and then use that time off the ban too much or string the national laws to string them international law on trade. and the reason why we want to this moratorium futon is because we know journalists themselves have exposed stories are about how lives are being threatened. individual lives are being destroyed, journalists are trying to adapt to surveillance and digital attacks for everyone here. awareness and finding a legal framework is crucial to defend free press release i will. i'll just see apple deleting with a white blue watching, i'll just say with me, sill robin, doha, reminder of all top stories, protest for and against abortion rights are being held across parts of the united states. after the u. s. chief justice, confirm that a league document about reversible unblocked ray versus way to bush look is all

center vice president campbell harris walls. the privacy of all americans is at risk for later when we look at the big picture, those ha attack rome have been clear. they want to a ban abortion in every state. they want to bully any one who seeks or provides reproductive health care. and they want to criminalize and punish women from making these decisions. at its core, ro recognizes the fundamental right to privacy. though paul's mer says hundreds rain trapped inside the avar style steel plant.

moscow resumed shelling there soon after sundays, recreation sayings attacking ukrainian fighters inside. britain's prime minister has received a standing ovation from ukrainian members of parliament after telling them that the war with russia will be one forest. johnson also pledged a feather, $375000000.00 in military aid. the executive general has warned that attacks in this hell region of africa are no longer a regional issue, but a global threat containing a terrorist called for resources to help and the violence. he also reassured leaders at the top priority is to see peace and stability in the area and a care fee has been enforced at the indian city of jar full following the fighting between these muslims. the address began on monday night jury religious festivals. if one of those stories on our website at al serra dot com, i'll be back with more news in half an hour here on al jazeera. next, it's inside story to stay with us. ah.

media under attack, journalists face increasing threats in the field and online from this information and censorship. so what can be done to protect the free flow of news and information? this is inside story. ah hello and welcome to the program. i'm how much of june the internet is a place for the free flow of information, as well as attempts to control and suppress it. this years you in world press

freedom day is highlighting threats to the media. especially online rushes war on ukraine is a major example. the committee to protect journalists says at least 7 media workers have died in the field. since the invasion began in february. the media has become the battle ground for competing narratives on the conflict. britain's government has accused russia of running a so called troll factory in st. petersburg to spread this information and lies on the internet. and the u. n. says online attacks on journalists and information are eroding public trust. this year's world press freedom indexed by the n g o reporters without borders issued warnings on how propaganda and unregulated social media are fueling divisions within and between countries. examples include russia's propaganda campaigns before its invasion of ukraine. the united states, france, and poland. the report says, are facing some of the worst media polarization, due to misinformation and opinion driven media. the civil society organization, forum of information and democracy once countries to adopt legal frameworks and

systems to protect information online. the european union has proposed laws to limit lawsuits designed to silence journalists and human rights advocates. they would give courts more power to dismiss cases if they're found to be abusive or unjustified. the ear criticized some governments and businesses for using defamation proceedings as a form of harassment. the role of journalists and dos that keep follow in check is tremendous. a package that we proposed today, a directive and recommendation to members states will can sure that they can exercise this role in some but not all member states. defamation is still a criminal offense that carries at prison sentence. member states are therefore encouraged to abolish prison sentences for defamation cases. they should favor the use of administrative or civil law instead of criminal law for such cases

. all right, let's go ahead and bring in our guests. rebecca vincent is director of operations and campaigns at reporters without borders. she joined us from london. joining us from vanessia and ukraine is romeo cookery etzky. he's managing editor at the new voice of ukraine. also, joining us from london is tim squirrel. he has had a communications and editorial at the institute for strategic dialogue, a very warm welcome to you all and thanks so much for joining us today on inside story. rebecca. let me start with you today. where does the state of press freedom worldwide stand right now? unfortunately, we've reached another real press freedom day where the state of press freedom around the world has gotten worse. this year, a record total of $28.00 countries have dipped into our worst category of the index indicating that their country situation for press freedom is very bad. we've

highlighted a number of times in the analysis that comes out with our index, but the overarching theme of this year really being that we've entered a new era, a polarization. and so we've looked at how polarization, both within countries and between countries has impacted the state of media, freedom around the world. and the impact has indeed been significant. romeo just how difficult and dangerous are things right now for ukrainian journalists. and also how tough is it to counter disinformation and propaganda and to make sure that accurate reporting is getting out? it's not. i would say that over the past few years, ukrainians have become masters of countering rush and information of the escalation of propaganda during the war is to be expected. but i think that ukrainians have we have developed media because we are that is very resistant to russian. this

information. and i think now finally we've been able to start export a g. that kind of resistant goes, we're to the rest of the world because russian does information is i think, as everyone here knows, incredibly pernicious and has basically infiltrated nearly every aspect of the modern narratives that we have class for the dangers of reporting. i mean, it is a wars them, a lot of cities are, however, safe reporting from levine does not merely carry the same risks as reporting from occupied here. so for example, and for those. busy who are living in on you by territory. and i mean, they are incredibly brave and i am incredibly grateful for the work they're doing. um, but as these areas stay under occupation for longer i, it will only grow more and more dangerous for the journalists. are working in

russian occupied areas, of course, for journals that go and visit the front lines. but generally, i would say most journalists are in relatively safe cities. and we for now, have about the same level security we did before the war barring the occasional missiles, right? tim, you heard romeo, there are talk about the pernicious effects of russian propaganda and disinformation i, i saw you nodding along so i want to get your reaction. but also i want to talk to you about the fact that the british government is now saying that russian internet trolls based in st. petersburg are targeting world leaders online that, that there is spreading support for hooton's invasion of ukraine. you know, initially many had considered that russia was losing the information where when it came to propaganda about ukraine, is that changing at this point? say this a few things to tease out here. i don't necessary show the same kind of optimism

around the resilience of the information is fair. outside of ukraine, we've suddenly seen your concern tenants from pro kremlin forces to push the narratives elsewhere on social media in mainstream media, embarrass other spaces. so for example, in the aftermath of the church trustees, when they came out, i sd to study, looked at the 200 posts which were most shared across facebook in 20 different countries. and found that while a minority of about $55.00 were disputing the kind of true account of what happened in which they were more shad than the other $145.00 combined. and so there's still quite a lot the social media platforms and tech companies need to do to try to clean up the information ecosystem and make it more resilient to and the kinds of narratives and propaganda the coming out of the kremlin in terms of your 2nd question around whether with whether we or the west are winning the information was i think it's a complex picture. so obviously around the beginning of the war, he had a lot of people say to landscape particulars doing strange well and ukraine more

broadly was taken as quite a western oriented view. and if you look at some of the studies coming out via, do you know why you can see that the real inroads being made a lot of non anglo communities by the kremlin? so for example, an r t and arabic is doing extremely well. if you look in a number of other countries, you can see that across the social media landscape as well. so while it may be the case in the western, they're doing reasonably well. rusher is attempting to push it. ready narratives and when the information more a number of different fronts and we can't afford to the golf down the road. let me also ask you about about what the british government is saying, because they've also alerted international partners that they're going to work closely with allies and media platforms in order to undermine russian information operations from your perspective. what are the steps that need to be taken in order

to counter this and what can be done to protect the free flow of news and information? i think one of the biggest tools, ah, that's the kind of liberal democratic world has to counter the system. doesn't mean specifically on social media is the fact that social media companies are based in liberal democracies on they are accepting, of course, for the child. so chinese social media companies, they're mostly based out of silicon valley or somewhere else in the united states. and that means that they must respond to regulatory pressure. they must respond to policy makers. they must respond to legislation. and the greatest tool that we have in order to really ensure that the social media companies clean up their act, that they stop giving a platform on to obvious conspiracy. muggers are obvious paddlers of this information is to mandate them in some way. am i not a policy expert?

i don't think that my word is gospel, but there must be a real conversation about a legislative approach or regulatory framework that can be applied to the social media platforms. that will somehow cause constrain the operation, especially of bots, because a lot of the system ration is not being shared organically. it is 1st boosted to an insane degree on by bart networks. and then once that initial engagement has been registered by the algorithms, only then is, does it begin to get traction organically and spread from there? so there has to be something to constrain the activity of these parts. often these are networks on, as we know in russia, these are networks funded and operated by state actors. i am taking anything less than a regulatory or legislative approach to that problem is not going to fix it. you can't rely on the attack companies themselves. the social media platforms

themselves to self regulate because our 1st, their incentives are not there to do so. and secondly, they are not state actors and they don't really have the resources necessary to counter a state working on a different disinformation on direction, on their own. rebecca, we were speaking before about the 2022 edition of the reporters of our borders world press freedom index. and one of the issues that that highlights is what it calls the disastrous effect of news and information. chaos. i want to ask you, what is the impact of a globalized and unregulated online information space that encourages fake news and propaganda and, and how bad is it all getting? well, that again is one of the major themes that we highlighted in the index is the impact of all of this on the state of press freedom around the world. so when we talk about polarization, we mean exactly that the sort of the impacts of disorder. this information proliferating on social media, but also outright propaganda. and that's not just

a matter of internet trolling that can be actually done on official media channels . and so, um this year we have seen that within countries including our own democracy. so i know we're, we're mostly talking about rush at the moment, but it's worth noting that part of the trend is even within our democracies, the proliferation of opinion media, the sort of fox news, if occasion of media is also contributing to this chaos. and then of course, the propaganda wars of authoritarian states including russia against democracies. it's all creating a lot of tension when it comes to, to global press freedom. so it's worth noting that of course, while the ukraine of conflict was preceded by an information war, this is not a new phenomenon. this has been building for years when it comes to russia, and it's not only russia we've pointed to, for a number of years to concerned with china. for example, report a somewhat as published a landmark report just in december. really examining the, the spread of china's model of information control, which china is now trying to proliferate throughout the region. and in fact,

internationally as well it's, it's not just a rush, a problem. it's broader than we think of reporters. it's on board, as we do think that there needs to be greater responsibility of the platforms. what that looks like, and it has to be done in a way that protects press freedom and freedom of information at the core. we've engaged in advocacy around the european dsa, for example, which we think currently looks like a good model of how this can be accomplished. here in london, i'm watching carefully with the u. k. government is doing with the the online safety bill. we've got a few concerns, i have to say, but it's clear that the space does meet some regulation. so tim, you heard of rebecca there talk about the fact that the, these online spaces are from her vantage point. you need more regulation. i also heard romeo a talk about that there should be frameworks put in place to help a safeguard information that's out there. i want to ask you, you know, there's growing calls for countries to adopt legal frameworks and systems to protect information online to, to counter dis, information. of course, one example,

rebecca mentioned that the dia say a with the you. but, but do you think that we're going to see more of this? is this trend going to continue? are there countries out there that are going to be setting up systems or passing legislation in order to do this? well, it's absolutely necessary if the kinds of regulatory frameworks be introduced. i just want to give a quick word about what they need to look like, as well as the fact they need to exist. because up until now, we've both relied upon platforms to moderate themselves and also taking a really piecemeal approach to content moderation, which looks at specific pieces of content or types of content and tries to remove them, rather than examining the underlying business. most of the companies, rather than looking at how their own models and how that and algorithms can encourage the kinds of problems that we're seeing. so what we really need is a systemic approach, which allows us, for example, as researchers to access data to encourage rigorous levels of transparency. so we

can see just how big the problems are and how they are functioning. because all this data shouldn't be in house at 10 company should be available for scrutiny by those who are qualified to look at that. and so we need to make sure that these regulatory framework enshrined in law. and i really do hope, in addition to the d. s a, in addition to my safety belt, that other countries with crowds and with large numbers of users in them stop. so don't be because the power they have is directly proportional to how much of the market of a tech company is regulated. so the, the dsa in europe means much more for me on my safety down the u. k. if the us wanted to introduce similar kinds of legislation that would have much more power still, partly because of these companies being based primarily in silicon valley. and then i guess if i may a word about texas, which is a bit of a problem because of the fact that it is chinese iron, it doesn't have the same kind of regulation or accessibility as nearly any other

platform. it's the most opaque. you basically have to do any kind of research on manually. we have no conception of the scale. the problem that but the manual qualitative research we have done shows that there are huge amounts of propaganda being pumped on to the platform from stay active, non stamps the like, margarita simonian, the editor of russia. today, all t has extremely pull your account on that. even with all t and sputnik being bans. and it's important to know that base platform in particular has become a massive new vector dis information. and we really need to do something about romeo. it looked to me like you were reacting to some of what tim was saying, did you want to jump in? no, i just wanted to mention that. yes. as tim said, i think taking this individualized approach to crating regulatory remarks for these social media platforms. i mean, twitter and facebook don't work like to fame, tick tock and instagram don't work like any. there is no one size fits all

framework. you can place on all these platforms and say, well, the problem solved. you do have to approach them individually based on how the platform operates. and i think this is incredibly important insight to remember when we consider kind of what the, the future of the joint negation is going to look like. now that we have mature enough to, to encounter these massive, massive information belts. rebecca, so in april the european commission announced that it wants to see the, you adopt a law to protect journalists and civil rights activists from lawsuits aimed at censoring them. but in order to take effect, this proposal is going to need approval from you member countries and from lawmakers in the european parliament. first and foremost, do you think that this is going to happen? and secondly, how significant would it be if it does? it has to scrutinize the, the billing question, but in principle, of course, there is a need for greater protections in particular for journalists online. and if i don't

know if that particular bill is focus just on the sort of disinformation side of it, possibly my expense to, for example, a covering slap strategic lawsuit against public participation. because i know there's been a lot of advocacy towards securing protections against slaps, particularly that target journalists at the level um from, from my perspective, that would be a positive thing. but again, we have to see what is tables and, and, and to assess indeed what support it has. and if that might then be possible not only at the european level, but possibly replicable osler. rebecca, i also want to ask you from your vantage point, how much better equipped are, are fact checking organizations. now, a dealing with disinformation, whether it's surrounding the worn ukraine, whether it's surrounding the pandemic. other propaganda efforts is just how much better have fact checkers online, gotten at countering propaganda. this information well, from reporters about warner said we have actually focused on fact checking initiatives because our crust read amend. it means that we focus on journalism and

frankly, if something has not been fact act, it is not professional journalism. we have worked instead to develop the journalism trust initiative, which is essentially a white listing exercise. we've developed a standard initially at the european level, but which we're now working to roll out more globally. that looks to sort of encourage and incentive fi, incentivize, ah, journalism that has gone through rigorous chuck to show that it is about professional ethical standards of journalism. so we feel strongly that it shouldn't be about the content, but about the process, because then you address the content issues that arise. but if he only address content as act checking initiatives, do that his own li, adjusting the symptom in the disease. a tim, the un has said that the online attacks on journalists and information are eroding trust from your vantage point. how bad are things getting? i think those extremely important tonight, because fact checking is one thing and so is stopping frivolous all over the citrus

lawsuits. but we have to address the records of this, which is least to some degree that trust in journalism trust in democratic institutions. trusted electoral processes is really being eroded on systematic level by a variety of axes. and the demand side of disinformation isn't being addressed either. so it's not just that people are being supplied or a range of different narratives. my range of different access is also they are looking for that kind of information because in many ways a lot of things in the world feel like they're getting was he will feel like they can't trust or thursday ortiz. and so consequently, they end up going looking for things which make totalizing conclusions about well, which see in black and white hands, which often appeal to conspiracy theories. because those give them more satisfying explanations. but many of the things, many of the real mechanisms which underpin the way the world works. and so that's deeply problematic. and we know that many of regimes,

and also many governments saw and political parties in states are engaging in these sorts of campaigns to undermine trusts. we saw it during the trump years in the us . we see it with russia right now. we see it with, for example, north african regime, what train regime. we see it in eastern europe. it was hungry. oh, central problem. and that's deeply problematic. so i think we are really quite dia, state right now with respect to be mount trust replacing journalists and the amount of attacks that happen in the online space, as well as offline, as well as the prosecutions and the kinds of lawsuits. romeo, do you think we're at a moment where we'll see dr by more members of the international community to actually strengthen protections for journalists and for journalism? unfortunately, i can't really say that i'm optimistic in this sense. there has been a consistent trend over the past few years. and in basically the opposite

direction. there has been a huge move in which i is based around the had a concept of free speech, or at least that's the rhetoric that they use and use of our some of this with a billionaire. you must. i said he was going to buy twitter and bring free speech, but that rhetoric actually serves too obscure. i the actual practical effects of what these so whole free speech policies will bring, which would be an end to moderation or incredibly hands off moderation, which in turn will only i intensify. attacks and dental my dog piling in terms of i smears and further road trust in any kind of institution. good in general to once so unless governments really take a long term and are kind of layered on you want to look at situation instead

of simply bowing to the rhetoric, oh, we need more free speech. we need less regulation. they're controlling your speech a less that kind of rhetoric is ignored and on the question is, prob, further by policy makers are then i don't see that situation improving, especially when it has on such get a wide support from a very influential individuals in the box. rebecca, how much have surveillance and hacking compromised journalists of late and not just journalists, but also their sources and, and whistle blowers. how much dangerous has, how much more dangerous has gotten for them all? it is certainly increased. i think tensions it sometimes can lead to self center censorship if, if somebody feels very ill at ease and investigating, for example, certain risky topics or individuals. it's also worth mentioning, the impact immediately the,

all of this house on the safety of journalists in parallel to trolling this active sort of abuse and rats. and these, you know, vast highlands that can happen very easily towards journalists. and in particular, often disproportionately targeting women journalists, too often now can translate into real life manifestation of such threats and sometimes buying the acts. and so in our broader work, in a, in the sort of more classic areas of freedoms, the safety of journalists is also having a massive impact as well. it's all part of the evolving nature of threats to journalism. and certainly states are not doing enough, at least in a concrete way beyond just statements. we need to see more action, including by our democracies to ensure that their own house is in order with the domestic frustrating claim. and that includes ensuring that the online space is a safe and enabling environment for journalists to be able to do their jobs. all right, well we have run out of time, so we're going to have to leave the conversation there today. thanks so much to all of our guests. rebecca vincent, romeo cookery out ski and tim squirrel. and thank you for watching. you can see the

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