Five insights from UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference

This year’s UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference in Uruguay saw policymakers, journalists and media practitioners come together to discuss matters of press freedom, privacy and sustainability within a sector facing existential digital threats, surging violence and unregulated surveillance. It is these multifaceted threats that defined the theme of this year’s conference: ‘Journalism under Digital Siege’.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF) outlines five key trends that emerged at the conference, including during panel sessions hosted by TRF and the Media Freedom Coalition:

1) Journalism and democracy are under siege… but the fight is fierce

There is growing recognition among stakeholders that press freedom is freedom for all; an independent media is the bedrock of democratic societies.

The President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, who attended the opening ceremony of the conference, called for “certainty to journalists, not just to ensure their freedom of expression, but their freedom to work.” He emphasised the need for the sustainability of journalism, because “local media is extremely important to the sustainability of our culture and our idiosyncrasies.”

Referring to the increasing numbers of stakeholders fighting back to ensure a “democratic digital future”, Shoshana Zuboff declared that “for the first time in a long time, I have hope.” She cited the European Union Digital Services Act as an example of progress.

The 2022 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize awards $25,000 to recognise outstanding contributions to the defence or promotion of press freedom, especially in the face of danger. As a testimony to the journalists fighting to report the facts about the Ukraine crisis, this year’s Prize was awarded to The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ). The BAJ is a non-governmental association of media workers with the objective of promoting freedom of expression and independent journalism in Belarus.

2)  The digital siege is gendered

A disproportionate number of journalists who are monitored, blackmailed, persecuted and targeted with harassment are women. Furthermore, misogyny and sexism intersect with other forms of discrimination, leaving women experiencing multiple types of targeted abuse concurrently, and traumatised. Women are often left to deal with this violence alone, with a lack of support from their employers.

The violence also manifests offline. According to The Chilling report by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), funded by UNESCO, 20 per cent of survey respondents identifying as women said they had been attacked or abused offline in connection with online violence they had experienced.

There is an urgent need for newsrooms to acknowledge that this scourge of online violence is a workplace safety issue. Employers are advised to enact gender-sensitive policies and social media codes that support and advocate for women journalists, not just govern their conduct. These and other recommendations were discussed in detail during the panel session on ‘Newsroom responses to online violence against women’, hosted by ICFJ and outlined in the newly-published research excerpt. Last year, TRF partnered with UNESCO, the International Women’s Media Foundation, and the International News Safety Institute to develop practical and legal tools for journalists, media managers and newsrooms to counter harassment.

The second excerpt of the ICFJ and UNESCO report highlighted stark failings by many internet and social media platforms to take responsibility as forums for online violence. Women journalists find themselves in a double bind: heavily reliant on the very same services that are most likely to expose them to online violence.

But women are fighting back, with the support of technologists, industry experts and other stakeholders. In our panel on ‘developing effective tools to counter gender-based online violence’, TRF, in partnership with Google’s Jigsaw, showcased TRFilter. This new tool will enable women to limit their exposure to abusive content by automatically identifying abusive content and allowing them to block, mute or save comments at scale.

Another tool, Areto Listener, measures an online community’s toxicity and sentiment across the globe, enabling organisations to understand the health of their digital community, protect their brand ambassadors from digital bullies, and address any emerging hot spots before they flare-up.

But it was clear from the conference that a culture shift is still needed to ensure that what is illegal offline is also illegal online, breaking the alarming trend of impunity for online violence. Which brings us to the third trend: increased scrutiny on strengthening legislation to keep pace with technological developments.

3)  Laws must keep pace with technology

While technology has accelerated the world’s access to free and independent information, some new innovations can be harmful or exploitative. For the effective regulation of technology, the law must keep pace with the current realities of the digital landscape – as stated by Quinn McKew, Executive Director of Article 19.

In a panel hosted by the Media Freedom Coalition, supported by TRF as secretariat, Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right t