Social media amplifies the human tendency to bind with one’s own kind. “The same medium that so effectively transmits a howling message of change also appears to undermine the ability to make it. Wael Ghonim, one of the fathers of the Arab Spring, dubbed the social media revolution, now says: We need to ask whether technology has finally outpaced our human ability to keep up.Īdvertisers need to boycott the lying sites. One of the main writers of these false articles - these lies - says people are getting dumber, just passing fake reports around without fact checking. Combined with the most incredible development ever - the tsunami of fake news sites - aka lies - that somehow people could not, would not, recognize, fact check, or disregard. The winning candidate did a savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people.
We have to accept that we’ve had our lunch handed to us by the very same social media that we’ve so slavishly been devoted to. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth.Īnd we have to be prepared to fight especially hard for the truth in a world where the Oxford English Dictionary just announced its word of 2016: post-truth. I believe in being truthful, not neutral. I learned long ago, covering the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia, never to equate victim with aggressor, never to create a false moral or factual equivalence, because then you are an accomplice to the most unspeakable crimes and consequences. We cannot continue the old paradigm - let’s say like over global warming, where 99.9 percent of the empirical scientific evidence is given equal play with the tiny minority of deniers. It appeared much of the media got itself into knots trying to differentiate between balance, objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, truth. Murrow do?įirst, like many people watching where I was overseas, I admit I was shocked by the exceptionally high bar put before one candidate and the exceptionally low bar put before the other candidate. The historian Simon Schama, in the house tonight, told me early on that this was not just another election, and we cannot treat it as one.Īnd he says if ever there’s a time to celebrate, honor, protect, and mobilize for press freedom and basic good journalism, it’s now.Īt the start of this campaign, a network news president said this phenomenon may not be good for America but damn good for us.ĭuring an interview on my program this summer, the film-maker and historian Ken Burns asked me what would Edward R. Recommit to robust fact-based reporting without fear or favor - on the issues.ĭon’t stand for being labelled crooked or lying or failingĭo stand up together - for divided we will all fall. So this above all is an appeal to protect journalism itself.
TRUMP FREEDOM OF SPRESS FREE
Just to say, Erdoğan has just told my Israeli colleague Ilana Dayan that he cannot understand why anyone’s protesting in America, it must mean they don’t accept - or understand - democracy! And he thinks America, like all great countries, needs a strongman to get things done!Ī great America requires a great and free and safe press. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison - and then who knows?
We are not there but postcard from the world: this is how it goes with authoritarians like Sisi, Erdoğan, Putin, the Ayatollahs, Duterte, et al.Īs all the international journalists we honor in this room tonight and every year know only too well:įirst the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating - until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. He walked back the part about the protesters but not the part about the media. I actually hoped that once president-elect, all that that would change, and I still do.īut I was chilled when the first tweet after the election was about “professional protesters incited by the media.” Ladies and gentlemen, I added the bits from candidate Trump as a reminder of the peril we face. I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home. They are being republished here with the permission of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which organized the event.
These remarks were delivered by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at the International Press Freedom Awards on Tuesday evening.
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