“It’s biased against facts, it’s biased against journalism,” said Maria Russa. (file)
Manila:
Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Rassa used her newfound prominence to criticize Facebook as a threat to democracy, saying the social media giant fails to protect against the spread of hate and propaganda and is “biased against facts”. .
The veteran journalist and head of Philippine news site Rapper told Reuters in an interview after winning the award that Facebook’s algorithms “prioritize the spread of lies filled with anger and hate over facts.”
His comments add to a pile of pressure recently used by more than 3 billion people at Facebook, which a former employee accused of turning a profit on the need to stop hate speech and misinformation. Facebook denies any wrongdoing.
A representative for Facebook in the Philippines did not respond to requests for comment on Resa’s comments.
Resa shared the Nobel on Friday with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, whom the committee called in support of free speech, under fire around the world, to anger the leaders of the Philippines and Russia for exposing corruption and misgovernance. .
Facebook has become the world’s largest news distributor and “yet it is biased against facts, it is biased against journalism,” Resa said.
“If you don’t have any facts, you can’t have truths, you can’t have trust. If you don’t have any of these, you don’t have democracy,” she said. “Also, if you don’t have facts, you don’t have shared reality, so you can’t solve the climate, existential problems of the coronavirus.”
Resa has been the target of intense social-media hate campaigns from supporters of President Rodrigo Duterte, which he said were aimed at destroying him and the rapper’s credibility.
Election ‘battle of facts’
“These online attacks on social media have a purpose, they are targeted, they are used as a weapon,” the former CNN journalist said.
The rapper’s reporting includes a close-up investigation into Duterte’s deadly war on drugs and a series of investigative reports that he says are his government’s strategy to “weaponize” the Internet, using bloggers on his payroll to smuggle online supporters. Those who threaten and defame Duterte in order to incite anger. Critics.
Duterte did not comment on Ressa’s award. A spokesperson for Rashtrapati Bhavan, Duterte, his chief legal adviser and communications office did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
In March 2019 Facebook pulled down an online network in the Philippines for “coordinated unverified behavior, and linked it to a businessman who previously said he helped manage the president’s social media election campaign in 2016.
According to a 2021 study by social media management firms, the Philippines tops the world in time spent on social media.
Platforms such as Facebook have become political battlegrounds and helped bolster Duterte’s support base, which was instrumental in his election victory in 2016 and the defeat by his allies in the midterm elections last year.
The Philippines will hold elections in May to choose Duterte’s successor, who is not permitted under the constitution to seek a second term.
That campaign “will be a battle of facts,” Ressa said. “We’re going to make sure that our people see and understand the facts. We won’t be harassed or threatened to keep quiet.”
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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