journalist facing increasing attacks on the field and online. what can be done to protect the free flow of news and information? this is an side story. anchor: hello and welcome to the program. the internet is a place where the free flow of information as well as attempts to control and suppress it. this euros world press freedom day is highlighting threats to the media. russia's war on ukraine is a major example. the commitment to protect journalists has said journalist have died in the field since the invasion began in february.

britain's government has a cute breccia of running a subcultural factory in st. petersburg to spread this information and lies on the internet. the q1 says online attacks on journalists and information are eroding public trust. this year's world press freedom index issued warnings on how propaganda and unregulated social media or fueling divisions within and between countries. examples include russia's propaganda campaigns before its invasion of ukraine. the united states, france and poland are facing some of the worst media polarization. the civil society organization wants countries to adapt legal frameworks and systems to protect information online. the european union has proposed laws to limit lawsuits designed to silence journalists. they would give courts more power to dismiss cases if they are fun to be abusive or

unjustified. the eu criticized some governments for using defamation proceedings as a form of harassment. >> the role of journalists and those that keep power in check is tremendous. the package you have proposed today will ensure that they can exercise this in some come up but not all member states, defamation is still up was a month -- criminal offense that carries a prison sentence. member states are therefore encouraged to abolish prison sentences. they should favor the use of civil law instead of criminal law for such cases. mohammed: let's go ahead and bring in our best. rebecca vincent is director at reporters without borders.

she joins us from monday. joining us from ukraine is romeo kokriatski, managing editor from ukraine. also joining us is tim squirrell . a very warm welcome to you all and thank you so much for joining us. rebecca come out let me start with you. where does the state of the press worldwide stand? >> unfortunately, it has gotten worse. this year, a record total of 28 countries have dipped into our worst category in the index. we have highlighted a number of trends that comes up with our index. the overall theme of this year being we have entered a new era of polarization. we have looked at how polarization has impacted the state of media freedom around the world.

the impact has been significant. mohammed: romeo, just hope dangerous are things right now for ukrainian journalists? and also, how tough is it to counter this information and propaganda and to make sure accurate reporting is getting out? >> i would state that over the past years, ukrainians have become masters of contouring pressure propaganda. the escalation of propaganda during the war is to be expected, but i think that ukrainians come up have developed a media ecosphere that is very resistant to russian misinformation and i think now finally we have been able to start exporting that kind of resistance -- ecosphere to the rest of the world. russia has infiltrated nearly

every aspect of the modern narrative that we have. as for the dangers of reporting, it is a war zone. a lot of cities are not safe. for those who are living in occupied territory, they are incredibly brave and i am grateful for the work they are doing, but as these areas stay under occupation for longer, it will only grow more and more dangerous for the journalists working in russia occupied areas. generally, i would say most journalists are in relatively safe cities and we come up for now, have about the same level of security that we did before

the war. mohammed: tim, you heard romeo. she talked about the pernicious effects of russia propaganda. i want to get your reaction. i also want to talk to you about the fact that the british government is now saying that russian internet trolls based in saint petersburg are targeting world leaders online. many were saying russia was losing the information war. is that changing? >> there are a few things here. i do not share the same optimism of romeo around resilience of the information sphere outside of ukraine. we have seen attempts from crumbling forces to push narratives elsewhere, on social media, in mainstream media.

when they came out after the bucha atrocities, there were 200 hours of posts shared in 20 different countries. while a minority of them were disputing the kind of true account of what happened, they were more shared than the other 145 combined. there was still quite a lot that social media platforms need to do to clean up the ecosphere and make it more resilient. in terms of your second question , whether we are the west are winning the information war, i think it is a complex picture. you have a lot of people saying president zelenskyy was saying -- doing well. if you look at some of the studies, you can see that there are inroads being made and a lot

of non-anglo communities in the kremlin. you can see across the social media landscape as well. while it may be in the case in the west they are doing reasonably well, russia stepped in to do -- russia is attempting to push its narratives and a number of different fronts. mohammed: let me ask you about what the british government is saying. they alerted international partners that they are going to work closely with allies and media platforms in order to undermine russian information. what are the steps that need to be taken in order to counter this? what can be done to protect the free level of news and information? >> one of the biggest tools that the liberal democratic world has

, specifically on social media, is the fact that social media companies are based in democracies. the chinese social media companies are mostly based out of silicon valley, that means they must respond to regulatory pressure. they must respond to policymakers. they must respond to legislation. the greatest tool we have in order to really ensure that social media companies clean up their act, that they stop giving a platform to obvious conspiracy mongers, is to mandate them in some way and i am not a policy expert, but there must be a real conversation about a legislative approach that can be applied to the social media platforms that will somehow constrain the operation, because a lot of it

is not being shared organically. it is posted to an insane degree by bot networks. only then does it begin to get traction organically. so there has to be something to constrain the activity of these spots. --bots. taking anything less then a regulatory approach to the problem is not going to fix it. you cannot rely on the tech companies themselves to self regulate. there incentives are not there to do so. secondly, they are not state actors and they do not really have the resources necessary to counter estate working on this information direction.

mohammed: rebecca, we were speaking before about the 2022 addition of the reporters without borders freedom index. one of the issues that that highlights is the disastrous effect of news and information chaos. what is the impact of a globalized and unregulated online information space that encourages fake news and propaganda? how bad is it getting? >> that is one of the major themes that we highlighted in the index. the impact of the sun press freedom around the world. we talk about polarization we mean exactly that. the impacts of disinformation. but also outright propaganda. that can be done on official media channels. we have seen that within countries, including our own democracies. it is worth noting that part of the trend is even within our

democracies, the proliferation of opinion media is also contributing to this chaos. and also the propaganda wars of authoritarian states is creating a lot of tension when it comes to global press freedom. when they ukraine conflict was preceded by an information war, this is not new. we have pointed for years to concerns about china. we published a report examining the spread of china's model the -- model of information control. it is not just a russia problem. it is broader than we think. at reporters without borders, we -- we do think there needs to be greater responsibility of the platforms.

we think the european dsa looks like up good model of how this can be accomplished. it is clear the space needs some regulation. mohammed: tim, you heard rebecca talk about how these online spaces need more regulation. i also heard romeo talk about that there should be frameworks put in place to help safeguard information that is out there. i want to ask you, there was growing calls for countries to adopt legal frameworks and systems to protect information online. to counter this information. one example rebecca mention is the dsa with the european union. do you think we are going to see more of this? will this trend continue? are there countries out there that will set up systems or pass legislation in order to do this? >> it is absolutely necessary.

i want to give a quick word of what they need to look like. up until now, we have relied on platforms to moderate themselves and also take a piecemeal approach to moderation. rather than examining the underlying business models of the best companies. rather than looking at how the algorithms can encourage the kinds of problems we are seeing. what we need is a systemic approach that allows us to research data, to encourage rigorous levels of transparency so we can see just how big the problems are. all of the status should not be in house at tech companies. it should be available for scrutiny by those qualified to look at it. we need to make sure these

regulatory frameworks ensure that in law. i really do hope that other countries with clout and with large numbers of users start adapting this. the power they have is directly proportional to how much of the market the tech company is regulated. the dsa in europe means much more in the queue k if the u.s. were to introduce similar kinds of legislation --. a word about tiktok, which is a bit of a problem because of the fact it is chinese owned. it does not have the same kinds of regulation or accessibility. it is the most opaque. you have to do research manually. we have no conception of the scale of the problem. the research we have done it shows there are huge amounts of propaganda on the platform from

state actors and nonstate actors. it is important to note that this platform has become a massive doctor for disinformation and we need to do something about it. mohammed: romeo, did you want to jump in? >> i just wanted to mention that yes, taking this individualized approach, twitter and facebook to network alike. there is no one-size-fits-all framework you can place an obese platforms. you do have to approach them individually based on how the platform operates. this is an incredibly important insight to remember when we consider what the future of digital communication is going

to look like now that we have matured enough to encounter these massive information problems. mohammed: rebecca, in april the european commission says it wants to see that you adopt a lot to protect journalists from lawsuits aimed at censoring them. this will need approval from eu member countries. do you think that this is going to happen? how significant would be if it does? >> we would have to scrutinize the building question. -- the bill in question.

we have to see what is to vote and to assess what support it has and if that would be possible at the european level. mohammed: how much better equipped are fact checking organizations dealing with disinformation, whether it is about the war in ukraine, the pandemic. how much better have fact checkers button come to think disinformation? -- gotten at countering disinformation? >> if something has not been fact checked, it is not professional journalism. we developed a standard

initially at the european level that looks to encourage journalism that has gone through rigorous checks to show that it is about professional ethical standards of journalism. it should be about the process because then you address the content issues that arise. mohammed: tim, you one has said that online attacks on journalists and information are eroding trust. how better things getting? -- how bad are things getting? >> i think that is important. we have to address the root cause of this, which is that trust in journalism, trust in the credit institutions is really being eroded on a systematic level by a variety of factors.

the demand side of disinformation is not being addressed either. it is that they are looking for that kind of information because in many ways a lot of things in the world feel like they are getting worse, people feel like they cannot trust authorities, so they go looking for rings -- things that you can see in black and white terms that often have to do with conspiracy theories. that is deeply problematic. we know there are many regimes and governments in states that are engaging in these two undermine trust. we see it with north african

regimes, we see it in eastern europe, in hungry. that is deeply problematic. we are in a dire state right now . mohammed: romeo, do you think we are at a moment where we will see a drive by more members of the international community to strengthen protections for journalists? >> unfortunately, i cannot really say i am optimistic. there has been a consistent trend over the past few years in the opposite direction. there has been a huge movement which is based around the concept of free speech or at least that is the rhetoric they use. we some of this when elon musk

said he was going to buy twitter and burned free speech back -- bring good free speech back. it would be an end to moderation would in turn only intensify attacks, intensify the erosion of trust. unless governments really take a long-term and layered look at the situation instead of simply bowing to the rhetoric that we needed more free speech and less regulation. unless that kind of rhetoric is ignored and the question is probed further by policymakers.

then i do not see that situation improving, especially when it has such wide support from very influential individuals. mohammed: rebecca, how much have surveillance and hacking compromised journalists? and also their sources and whistleblowers? >> it has certainly increased tensions. it sometimes can lead to self-censorship if somebody feels very ill at ease investigating risky topics and individuals. in parallel to trolling, this act of abuse and threats that can happen very easily towards journalists, too often now can

translate to real-life manifestation of such threats. this is also having a massive impact as well. it is part of the evolving nature of threats towards journalists. we need to see more action, including by our democracies to ensure their own house is in order. that includes the online space being safe for journalists to do their jobs. mohammed: we have run out of time so we have to leave the conversation there today. thank you so much to all of her guests. and thank you too for watching. you can see the program any time at our website. for further discussion, go to our facebook page. you can also join the conversation on twitter.

goodbye for now. ñ?lo)?■o■oóñ■ñ■

- [mike]: i started coming to this mall in 1982 when it opened. hey anlee, this is mike, jasper mall. i have few emp space [upbeasynth pop] ♪ [ambient mus] - [announcer]: major funding for reel south was provided by: etv endowment, the national endowment for the arts, center for asian-american media,