Hannah McKay will be a #ijf18 speaker

Critical perspectives on the disinformation discussion, the Rohingya crisis, and journalists at risk

Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

edited by Marco Nurra

🔔 Pleased to announce our 700+ confirmed #ijf18 speakers. All festival sessions are free entry for all attendees. Come and join us!

• Six key points from the EU Commission’s new report on disinformation. The report is inclusive, collaborative and demands that the European Commission take concrete steps in furthering our understanding of the current information landscape, while also underlining the dangers that can arise from knee-jerk regulatory responses. As stated in the report, “most of the responses will be of a non-regulatory character” and, if deployed at all, regulation “need[s] to be based on very precise definitions addressing the causes of the disinformation problems at hand, ensure due process, as well as accountability and proportionality”.
• A guide to anti-misinformation actions around the world. The final report by the European Commission high level group explicitly recommends not regulating against misinformation — but the EU is only one of many governing bodies that have sought to stem the flow of online misinformation over the past few months. Poynter has created a guide for existing attempts to legislate against what can broadly be referred to as online misinformation.
• Soft power — not government censorship — is the key to fighting disinformation and fake news. “Content regulation of material that — while perhaps problematic and uncomfortable — is often part of political debate smacks of censorship and is at odds with freedom of expression,” Rasmus Kleis Nielsen argues.
  🔔We’ll tackle this topic at #ijf18 with Alexios Mantzarlis, Martin Moore, Rasmus Nielsen and Farida Vis
  🔴 Critical perspectives on the disinformation discussion
• Censorship tightens in Egypt as el-Sisi prepares for re-election bid. Ahead of elections in Egypt later this month, in which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is seeking a second term, the authoritarian leader’s government has further clamped down on press freedom, issuing warnings to the media and arresting critical journalists on “false news” charges.
  🔔 We’ll tackle this topic at #ijf18 with Declan Walsh, Malek Adly and Maria Gianniti
  🔴 Al-Sisi’s Egypt: elections, repression, the Giulio Regeni case
• How journalists are using Spotify to circumvent press censorship. For World Day Against Cyber Censorship, Reporters Without Borders Germany harness the power of music to tell stories in censored regimes with ‘The Uncensored Playlist’.
• Journalists are risking all to expose the Italian mafia. They must be protected. Aktuality’s reporter Ján Kuciak was shot dead while investigating the Italian mafia in Slovakia. He is the second journalist to be murdered in Europe in recent months.
  🔔 We’ll tackle this topic at #ijf18 with Peter Bardy, editor-in-chief of Aktuality.sk, Carlo Bonini, Maria Gianniti and Alan Rusbridger
  🔴 Killing investigative journalists: a new reality in Europe
• Jan’s and Daphne’s Laws: How to Stop the Murder of Journalists. “Murdered journalists are often working at the nexus of crime and government, as Jan was doing. In Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Malta, and many other European countries, that nexus is large and growing,” writes Drew Sullivan, co-founder and editor of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Program (OCCRP).
  🔔 Drew Sullivan will be a #ijf18 speaker at the following events:
  🔴 How can politics support investigative and quality journalism?
  🔴 Dangerous conversations: interviewing criminals and people with a history of violence
  🔴 Isolation, lawsuits and bombs
• Rohingya Crisis: haunting images show the severity of the situation. Hannah McKay spent 17 days documenting thousands of refugees fleeing Myanmar.
  🔔 Hannah McKay will be a #ijf18 speaker
  🔴 Reporting the Rohingya crisis

photos Hannah McKay

• Africa’s first digital journalism training platform launches: 47 free lessons now added to CodeForAfrica’s website.
  🔔 Justin Arenstein and Jacopo Ottaviani will be #ijf18 speakers
  🔴 Robot journalism in the Global South: beyond the hype
• When wire services make mistakes, misinformation spreads quickly. Uncorrected versions of more than half the AP stories with mistakes between January and February persist on a range of websites.