Keynote speakers professor David Robie and Glenda Gloria, executive editor of Rappler, addressed “truth and justice” on the opening day of the Asian Media Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference in Auckland.

Dr Robie opened the conference yesterday with his topic “Journalism education ‘truth ’ challenges in an age of growing hate, intolerance and disinformation” while Gloria spoke about the difficulties of doing investigative journalism amid this covid-19 pandemic.

Founding director of the Pacific Media Centre, Dr Robie began with a tribute “to two extraordinary and inspirational journalists, who have shed light on dark places and given the rest of us hope”.

• READ MORE: Other ACMC media conference reports

The first of these was to Maria Ressa, chief executive of the Filipino investigative website Rappler, who, along with Russian editor Dimitry Muratov, was named a Nobel Peace prize laureate last month for safeguarding “freedom of expression”.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee described them as “representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions”.

Julie Posetti, global director of research at the International Centre for Journalists (ICJ), said the choice had been very timely and she pointed to the fact that it had been 85 years since the first working journalist had won the Nobel prize.

German investigative editor Carl von Ossietsky won the Nobel prize for his “burning love for freedom and expression”’

Award in jail
Ossietsky, was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp at the time he won the award and later died in jail.

As Gloria told the conference hosted at Auckland University of Technology, the Nobel prize put a “global spotlight on the extraordinary dangers that we journalists face today”.

“You and I are no stranger to threats to media freedom – from repressive laws to libel suits to imprisonment to death threats,” she said.

“To many of us in the Global South, journalism has always been considered a dangerous profession long before media watchdogs started ranking countries around the world according to the freedoms enjoyed by their press.

“And yet, despite all that we have seen and experienced, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most challenging period for journalism. At stake today is our very existence, our relevance, and our ability to speak truth to power.

“Not only are journalists under attack. Truth is under attack,” Gloria said.

Optimism for Rappler
She gave three reasons for the Filipino publication Rappler to be optimistic in spite of dealing with 11 lawsuits aimed at silencing the website.

“Every crisis is an opportunity. In the last two years, we at Rappler managed to bounce back and continue holding power to account and exposing wrongdoing,” she said.

“Part of the reason is how our ownership structure was set up. Rappler is the only journalist-owned and journalist-led media company in the Philippines. We make decisions for the public interest even if it’s bad for business.

“Second reason to be hopeful is — for journalism to matter, the community must be a part of it. In our crisis years, our community stayed with us.

“We realised that we had a core base of audience that, while not massive, shared the same value that we believe in, which is the public’s need for transparency and accountability on the part of those who lead and government them.

“At Rappler, we learned that when the going gets tough, hold the line, stick to your core, and have faith in your community of readers.

“The third reason to be hopeful is that crisis challenges our mindsets. The attacks on Rappler scared away advertisers but also compelled us to diversify our revenue stream so that today, our revenues come not just from advertising but business research, grants, membership, programmatic ads, and special projects.

Postive net income
“We have not paywalled our site but we have content and activities exclusive to paying subscribers. Thankfully, we are now entering our third year of positive net income,” Gloria said.

Dr Robie’s second tribute was to Max Stahl whom he described as a “courageous journalist and filmmaker who sadly died at the age of 66 from cancer”.

From Timor-Leste, he made the controversial film footage of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in the capital Dili which eventually led to Timorese independence.

British-born Stahl returned to East Timor in 1999 and made the documentary In Cold Blood: Massacre of East Timor, for which he was decorated with the Order of Timor-Leste, the country’s highest honour and he was awarded Timor-Leste citizenship in 2019.

“The common thread linking all four of these media communicators – Maria Ressa, Dimitry Muratov, Carl von Ossietsky and Max Stahl – has been their courageous, determined relentless pursuit of ‘truth and justice’,” Dr Robie told the virtual conference.

“ ‘The truth’ – this supreme goal of journalists in holding power to account is hugely under threat by politicians, demagogues and charlatans peddling fake news and disinformation,” he said.

Dr Robie spoke about covid-19 and the “disinfodemic” – described by UNESCO as “falsehoods fuelling the pandemic”, leading to civil disobedience and attacks on medical staff the world over, including in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Violence pervaded South Pacific
The violence had pervaded the South Pacific and was noticeable in Fiji and Papua New Guinea despite the high number of people being infected.

Dr Robie highlighted PNG where health authorities were forced to cancel vaccinations for fear of attacks, hence the rate is incredibly low this month, sitting at 2.5 percent,

He also addressed the infodemic and the rise of “disinformation” and the challenges it brought to the media.

Dr Robie spoke about climate change “and the disproportionate impact this is having on our Asia-Pacific region”.

A key component of the disinfodemic was the lack of fact-checking and as veteran Pacific journalist and consultant Bob Howarth had asked, why had the basics of fact-checking not “become part of journalism training in our universities and colleges?”.

Dr Robie also spoke about climate change “and the disproportionate impact this is having on our Asia-Pacific region”.

Climate ‘catastrophe’
He outlined the challenges of climate change, preferring to call it climate “catastrophe”.

“I am stressing the word catastrophe rather than merely change, That is because for the microstates of the Pacific it is already viewed as an impending catastrophe,” he told the conference.

Dr Robie said he had developed several theories and models of journalism such as “talanoa journalism”, a concept developed through a Pacific approach.

“My emphasis has been on ‘project journalism’, creating high quality coverage of issues and challenging assignments on university platforms with high standards of journalistic integrity and to foster multi-university collaboration across national boundaries.”

The conference concludes tomorrow.

• The ACMC conference programme

After days of web surfing for Covid-19 coronavirus news around the Asia-Pacific, two areas that appear to need improving in some countries are official communication and fact checking.

So here’s my two cents, rupiah, kina or tala worth.

Fact checking:
Journalists everywhere need training in fact checking. This month Timor-Leste held its first training in fact check techniques, organised by its press council and sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for 80 journalists and NGOs.

Most training was in their Tetum language and the lead trainers Raimundos Oki (who did four weeks of training beforehand with Google in Singapore) and web guru Armindo de Jesus covered everything from how to track deep fake imaging and advanced searches.

The press council’s media development director Alberico da Costa Junior reminded attendees of the council’s code of ethics which covered balance, accuracy and addressed the use of social media and personal opinions.

The reaction of the majority: We want more training.

In the South Pacific only two countries appear to have certified fact checkers: Australia and New Zealand. For details on global fact checkers and the certification process this link at the Poynter Institute is the most helpful: https://www.poynter.org/media-news/fact-checking/

QUESTION: Does your country and its media need fact check training?

Official communication:
My colleague on The Jakarta Post, Endy Bayuni, recently wrote this opinion piece on the performance of some of Indonesia’s leaders. It’s worth reading:
Covid-19: Mr President, you need professional help

So what are the lessons learned so far by official spokesmen in televised press conferences in the region?

Australia: Its prime minister and top health expert give updates several times a day in a courtyard. Previously it was difficult to hear any reporter’s questions but deaf viewers could follow with professional signers. For recent “pressers”, audio of questions was added.

New Zealand: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern impressed the world with a live Q&A from her home wearing pyjamas which led to an outpouring on social media of viewers wishing she was their leader.

Fiji: The prime minister has mostly the same set with flags draped behind him and a serious military figure in the background. Not a lot of hard questions.

Papua New Guinea: The prime minister has been overshadowed in performance by his young Minister for Police Brian Kramer, who not only chastised local reporters for not self-distancing 1.5 metres but repeated questions viewers couldn’t hear. Worst performance was the PNG Health Minister who failed to self-isolate with a gaggle of other Big Men in earlier telecasts. Excellent coverage by the local EMTV network.

Samoa: The PM has set scenes looking very tropical and kept a tight rein on the information flow.

Meanwhile, in Timor-Leste its president in formal settings kept up a steady flow of updates but his health minister’s performance resulted in formal protests from all local journalist groups about a lack of information. Mainly in the form of handouts and no questions.

Thailand: The health minister also didn’t miss out on his share of bad reviews for TV performances by the popular Asian Coconuts website:
Health minister under fire, again, for saying infected medical staff weren’t careful

LESSONS LEARNED: Many leaders need professional advice. Other key advice:

• Signing for the deaf should be mandatory (although a radio disc jockey in PNG who made fun of the excellent young woman providing the service was sacked for his online mockery of her in a Tiktok video. Karma).
• Viewers and listeners need to hear the media questions or speakers should repeat them before answering.
• Leaders do not need a posse of bored, huddled people with big bellies behind them to distract from their message. Nor should the bored posse clap announcements.
• Last, but not least, reporters should do their homework so there are lots of valid questions … and self-distance please.

Here endeth the lesson.

Bob Howarth is a veteran Australian journalist and trainer who recently returned from Timor-Leste to assist in fact check training. He is a frequent contributor to Pacific Media Watch.

They are both at the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WEC) meeting at Auckland University of Technology.

Dr Maslog is chairman of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre in Manila and Dr Wahyuni is Head of the Masters in Media and Communication Science programme at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta.

AUT Pacific Media Centre photographer Del Abcede took the pictures.

Asia NZ Foundation team

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While I was grappling with the horrible impositions of Martial Law when I was editor-in-chief of Philippine Panorama, I had to run to some safe, soul-restorative place on weekends outside the city. It was at the home of Cris and his wife scientist, Flor, on the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) campus that I found comfort and assurance that all will be well, that the tyrant Ferdinand Marcos and his family will be driven away from the land, and that democracy will be restored.

His article should remind us that Martial Law should never happen again – and the

perpetrators not be returned to seats of power. – Domini M. Torrevillas, The Philippine Star

By CRISPIN C. MASLOG in Manila

Somehow, today’s university student generation is not to blame for its Martial Law amnesia. These people were not yet born at the time Martial Law was proclaimed 44 years ago!

We, the older folks, are to blame. We did not teach them history properly – and I mean by we, mainly the Philippine government and the mass media who suffered the most under the Martial Law regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

Now that the surviving members of the Marcos family are active in politics again and pushing a revisionist version of Martial Law history, we are worried, to say the least.

So when I told students at Silliman’s College of Mass Communication recently about the abuses during Martial Law proclaimed by Marcos in 1972, they were aghast at what they heard. I told the group that before Martial Law was proclaimed in 1972, the Philippines went through hard times under Marcos’ two four-year terms from 1965 to 1973 – the years of discontent.

There was a dramatic increase in poverty during Marcos’ two elective terms, resulting in social unrest.

Yet Marcos wanted to extend his term, which he could not do legally because he was limited by the Constitution to two presidential terms ending in 1972. So he decided to suspend the Constitution and declare Martial Law on Sept. 21, 1972.

The first few years under Martial Law were peaceful and orderly. The average person liked that people were disciplined. But people were disciplined because they were afraid.

More corrupt
And soon after 1972, Marcos and his family became more corrupt because no one, especially the mass media, was free to criticise them. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The next 14 years witnessed corruption unparalleled in Philippine history.

Instead of improving, the Philippine economy took a nosedive during the 14 years of Martial Law because of cronyism and economic plunder. Cronyism was an “economic system” where every major economic activity was controlled by the First Family, their relatives, or cronies.

This phenomenon was documented meticulously by Ricardo Manapat in his 615-page book, Some Are Smarter Than Others: The History of Marcos’ Crony Capitalism (Aletheia Publications, NY, 1991). The New York Times has reviewed the book as “impressively documented”.

Answering criticisms about relatives who became millionaires overnight during Martial Law, Madame Imelda is quoted to have replied: “My dear, there are always people who are just a little faster, more brilliant, more aggressive.”

The Manapat book is based on 11 years of research and writing and is the authoritative source of information on the economic plunder of the Philippines under Marcos. The title of the book is based on a famous quote from Madame Imelda.

The major cronies, as documented in Manapat’s book, were: Roberto Benedicto who controlled the sugar industry, Danding Cojuangco who monopolised the coconut industry, Antonio Floirendo who cornered the banana industry, and Hans Menzi who lorded over the mining and paper industries.

Cronyism meant giving loans to friends that had little or no collateral, whose corporations were undercapitalised. Marcos, family and his cronies used the national coffers, the resources of private banks, and even international loans from multinational banks for their business. Aid money from the US and Japan were placed at the disposal of Marcos’ money-making network.

Squandered loans
Until today we are still paying for these loans squandered by the Marcos regime.

The corruption reached such a massive scale that it took its toll on the Philippine economy and the lives of the average Filipino. By 1986, just before People Power I, the number of Filipinos living below the poverty line doubled from 18 million in 1965 to 35 million.

The history of this economic plunder is one of the blind spots in the minds of the Filipino millenials today.  It worries me and my generation no end, that the son of Ferdinand Marcos is running for vice-president of the land, and be just a heartbeat away from the presidency.

If that happens, philosopher George Santayana may again be proven right when he said long ago that a people who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat it.

Domini M. Torrevillas is a columnist on The Philippine Star. One of her From The Stands columns this month was devoted to this article by Professor Maslog and is republished here with the permission of the author. The Philippines presidential election is due on Monday, May 9.

• Martial Law under Marcos at Rappler