Halkjaer at 30 BSPC

30TH BSPC: SECOND SESSIONDemocracy in a changing media landscapeSpeaker : Mr Erik Halkjaer, President of the board of the Swedish section ofReporters without borders- reported speech -Ms Stålhammar thanked Mr Nilov. She noted that some of these perspectives wereseen differently, but it was always important to safeguard the freedom of expression.On that point, she introduced the representative from civil society. Since 20 19, Mr ErikHalkjaer had been president of Reporters Without Borders in Sweden. Mr Halkjaer hadabout twenty years of experience of being a journalist and having worked for variouswritten media in Sweden.Speech by Erik Halkjaer, President of the Swedis h Section of Reporters WithoutBordersMr Halkjaer thanked the BSPC for the invitation as well as Ms Cederfelt, Prof Hofmannand Mr Nilov as speakers before him. Their contributions had been interesting, henoted. Mr Halkjaer pointed out that he had addres sed this forum in the spring, beforethe summer, although the audience might have been a little different. At that point, hehad mentioned that press freedom was under pressure all over the world, includingEurope and in the Baltic states. They were not fr ee from this attack on press freedom,not even in this area. A quick look at the report by Reporters Without Borders, thePress Freedom Index, showed that – apart from Norway and Finland at the top -,Lithuania and Latvia were the only two countries showin g something like improvementin terms of press freedom over the last few years. All the other countries, includingSweden, were going up and down the list. It was not looking that positive, in hisestimation. All of them were facing great challenges in the ir respective countries.He went on to point out that journalists were being killed, even within the EuropeanUnion. That was horrendous, he underlined. Nevertheless, he considered the greatestthreat they were facing in the EU and the Baltic states were harassment, threats andhate speech. These were generated both by state actors as well as private sectorrepresentatives, organised crime or common citizens. With the pandemic, there hadbeen a rise of these threats. Journalists covering the pandemic or th e regulations andmethods used to inform or handle the spread of the virus had been suffering morethreats and hate speech, or they might have been oppressed by the state or put in jailor forced to cover something else, such as sports or culture issues. T he flow ofdisinformation had been increasing all over the world, including the Baltic Sea region.As Ms Cederfelt had said earlier, this was not a new occurrence. All the factors he hadjust mentioned were something that had always been there. But what th e pandemichad brought about was something that the World Health Organization (WHO) calledan “infodemic”: a worldwide spread of disinformation along with threats andharassments in the footsteps of the virus. All of this was much more than there hadever been before, because of the global digital platforms. He noted that this had beenpointed out earlier by Prof Hofmann in particular. This development could be called astorm or a hurricane of disinformation, threats, harassments but also surveillance. Thisdid not only concern journalists but most citizens.At Reporters Without Borders, they had long advocated for more transparency towardsthese platforms, as Prof Hofmann had asked for earlier. For long, they had asked formore open algorithms and more transparency, to see why certain contents werepromoted w hile others were blocked or even suppressed. His organisation had longadvocated for more press freedom on the platforms so that journalists and journalisticor media contents were boosted and that verified journalistic contents would be easilyspread and shown on these platforms instead of contents and information from non -verified sources. More media plurality was needed on the media platforms. As a citizen,one could get a variety of information, from a lot of different sources. This, Mr Halkjaerunderli ned, was truly life -saving during a pandemic. That was necessary. As a citizen,one needed to be able to make their own decisions, to make up their own mind, withinformation from a variety of sources, with different angles and views. That was vital instopping a pandemic. During the pandemic, the platforms had indeed been blockingand in some cases taking down misinformation – what was called “fake news”. Thequestion, though, was what constituted fake news and who decided what was fakenews.Mr Halkjaer said that the methods employed by the platforms were okay but notunproblematic. At Reporters Without Borders, they would rather talk about carrots thansticks. Instead of blocking and erasing content, they would prefer if the platforms anddigital outlets were spreading more information from verified journalistic sources toboost these sources. His organisation had even created a tool for this: the JournalismTrust Initiative which had been launched in the spring of 2021. That was a method formedia outlet s to certify journalism and show their audience how these worked,providing more transparency. Moreover, while they were asking the digital mediaplatforms to be more transparent, they equally asked the journalistic content – thetraditional media outlets – to be more transparent as to how they implemented theirjournalism. This concerned questions such as which sources they were using, how thesources had been acquired, how were the contents verified, who was paying for thecontents and who were the owners of the outlets. With this certificate from theJournalism Trust Initiative, Reporters Without Borders was hoping that this could beused by the digital media platforms and by users to know that this was a trusted mediaoutlets in contrast to another not v erified source. Disinformation and fake news werebest fought through journalism with verified sources, it was best fought with investmentin journalism.His organisation had also worked with an initiative called Information and Democracy.There, a large g roup of countries had been put together. Mr Halkjaer mentioned thatall countries were of course welcome. They had created a forum for information anddemocracy. The idea behind it was to work together to find a way to make the internetmore democratic – to make the digital platforms more democratic. As JeanetteHofmann had said in her contribution, the goal was to make it easier to enforce andappeal to the platforms as a citizen.Unfortunately, in a forum of parliamentarians from all countries around the Baltic Sea,Mr Halkjaer had to say that there were countries in this region who were not using whathe had just described. Those nations were using another method, i.e., blocking,suppressing and making it harder for journalists to work. For example, ther e wasRussia which had implemented a whole set of laws according to which journalists hadto register as foreign agents or where the telephones one bought featured pre -installedsoftware. It was illegal to spread false information – as had been discussed h ere. Butthe question was how to decide what such false information was. Russia was blockingsites, and platforms needed to block illegal content. This was interesting, Mr Halkjaernoted, because Prof Hofmann had also mentioned this as a German law. In his view,this was a very sensitive issue because the question remained of who decided whatwas illegal and what had to be blocked. He said that this decision -making process hadto follow the human rights and already existing laws. All of these methods, thoug h,were highly sensitive, and he would be careful about using them. Instead, he preferredusing the carrot, to work for more media plurality and create a state where there weremore journalists who could work, where it was easier to verify who was a journa list.After all, there were tools to do so, such as the Journalism Trust Initiative. It shouldalso be revealed what methods these journalists were using. All of that should beshown openly, instead of blocking and making it harder for different actors. In the end,one had to ask themselves who was deciding what was fake news, false informationetc.He went on to talk about the situation in Belarus which was deteriorating quickly andhow Belarus was using disinformation in an information war against Lithua nia. Thataffected the European Union and its citizens. Once again, Mr Halkjaer was getting callsfrom journalists, asking him how one could determine if something was verified content,dealing with information received from the border between Lithuania an d Belarus. Hecould only answer that he didn’t know but that the journalists had to check the sources.That was essential and a journalist’s job. Where did the video come from? Who wasbehind it? Could the journalist verify the information from another sou rce? These andmore tasks along this line were crucial for journalists and had to be done.He went on to describe the situation south of the Baltic, specifically in Poland wherelaws and media takeovers were used to diminish media plurality. Once again, heemphasised that this was not the way to create a democratic society. The recipe forfighting disinformation was with media plurality, journalism, transparency and pressfreedom. That was how one built a long -lasting, sustainable democracy, he concluded.