COMMENT BLOG
A remark, a critique, an opinion…
Communication rights are central to climate justice
On 8 August 2021, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a major reportthat unequivocally links climate change to human activity and predicts more frequent and more severe heat waves, droughts, and floods over the coming years....
Newsrooms without women: The future of journalism in Afghanistan
Imagine a newsroom without women, where all staff, without exception, are men. Now imagine all newsrooms in an entire nation with men only, across all jobs, from the reporters, to the technicians, to the editing staff and managers. This threatens to be the future of...
Afghanistan: Is digital communication a blessing or curse?
The swift takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban following the withdrawal of foreign forces has shocked and appalled human rights defenders. It has led to wholesale urgent calls to assist Afghans – particularly women, journalists, and those who have worked for or...
Restoring a sense of justice to history
By targeting monuments that celebrate historic figures who actively contributed to institutional racism and the oppression of marginalised peoples, Black Lives Matter and others have implicitly questioned the way collective memory is fashioned. Protests of this kind...
Call for a public service Internet
“The dominant forms and uses of digital technologies and the Internet endanger democracy. They undermine the indispensable resources of trusted information, in-depth analysis, rational debate, and diversity of representation that allow us to fully understand the...
The state of digital news and the world we want to see
The 2021 Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute points to some promising findings for those who value independent and reliable news. The Covid-19 pandemic appears to have increased trust in mainstream news – at least back to 2018 levels. Three quarters of the...
Public service journalism at its very best
Reporters Without Borders has underlined growing concerns about a steady decline of press freedom in several European Union member states, including Greece, Malta, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia. In “‘Worrying picture’: Journalists in Europe face increasing...
In the battle of giants, who to root for?
The tech headlines in the past week have marked the growing data privacy battle between Apple and Facebook. The latest update to iPads and iPhones includes an App Tracking Transparency feature which will force app developers to ask users permission to collect their...
Global tax reforms and communication rights
Do current shifts in economic thinking represent an opportunity for communication rights? On April 5th, United States Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen issued a call for a global corporate tax rate, a major shift from the neoliberal consensus that has...
Trust is a two-way street
The theme of WACC’s annual report for 2020 is “Truthful Voices Matter”. What appears to be self-evident reflects a growing perception that public interest media need to rebuild trust in their news content and opinions: by demonstrating impartiality, balance, and...
Digital justice, still waiting in the wings
Everyone agrees that social media are failing to distinguish between truth and lies. That’s partly because the line is easily blurred, but also because social media are corporate entities running on profit. Few people agree on how to tackle the problem of fake news or...
#IWD 2021: Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world
March, the month set aside to honour women's contributions to American history is today commemorated worldwide as "Women's history month". Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world is the theme of International Women's Day March 8. If there's anything that a...
PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Jeffrey/ACT Alliance