconstruction of an activist home which was demolished by the israeli military in the last few hours israel says the home owner's son killed a soldier earlier this year and saw about it causes the chief palestinian negotiator he says this demolition could lead to more violence in gaza and the occupied west bank. is the war crime committed by the government so they go by and got there at the vision and you know it's possible and he's four years sponsored

and his government with the war crimes being committed against the palestinian people there is that i am paying job. war crimes. mass execution a diminishing of form confiscation of land he announced the building of two thousand settlement housing units and this call comes under the encouragement to resign from article it was speaking at the doha forum in cats who are alongside other political leaders iran's foreign minister addressed several issues and had this to say on saudi arabia's role in the killing of journalist. david believe that increasing tension. he's in debt interest rate and they truly believe that they can get away with murder. once you believe that you can't get away with these you know and. there's been fighting on the outskirts of her day the less than forty eight hours after yemen's warring parties agreed to

a cease fire in the port city video aired on a whole things even network appears to show airstrikes by the saudi coalition it's back to inside story next right here on al-jazeera welcome back you're watching an inside story special coming tuesday from the forum which talking about why journalists around the world literally and figuratively are increasingly coming under attack we've got three keynote speakers we will in the next ten minutes or so throw it open to our studio audience here at the doha forum which talking to sean spicer for me the white house press secretary david lessons from the committee to protect journalists and maria ressa one of the time people of the year it's kind of country and chew it is maria come i come back to you that people spend more time on websites that make them angry than make them feel good about their preconceived notions that anger is in many ways manufactured and i am i'm going to.

why do i say that i think that the in for our world is so infested with information warfare that. people have no idea they're being manipulated through social media and i'll give you the statistics from the philippines right. ninety seven percent of filipinos on facebook and you have exponential attacks on traditional media you also have when we when we came out with the series the propaganda war series in october of two thousand and sixteen for a month i lists hit per hour with ninety nine zero not one thousand hate messages per hour this is a new form of threat against journalists because it is psychological it is exponential and here's the are the part those same messages that were seated on social media several months later come out of power worse mouth our president then

use the same things and many of them are now filed this legal cases against us i see many similarities in different countries around the world and i think that's part of the problem that we have to deal with. offline the real world violence online moves into the real world and let's just talk about domestic terrorism in the united states the weekend of the pittsburgh attack there were four different instances that weekend would where repeated incitement to hate on social media erupted into real world violence the pipe bomb the bombs that were sent the pittsburgh the synagogue attack there was a tallahassee. and then there was a kentucky violence also all of these in the span of like a week and a half this is the world we live in and it isn't just i don't think it's just a journalist who can do this this requires power this requires p.

. bold real people this requires journalist it requires technologists and i think this is what the i sit on a council the information and democracy commission that's been put together by our s.f. the reporters sans frontiers twelve heads of states have signed on to this declaration of information and democracy just like post world war two the world came together to come out with seventy years ago the universal declaration of human rights what will define this new technology that's changed power structures that are being used by power to manipulate the narrative in individual countries except or would you confirm for me perhaps that there is a line of comic tippity between accusations of fake news people hearing the message people getting gums and then going and shooting up newspaper offices in the american heartland. and it's

a very short equation yeah i mean obviously annapolis comes to mind i don't and i'm not trying to of i don't like it for me to sit here and say that this was going through somebody as mine or not i think would be irresponsible i think that there is a perpetuation clearly from what a lot of people read seen here and how they act the direct linkage in that particular incident i'm not in a there's no way i have the professional authority to suggest whether that was there are not but you accept that we do live in a time of massive a massive influx of dissin from ation and misinformation is not just that we're publishing as they might but i think that again and this is where i think that you're missing this which is that you there is a failure i think and i agree with actually everything that david said there is this is a sense that when something gets published in its faults or misleading it kind of gets thrown by the wayside and yet when someone in a political context makes a mistake it's somehow got it rises to a different level i think part of the problem is that same person can react to

a negative story or a false story or perpetuated false never narrative or act on something because of a tweet that or journalist wrote i mean just yesterday alone there were probably four or five different outlets that wrote different stories as to who the next white house chief of staff would go in a very definitive way and every single one of them was wrong and i think that there is this there is so in the same way that people can act because of a piece of fake news they can also write because of a piece of fake or false reporting or something that's frankly not true so i just want to go back to sort of the how we go how we move on how we try to miliard the situation i mentioned earlier having to improve professionalism the other thing i would say is that journalists have to improve transparency so to your point about those tweets i think a lot of the prison the people no longer trust journalists is that there's been an over reliance on anonymous sources who often get things wrong and often aren't close enough to. we know the truth so i think in the future the way

a professional journalist will distinguish him or her so would be by the first extremely transparent about the rules that he or she works by but also extremely transparent about how they got the news that their god and why and why they decided to grant somebody and own image and if they did grant anonymity how that person knew what they knew can i say this is where the discussion needs to be exactly what david's talking about which is and some of the things that maria said which is instead of trying to figure out cruz to blame and remove play every instance in the past i think the discussion is how do we move forward and it's a two sided equation is what david's saying what marie is saying it's how do how do government leaders interact with the press what is that level of accountability and transparency but i think it's also looking at the media equation as well and that things that david suggesting would be extremely welcome and i think are important

for the industry as well when you look at the approval rating of journalists in the us it is now somewhere down competing with congress which is not a good thing and and i think that and i say this is somebody who who honestly believes that in america if we're going to get if we are as we think we are the greatest democracy on earth then we need to have the most robust free and fair press that in exists in the world as the example of the rest of the world that's what we need and i think that the way that we can support that as by building up the industry not tearing it down and so finding ways to move forward repairing that relationship repairing that trust in institutions is critical as opposed to continuing to figure out who's more to blame in the past and i think all that does is create further tension further correction and i think what you said is wonderful and i really appreciate hearing it from you i think you would do a world of good to hear your. former boss say it as well which i think he is looked

to as an example but i don't you know the thing that i love about that he used to work for reuters where worked at c.n.n. i can do as much as i can do right now you can do but i can sit here and i've been debate with her all day long about the problems i have with c.n.n. or some of the problems i've had with reuters and you can go great i don't work for them anymore but it's interesting or we can is collectively as individuals as we're doing now to try to advocate for things and a process in a way forward and i again i think did that to me is the most productive use of time and process right now is to say ok collectively how can people who have an influence try to show the way forward as opposed to try to figure out how to replay the past but i think there is one last thing and i will direct this to you sean because i think the difference is the power tends to abuse power right now and i'll speak from my experience right i've gone through a been a journalist and covered the philippines for thirty some odd years i've covered southeast asia i've never had an arrest warrant i've never been threatened with

jail for being a journalist you are in court in february however i am in court january sixteenth january twenty third i spent a lot of time in court nowadays i've filed bail i had to get approval to be able to travel here you know so these are the thinks it's like breathing polluted air i agree journalists are far from perfect we can do a lot of things better but we don't have the power that power has and when we're when we're attacked in this one thought tickle way both in information warfare and by power coming down to actually control the narrative in our countries that's a problem ok can i just take thirty seconds to explore another idea with you you're talking about basically open both of you seem to be saying the same thing was used as part of a journalist show up to speak truth to power that was what jamal said was all about

i mean the man lost his life in the most awful way he was not a dissident he was just somebody who was trying to shine a light on something that he wanted to have discussed. how do you maria do your job we discussed this last week when you won the award on a program on al-jazeera how do you do what you do without pivoting across the line to become a campaign or to stop yourself sounding like a politician who just hasn't been elected yet because that's a line that be a very easy thing to do particularly can i suggest you sean as well will come in a second when you when you're reacting as a journalist to the likes of donald trump or a jewel case mr thirty because the rates of flow of stuff coming out of the presidential office can be superfast yes i agree i have been and always will be a journalist and it's actually the actions of my government that have given my voice that have this that has elevated my voice right for me the standards and

ethics the line is very clear but i think what we and it's not just us not just the journalists not just the democracies under attack that have to think about this i think this is the time that is it's an existential moment for not just for journalists but for information the information ecosystem and how it impacts power because old power governments don't understand new power the internet and the people who control the internet don't understand how what they do has impacted geo political power and what i tried to do all the time is just take the long view i'm not against president detected in fact i think rappler skiver it helped get him elected because we gave him a fair shake all we're asking for is a fair shake right and then what we do is we stay figure out what are the values what are the principles what is the line for our constitution where on this

side of the line we are a democracy and when too many abuses go over we are no longer a democracy and that goes down in. vidual to organisation rappler to my country and that's all i do i mean i think i said this it's in these little steps that an individual an organization and a country moves from being you know in the case of me it moves from being a journalist to being an evil person a democracy to an authoritarian or a dictatorship ok thank you but david how do we identify the news organizations that we can trust because the fake news is a law i or it's an ability to lawyer a desire to lie to your audience your view is your listeners your readers your the people that read your blog how do we as consumers. work out who we watch who we channel hop to so i think in platforms where it's very difficult to tell one

one provider from another it really comes down to individuals in each of their pieces or articles being very transparent about their messages back to base airing very transparent about methods being transparent about standards and correcting errors and i think to i think maria gave a beautiful explanation of her position just to blow it out a little bit wider though i think it all starts from agreeing that there are such things as facts that we as people can disagree we can have discussions but we have to have those discussions from the the basis of facts and it is a journalist's job to find those facts out and if you accept that then the next step is to say a person finding out facts should not be killed should not be threatened should not be imprisoned should not be. should should not be kept from finding those facts and

. i think i think even if you don't with all due respect i think if you look at it the latter and of it wasn't a fad i mean it was i think journalism extends well beyond that i think opinion. folks are equally as important i don't think it's just not that opinion writers are devoid of fact but i think that the ability to get out there and express one's agreement or disagreement with policy or candidates on them is equally as important as well and so i think because he but he here is the problem is that where i think the line has blurred so much with reporting these days is that we've always been very clear in at least in america about where the opinion page was if you will and where the new section was and i think we've seen that blurring of it in both. figuratively and also but also like now you read the front page of a newspaper in c. and it didn't piece right on the front page which was traditionally reserved for news but too often i think reporters now give their opinion and conjecture and

that's not based on fact that's based on what they think or believe and where we started to blur the lines is that to so many of these quote credible sources the reporters themselves have done a disservice to the organization by focusing more on what they believe in where they think things are headed versus the mechanics that are unequivocal kind of takes us back to the whole argument about an echo chamber please ladies and gentlemen if you open unity to questions of guests you gentleman over there with the white shirt and the blue jacket and the tie yes so you'll point to a question we'll get a microphone on the comments for you very quickly great panel thanks for doing this my name is john frederick some a syndicated radio talk show host in washington d.c. my question is to sean spicer sean president trump gets a lot of criticism here today about. talking about fake news so in two thousand a teen the united states had

a tremendous economic resurgence jobs g.d.p. wages up. yet we just find out in a study by the media research center in washington that ninety two percent of the u.s. media coverage on president trump was. was hot positive negative ninety two percent negative only eight percent positive what is your response to that and how does that fit in to the narrative of fake news thank you. i mean thanks for the question i touched on this earlier but i think that at some point it's not just look i don't think the percentage to some degree matters in the sense that if it's deserved it's deserve if it's not it's not but i think when you track in that study in particular when you look at the past

presidencies obama clinton over a similar period of time it's literally twenty thirty points out of whack and to your point when you look at objective least some of the things the president has done whether you like them or not agree with policy the fact the matter is we have had sustained economic growth unemployment has gone down in so many ways he has actually done exactly what he said he was going to do in terms of the judiciary veterans so many of these things and you go ok so all of that adds up to a percent it doesn't jive and so that's why what i say is at some point you've got to say to yourself have many of these folks taken what they perceive as attacks whatever taken it very personal and made it made it made it negative and it's funny john because when you look at some of the things that i just cited you mention you'll read the stories and it'll say that well those things are happening despite trump because so everything's his fault when it when it benefits the story and whenever he's successful somehow it's never he never gets the credit ok anyone else

got a point a question yes the lady the in the middle will get you very very quickly. hi this question is for spicer so you talk about a two way street between journalists and power so what recommendations would you give donald chom in terms of his relationship with journalists great question i'm sorry your name please and where you're from you missed my name is carla ok i call i think that i would advise him to do what i mentioned earlier which is if you have a problem with a particular story a particular outlet call it out and be specific here's why i don't think this story was good here's why this reporter's tone or behavior is inappropriate but but i think when you look you just even at the press corps there are a lot of great reporters in that white house press pool and if you talk about all of them being bad collectively well then you're undermining the good reporters that

i think a lot of us think you a really good job and so my one piece would be more specific don't paint everybody with a broad brush i'm going interrupt you because i want to take one more question from the audience and then a closing thoughts from our panel here the gentleman with the gray hair and the pale blue shirt there with his arm up wearing the blue jacket please so that gentleman stood up first but will take about one to thank you. from kuwait political science professor of been back on the fourth united states for the last forty years and never head fake can you was. until obama a top administration came to a poll or was it a sponsible for spinning the fake in you is it the media or is it trump and his associates and cronies the number two for john sean spicer i remember the very first day you up. what that would depress you talked about the huge crowd of

trump in i go to asian do you take that back do you think that was something that you what called to spend it all did you believe in that and what is your opinion about alternative facts thank you i feel like i'm back in a white house briefing. and we fall off the most about thing so yeah. i served my time. number one i don't know when the term came in if being i think it's been in being for a long time there's clearly an acceleration of the use of the word in the last couple years as far as the inauguration goes for the eighty fifth time i look back on that day and if i could have a do over my life that's probably number one two three and four this forum is not long enough to get into what i wrote an entire book called the briefing that you can buy an amazon or wherever books are sold but i look i go back to what i said in

the beginning is that a day is that was that a day that i look back and say i did not articulate an argument as well as we could have did that come out wrong absolutely but this forum and this this period is not long enough to really get into ok when we go to the gentleman he stuck his hand up straight away the gentleman we tried to go to him a little earlier with the great. thought. gentleman there with the green on the glasses. son spies how do you think i did now it's this brutal action for killing gun so kushal do you think that the conduct of time but mr de shannon is a miss conduct but requests to nation cannot live kaloogian this is one thing for tibet out of the problem not to continue is but there are a lot of things to be done coveting gob med yes sites from the people this is one imbedding forming the three syndicates in it where are

totalitarian regimes above the effective use spirit if you like to know you have to go to egypt to hear that fact that i see every day then you wouldn't know. what are the victim you would thank you ok that was a very robust point strongly made to get to our closing points with our panel here . david briefly we've got about thirty seconds each there is a new phrase on the periphery of social media and it's called it is expressed as media literacy and it means that we in the world of journalism the three of us sean including you probably have to tell us you can trust us or you can trust that broadcaster all that newspaper is that right or wrong. i think the way i see media industry is that people need to be discerning about where they get their

news even if platforms gives a fire hose of information they have to be able to parse that firehose and separate those who do the work with professionalism from those who don't those who deal in facts from those who deal in fiction we on the journalism side have responsibility as well but my bottom line is journalism is not a crime journalism is not worthy of a death sentence for anybody sean very quickly in twenty seconds is it journalists reporters anchors to trust the audience the consumers to work out what is fake and what is not with the caroll area of danger off the back of that to journalists like maria i mean i think that you should strive every day to instill a sense of trust you earn trust it's not given so i think that to the point that david made were spot on which is journalists should try every day to do things that instill trust in the writing and the publishing of everything that they do. maria

very briefly twenty seconds we assume of course the truth will always shine through what if we're wrong or wrong it's will not always shine through we all believe information is power that we agree on but the information ecosystem is broken and that's part of the reason democracies journalists are under attack because we're the front line to protect democracy and democracies are under attack and i think what we need to do now is to look at how we all it's the ecosystem that's broken and the first enabler in breaking that are this our technology the social media platforms we have to leave it there ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for your company thank you talk guests. on the david and maria. we really hope you've enjoyed the debate today it will continue via the al-jazeera website as well and you can find us on facebook and twitter and honest truth you can trust us as

well thank you so much for your contributions as well thank you. hello once again the eastern med go to all the action so iran's go to great cloud and something cross the caspian sea but nothing much really that might develop in

some useful showers in afghanistan i don't think much of come of it really but watch the cloud that now is developing as a streak coming out of egypt. and towards syria now that's doing nothing very much on sunday in fact because a southerly breeze is quite warm by rita twenty two degrees but it will develop that cloud will deepen more rain running across syria and who is northern iraq snow of course on the higher ground it's just miserable weather once again we've seen before and there's another one to come shout developing the eastern med again on monday that all these tails off in the world and saudi my producers share too in those in saudi arabia but most of the action stays north of the border then for the raven plates generally fine and quiet temperatures disappointing for some twenty four best in doha should be better and then the cloud increase in the arabian sea suggests a stream michel's going towards the whole of africa but most of the rain is further south than that and it should be tanzania mozambique at least in the north and zimbabwe in zambia back up to and go that's where the rain should be that's where

the rain is with occasional big showers in the eastern cape as well. getting to the heart of the matter how can you be a refugee after you while eight borders between five safe countries facing new realities that from the very beginning of the abundant school providing context housing is not just about four walls and a roof hear their story and talk to al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera. you're watching the news hour live from a headquarters in doha coming up in the next sixty minutes police in paris push

back against yellow vests protesters after a day of anti-government tax and climate talks go an extra day with big polluters disagreeing on the details of the final agreement. is your crime committed by the government to the buying got therapy when you know. the chief palestinian negotiator criticizes israel for demolishing the home of a prominent palestinian activist and how an economic crisis is hurting latin america's literary giants argentina. hello we begin this news hour in france where officials say more than thirty three thousand yellow vests protesters are demonstrating right across the country for the fifth weekend in a row that's less than half the number who turned out last saturday but there have still been scenes of violence in the capital with one hundred arrested after

protesters clashed with riot police anderson reports from paris. seems here like previous weeks but this has been a saturday so far marked by a decline in. out of the yellow vest protesters at the focal point of street action the up to trail police outnumbered the demonstrators early on saturday the crowd here had been told the security forces have lifted a cordon of protesters can march along the seans elisei but let's hope they will stop from going further then penned in on the pavement it was passive resistance and some strong imagery here these women dressed as mary and a symbol of the french republic facing off the police in riot gear and upon the settlers possibility this we could seen a major attempt from president a money well mccrone to try to quell the protests with tax concessions and the

increase in the minimum wage may have had some effect but the people here say the numbers may be down for a variety of reasons but momentum is still strong you know much more job to be just like the numbers are down because we have been protesting for five weeks it's long simula vestas chose to stay at home or on the roundabouts in their town some couldn't come to paris it's also a result of the strasberg attack and i'm going to mourn if he knew those measures announced by my count come from an illegitimate government he has just done this for our movement to stop because it has hurt his popularity and image you brought but given our rights are not respected i will keep fighting. another factor that might explain lower numbers is the strasburg attack on choose day in which four people were killed with security forces stretched the government had called on the yellow vests to scale down the protests at aside from all at the christmas holiday season is here although you'd never guess that by looking at the show's ollie's a

this weekend to gas in the air again this demonstration is ending much the same way as the war ended last week if president mark wrong thinks that he's calming the situation down. that might be a pretty sure judgment andrew simmons al-jazeera paris so as andrew just mentioned last week president's micro announced tax cuts and income increases for the working poor and elderly people saying he's heard their anger people on the minimum wage will earn about one hundred fifteen dollars more a month starting in january while taxes on overtime pay will be scrapped also retirees earning less than twenty two hundred dollars a month will no longer have to pay a recent increase in social security taxes some protesters welcome micron's concessions as a good first step but critics are denouncing what they see as a half measure as they say which are too little too late earlier i spoke to laura sleep about in paris she's

a former president of the european young socialists she says president micro has failed to understand why young people have taken part in the protests. what is clear is that with the holiday coming up it's probably going to go a little bit down but we don't know what's going to happen in january anyway and he hasn't brought any solution to part of the protesters also that are high school students for instance and i think that that was one of the major mistakes of he's political stance you know not understanding that the youth also want social justice and want recognition for the their studies. so we'll see we'll see if you know what happens after today but what is for sure is that there is a huge frustration with mike holmes announcements this week because clearly he didn't understand the main message of the core or the two main messages at the core of the protests which was social justice that the wealthy also contribute to public services decent wages transition and democracy you know how can citizens be heard

in the political decision making process is this because clearly it's not the case so i don't think he's addressed these big claims delegates say they're within touching distance of a global warming deal after two weeks of talks between representatives of two hundred nations in poland an agreement will cover the fine print that was left unfinished after the twenty fifth in paris climate agreements this includes how countries will report their greenhouse gas emissions and the efforts they're taking to reduce them to clark is joining us from that summit in poor poland so clearly there is a huge level of disagreement at the conference and what's happening now. a huge level of disagreement in de baets i can say it looks as if we may have some movement very soon delegates are filing back into the plenary what's hopefully going to be the last the final plenary we'll see how it works out because these things are often delayed but at that point it seems as if they may just push

everything through looks as if all the issues have been ironed out the road article six which brazil didn't agree with which is about carbon credits is going to be extracted from the text and it's going to be booted down the road and dealt with next year is so we'll see what happens we'll keep a watching brief of what's going on inside the conference room of course what they're trying to do is incredibly complex asking one hundred ninety six nations to realign their economies to get carbon emissions down by half by twenty thirty completely by twenty fifty and this on the back of the hard science we had all manner of reports just before this conference started two thousand and eighteen set to be the fourth hostas year where at record c o two levels are going to go up by another three percent this year when they should be going down as i say by nearly half in just twelve years' time and it sounds as if the ambition levels within the agreement that hopefully will be signed soon will be supported soon is not all that

good will have to see if that's the case but all the way through the this conference the level of ambition has angered the more vulnerable nations especially the small island states and i spoke to the head of the granada delegation a little bit earlier. it's still some discussion taking place on a particular piece of text which speaks to markets and transparency in the need for measurable quanta fireball monitoring of performance and there are those that wish that to be removed from the text but removing that. removes an important mechanism to be able to monitor unquantifiable terms where we are and where we need to be. donald trump doesn't want any part of the parent's agreement he plans to pull out in twenty twenty the start that means that other nations other big nations have to step up people or nations like the e.u.

and those within its member states to reason ribeiro who is spain's environment minister. and so we need to demonstrate the tracks that live changing that that both economic system that we've got so being sure that so that we put in place the messages that we don't know what's to become fully the carbon as by the need of the centuries critical and i think that the exercise that the european union has been make in these last months he said quite important i say that that should to go straight to what we need to put in place for them to come up with different regulations of the eleven but that also really only straight just want said the business community the industrial. nations the. leanest good to be indecent in this kind of amount that's what we have to introduce into spain in the spanish government and the law is something which i saying it is very very very foregone we come up for it those that would be suffering from this transformation so policies need to come along with climate policies otherwise

people would be thinking what to say here for me sesame street that they have to get from this transformation because i think global relevant issues and it in that i see that that's not fair we need to prevent this type of reaction in the other way from we need to grow by. on a book to knee deep for the future for everybody. yes it brings is back straight to the issue of social justice that we heard about at the beginning of the program the issue of the will not take this and we can speak to david westin who's from the world resources institute and president macro massively miscalculated as he tried to basically enforce climate policies on the people in the big issues going ahead as we look at social justice yeah well coming out of this top i think one of the directives is going to be how to countries go home and work on increasing their ambition on climate action how they strengthen what they're doing and i think the law and what's happened in france is really

a lesson about the importance of having support in a broad way that you have to have your society behind you to take serious action what happened in france in a way the gas tax the petrol tax that that really fanned the flames there was just the straw that broke the camel's back and i think what we were seeing there was a much broader social justice movement and it's continuing. and it really was about questions of livelihoods in general and how. citizens were really feeling their pockets pinched and the gas tax was just incidental to that but what it did show us is that you need to take climate action in a way that is fair and we've seen examples of that being done around the world right and especially when you consider the scale is needed to to bring emission levels down if we're talking about health by twenty thirty yes that's right i mean we need transformation and that's going to have to be transformation not just in terms of climate in emissions but also

a broader social transformation and we do have examples of how that can be done well in british columbia in canada they've had a carbon tax in place for a decade more than a decade now that has actually improved the lives and the wellbeing of low income people and middle income people there are actually ended up putting more money in their pocketbooks the way that it was designed and then do need. we've seen similar things done as they. dealt with their fossil fuel subsidies and reform and it actually provided cash transfers to low income people there so we know that this actually can be done in a way that benefits people reduces any quality spain which you just mentioned has just recently agreed on how to close the coal plants there all of its coal plants over a period of time and they worked with their coal miners to make sure that their livelihoods were protected and they've put together a fund that will enable them to.