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News outlets across the world either love or hate Facebook. There’s true love when the social media giant brings traffic, pure scorn when it keeps the money. And so there has been yet another change to the Facebook Trending Topics news feed.
The dozen of so sub-contracted editors working on Trending Topics have been summarily dismissed and, in true new media form, replaced with an algorithm, robots in essence. Officially, Facebook wants a different Trending Topics section there on the right-side of the page to better reflect the interests of Facebook friends. In early days, it hasn’t gone so well and it’s been less than a week. (See more about social media here)
Several purely fake news stories from marginal right-wing websites were sorted among the Trending Topics. Some were typically hilarious, others not so much. Facebook’s explanation a few hours later was that the nut-ball items were, indeed, “trending” among right-wing fake news fans. "We’re working to make our detection of hoax and satirical stories quicker and more accurate,” said an official’s statement to the Washington Post (August 29). The Trending Topics feature appears only in the US, muting criticism, but not guffaws, elsewhere.
Taking questions from Luiss University students in Rome, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated that “no, we are a tech company, not a media company,” quoted by La Repubblica (August 29). He announced a €500,000 “donation” in the form of advertising credits to the Italian Red Cross for earthquake relief. Later he exchanged the trademark jeans and t-shirt for coat and tie to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican, presenting a model of the company’s Aquila drone. He also spent a few minutes with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
In the Middle East and North Africa media freedom remains, for Western media watchers, a lofty goal at best and deeply deficient otherwise. Authoritarian thumbs press hard on all media outlets, dissent rarely allowed. Progress is measured in small increments.
The government of Tunisia is now the second to sign-up to the Declaration on Media Freedom in the Arab World put forth by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) with support from UNESCO. President Beji Caid Essebsi formally signed the Declaration this past week (August 26). Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas signed in early August. The IFJ, along with regional journalist associations and unions, developed the Declaration over two years of consultations.
In its 2016 Press Freedom Index, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) ranked Tunisia 96th in the world from 126th in 2015, most improved out of 180 countries. “Arbitrary arrest and imprisonment has ended but defamation charges are often brought against journalists who cause trouble, although the charges are rarely followed by trials,” said the RSF report. In January RSF cast its wary eye on a speech by President Essebsi criticising “certain journalists and media for aggravating unrest.” Palestine ranked 132nd in the 2016 RSF index, slightly improved. (See more about media in the Middle East and North Africa region here)
“Today will be remembered as the turning point for media freedom in Tunisia and the Arab World,” said IFJ Middle east and Arab World coordinator Monir Zaarour in a statement the Tunis signing. “It is a recognition that press freedom and independent journalism is not only a force for public good, it is also a public good itself. Signing the declaration today will pave the way for the establishment of a regional mechanism to support media freedom in the Arab world that is truly independent from government control with the Declaration at its heart.”
Reporting from Syria is what most would expect: terrible, and that’s on a good day. Three Spanish reporters, all free-lance, working in Aleppo were captured in July 2015 by fighters of Al-Nusra Front. They were held ten months, release successfully negotiated by the Spanish government.
One continues to speak about the ordeal. If negotiations had failed, said Angel Sastre, they would likely have been “sold” to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group. “There was no hope,” he said to Austrian daily Der Standard (August 23). “I assumed that we would end at the IS.”
Sr. Sastre knows war reporting, filing from Latin America and Ukraine for Spanish daily La Razon, national radio channel Onda Cero and TV Quatro. He was honored by the Madrid Press Club with the 2010 Larra award for young journalists. His return, along with photojournalists Antonio Pampliega and Jose Manuel Lopez, was widely reported in Spain and Latin America.
“For me and my colleagues, we are not the message,” he offered. “There are thousands and thousands of civilians who, day in and day out, are exposed to systematic bombardment. That is why we traveled to Syria, to make interviews with the residents, with the people who live there. Because where an Arab revolution was once launched, it is now withered and exploited by radical Islamist militias.”
“It’s not enough to publish footage of bombs or gunfire,” he said to the (UK) Guardian (June 9), Shortly after his repatriation to Argentina, which he shares as home with Spain. “You need reporters on the ground who can translate the information, do interviews. Activists are replacing journalists.”
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