The Listening Post

After 26 years on the run, Felicien Kabuga - the man accused of being one of the key figures behind Rwanda's genocide - was arrested in Paris on May 16, 2020. A French court has ruled that he will be sent to Arusha, Tanzania to be tried in the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He has been indicted on two counts of crimes against humanity and seven counts of genocide, including "the direct and public incitement to commit genocide". That count relates to his part in setting up and funding Radio Mille Collines, or RTLM, Rwanda’s infamous radio station that played a key role in the genocide. RTLM started broadcasting in August 1993. As president of the station, Kabuga oversaw RTLM’s editorial agenda - an agenda that, from the outset, called for Rwanda’s majority Hutu population to “exterminate” the minority Tutsis. “It was a radio station run by genocide ideologues and all day long it was used to insult and demonise Tutsis, to say that they were a cancer,” recalls Jean-Pierre Sagahutu, a Tutsi who told The Listening Post’s Nicholas Muirhead that he survived the genocide by hiding in a septic tank for two months and 15 days. From the outset, one of RTLM’s key objectives was to radicalise the Hutu youth - they would come to be relied upon to carry out most of the killings. As a new station on the Rwandan airwaves, RTLM needed to recruit listeners and the strategy Kabuga and his co-founders put in place was to play popular music to attract the young. The songs would then be interspersed with hate messages about the Tutsis. Tom Ndahiro is a Rwandan academic and expert on the genocide. He says that the music - which often contained lyrics of Hutu extremism - served a dual purpose because when the killings began, RTLM would continue playing the songs as a way of alleviating the perpetrators’ guilt. “It's evil genius, how do you entertain killers as a way of taking away the guilt? This is what RTLM did,” says Ndahiro. RTLM also helped to coordinate the killings. Catherine Bond was one of the few international journalists in Rwanda during the early stages of the genocide. After joining a convoy of French troops travelling into the centre of Kigali, she witnessed groups of Rwandans lining the streets. They had been called out of their houses by RTLM to greet the French troops - but it was all a ploy. “People had come out of their houses who were Tutsis in hiding,” remembers Bond, “and the Hutu militiamen had been able to identify them and had moved in and killed them.” The genocide lasted 100 days, claiming the lives of nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Kabuga, along with many of the perpetrators, was able to flee Rwanda. He managed to disappear from public life, however his legacy - and the legacy of RTLM - would spread across the region. Multiple governments have since raised the spectre of Rwanda - and the hate messages broadcast on Radio Mille Collines - as justification to clamp down on media freedom in their own countries. History has already judged Felicien Kabuga. Now the courts will do the same. Contributors: Jean-Pierre Sagahutu - Genocide survivor Catherine Bond - Former journalist Tom Ndahiro - Genocide scholar - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: Should historic statues remain standing even if they celebrate racism and violence? Plus, the mastermind behind Rwanda's hate-spewing radio station is caught. Monuments of history or bigotry? The politics of statues The police killing of George Floyd, a Black American, and the weeks of protests that followed in the United States have sent ripples across the Atlantic. The defining image of the demonstrations in the UK has been the toppling of a statue in the port city of Bristol; a monument to Edward Colston, a slave trader whose wealth helped build the city. Colston's fall has offended those who say you cannot erase the past and that those who profited from slavery should not be judged by today's moral standards. Tell that to the thousands of British demonstrators, not just people of colour, who are out to tell the real story about Britain's role in the formation of the slave trade - the legacy of which spans the globe. Contributors: Maya Goodfellow - Author, Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats Adam Elliot-Cooper - Research Associate, University of Greenwich Priyamvada Gopal - Author, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent Kadian Pow - Lecturer, Birmingham City University On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about a racist cartoon put out by the Japanese public broadcaster, NHK; and the US broadcasters reconsidering what television shows are appropriate viewing. Felicien Kabuga: The man behind Rwanda's hate media While the media have been preoccupied with the pandemic, some important news stories have gone under-reported. One of those stories took place on May 16: the arrest, in France, of a man named Felicien Kabuga. Kabuga is accused of being a key figure behind the 1994 genocide in Rwanda which claimed the lives of about one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Kabuga set up and funded Radio Mille Collines, a station that now lives in infamy. RTLM, as it was known, laid the groundwork for the genocide with its incessant stigmatisation of the Tutsis and went on to play a key role in coordinating the killings. The Listening Post's Nic Muirhead tells the story of Felicien Kabuga and the hate media of Rwanda's genocide. Contributors: Jean-Pierre Sagahutu - Genocide survivor Catherine Bond - Former journalist Tom Ndahiro - Genocide scholar - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: How the video of a Black man's murder set the United States ablaze. Plus, drone investigations from on high. Caught on camera: Police brutality and racism in Trump's America Racially charged social unrest has been sweeping America on a scale not seen in decades. Showdowns are taking place in city after city between demonstrators and police, as authoritarian noises and tactics come from the Trump White House. From the phone camera that captured the police killing of George Floyd, to Twitter flagging how dangerous the president's tweets can be, to all those videos showing police attacking journalists and then finally to the lengths that the White House will go to to get a photo opportunity - there is no shortage of media angles to this story. Contributors: Siva Vaidhyanathan - Author, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy Meredith Clark - Assistant Professor in Media Studies, University of Virginia Tiffany Cross - Author, Say It Louder! Black Voters, White Narratives and Saving Our Democracy Mary Frances Berry - Professor of American Social Thought, University of Pennsylvania On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Meenakshi Ravi about how the demonstrations in the US have delivered the perfect opportunity for some international media - for example, state-run outlets in Iran and China - to take pot shots at America. Eyes in the sky: Gathering evidence with drones Sometimes capturing an image or a single video can have a transformative effect. Anyone contending with state violence, whether they are in Minneapolis, Hong Kong or the Middle East, knows that sometimes all they need to make their case - to expose illegality - is the right picture. But there are some places that satellites and phones cannot go. That is where drones come in. Television journalists love drone images for the perspective and scope they provide. Advertisers use them for their cinematic quality and effect on consumers. But drones are also being used to provide irrefutable, photographic evidence of human rights abuses and illegality. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi looks at drones and how they are being used in investigations across the world. Feature contributors: Josh Lyons - Director of Geospatial Analysis, Human Rights Watch Juan Bergelund - CEO, UAV del Peru and Country Manager, Peru Flying Labs Kelly Matheson - Human rights attorney and Director, Video as Evidence programme, Witness - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Sometimes the capturing of an image or a single video can have a transformative effect. George Floyd's killing is an example. The eight-minute, 46-second video speaks for itself. That is why it sent so many Americans onto the streets. And anyone contending with state violence, whether they are in Minneapolis, Hong Kong or the Middle East, knows that sometimes all they need to prove their point - to expose illegality - is the right picture. That is why mobile phone footage fills news broadcasts. It is why journalists and investigators have turned to images from space - satellite pictures - to expose China's secret Uighur prison camps. However, there are some places where satellites and phones cannot go; the space between. That is where drones come in. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi spoke with three voices from different fields, on how drones are being used to provide irrefutable photographic evidence of human rights abuses and illegality. "Drones give you a very exciting ability to collect not just powerful, graphic and compelling imagery and video," Josh Lyons, Geospatial Analyst at Human Rights Watch explained, "but new types of information that we haven't collected before and really couldn't have collected before." Lyons recently tested the limits of this technology in northeast Syria, descending into what was once a natural beauty spot - al-Hota gorge - and has since become a place of reckoning and death. It was a drone that exposed that ISIL, also known as ISIS, had turned a family picnic spot into a mass grave. "What it showed us was something we had not expected. Bodies, human remains, that were obviously fresh," says Lyons. "And it was clear from the imagery that these people had been thrown into al-Hota within the last two weeks approximately. And so it raised a whole range of new questions. Who put these bodies in there? Why are they there? And what lies below that water surface? But the drones also provided us with key bits of evidence that we needed to help argue and advance for professional forensic exhumation of this site." Drones let investigators reach places covertly, and see things, some would prefer to remain unseen - like illegality in the Amazon of Peru. That is where Juan Bergelund, Country Manager of Peru Flying Labs, is using drones to protect the environment and monitor illegal mining. "We can be in the air for two or three hours and then we can monitor everything that they [are] doing, without them even noticing," explains Bergelund. "So with all this information, we go through the authorities and we show what they were doing, not only this week, but the previous week, the previous month and so on. So that's why by combining all these new technologies we may be able to present the authorities with significant evidence." Combining mobile phone footage, satellite and drone imagery is the best way to build an airtight case, says Kelly Matheson, a human rights attorney with the NGO, Witness. The work she does revolves around how communities can use video evidence to bring about justice. Asked by The Listening Post what makes drone footage such a powerful medium, Matheson said: "From an environmental perspective, I think there's a lot of people out there who believe that we, as humanity, can't destroy the world. We don't have that power, the Earth is too powerful and will bounce back. But I think often times when you see that drone footage of the destruction that's happening right before our eyes, it allows us to imagine the unimaginable. It allows us to observe what can't otherwise readily be observed. And I think it's powerful for us to be able to see how we are destroying the planet and in turn destroying our own chances of survival." - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: How the video of a Black man's murder set the United States ablaze. Plus, drone investigations from on high. Caught on camera: Police brutality and racism in Trump's America Racially charged social unrest has been sweeping America on a scale not seen in decades. Showdowns are taking place in city after city between demonstrators and police, as authoritarian noises and tactics come from the Trump White House. From the phone camera that captured the police killing of George Floyd, to Twitter flagging how dangerous the president's tweets can be, to all those videos showing police attacking journalists and then finally to the lengths that the White House will go to to get a photo opportunity - there is no shortage of media angles to this story. Contributors: Siva Vaidhyanathan - Author, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy Meredith Clark - Assistant Professor in Media Studies, University of Virginia Tiffany Cross - Author, Say It Louder! Black Voters, White Narratives and Saving Our Democracy Mary Frances Berry - Professor of American Social Thought, University of Pennsylvania On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Meenakshi Ravi about how the demonstrations in the US have delivered the perfect opportunity for some international media - for example, state-run outlets in Iran and China - to take pot shots at America. Eyes in the sky: Gathering evidence with drones Sometimes capturing an image or a single video can have a transformative effect. Anyone contending with state violence, whether they are in Minneapolis, Hong Kong or the Middle East, knows that sometimes all they need to make their case - to expose illegality - is the right picture. But there are some places that satellites and phones cannot go. That is where drones come in. Television journalists love drone images for the perspective and scope they provide. Advertisers use them for their cinematic quality and effect on consumers. But drones are also being used to provide irrefutable, photographic evidence of human rights abuses and illegality. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi looks at drones and how they are being used in investigations across the world. Feature contributors: Josh Lyons - Director of Geospatial Analysis, Human Rights Watch Juan Bergelund - CEO, UAV del Peru and Country Manager, Peru Flying Labs Kelly Matheson - Human rights attorney and Director, Video as Evidence programme, Witness

For months now, journalists around the world have been on a crash course in reporting on medical science. But they had no experience in covering a pandemic. Now we are turning to journalists with some actual credentials in this field: science and health reporters. In many cases, they were the first to recognise the dangers of the outbreak in Wuhan, leaving the rest of us to play catch-up. The Listening Post's Flo Phillips spoke with three science journalists, from three different countries, about how they sounded the alarm on the virus that would come to be known as COVID-19. "It was something I definitely thought we needed to be watching," Helen Branswell, Senior Infectious Disease Reporter for STAT news explained. "The reports out of China were starting to become alarming because the numbers were growing pretty quickly. So if you watch these kinds of outbreaks over time, this was something that was setting off alarm bells." And in fact, many of these reporters have been watching out for these types of outbreaks for years. Back in 2013, Kai Kupferschmidt, a contributing correspondent for Science magazine, wrote an article about a bat in China carrying a potential pandemic. "Again and again, in the last 10 years or so, when I was doing my reporting, this sentence came up from scientists," Kupferschmidt said. "They were telling me, you know, it's not a question of if there will be a big pandemic. The question is when." Since the outbreak, science journalists have been relentlessly reporting. They have introduced audiences to concepts such as flattening the curve and social distancing; they have explained the need for lockdowns and mass testing, and; they have challenged governments on their pandemic responses. For their efforts, many have witnessed skyrocketing readership and online followings. But this new attention has come with a price, as political polarisation can often taint the information and lead to ad hominem attacks. "They want the reporting to be in line with the politics so that it doesn't make India look bad", said Vidya Krishnan, a health and science journalist from the country. "The minute the story goes online, we have government handles and politicians attacking individual reporters and questioning our integrity and dismissing the story without actually pointing out what's wrong factually that's being put out." In the United States, a similar picture has emerged. "One of the things that I found tragic about this pandemic and the coverage of the pandemic is how politicised the whole thing has become," said Branswell. "Which side of the divide people fall on relates to which party they support. There's a deep misunderstanding of what's going on in certain parts of the country." With COVID-19 becoming as much about the politics as it is about the science, many science journalists have been left out of the daily press briefings - hardly the best use of available resources when the story you are covering is a pandemic. "I'm not sure that science journalists need to take the lead, but I certainly think they should be at the table," said Kupferschmidt. "There are a lot of important questions that science journalists know to ask that political journalists don't know to ask. It just seems like this press conference would really profit if there were also science journalists there." Contributors: Helen Branswell - Senior Infectious Disease Reporter, STAT Kai Kupferschmidt - Contributing Correspondent, Science magazine Vidya Krishnan - Health and Science Journalist - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: The pandemic gives big tech firms a chance to access the holy grail of datasets - your medical records. Plus, science journalists and their sources. AI and our health data: A pandemic threat to our privacy Put yourself in the shoes of the NHS, the United Kingdom's tax-payer funded public health service. You treat about a million patients every 36 hours and that is pre-pandemic. The amount of health data you are now churning out is enormous - and you want to harness that data in the fight against COVID-19. So you turn to the private sector and get technology companies to help you do that. Seems to make sense, but here is the issue: Companies with chequered histories over data handling start landing those contracts. And, to date, the British government has refused to disclose the contractual terms. Information does not get any more personal than your health data. And, in the midst of this pandemic, the British public has been left in the dark on where that data is going - and what these companies and the government might be able to do with it, down the road. Contributors: Mona Sloane - fellow, Institute for Public Knowledge, NYU Cori Crider - director, Foxglove Phil Booth - co-ordinator, MedConfidential Bryan Glick - editor-in-chief, Computer Weekly On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about local television stations in the United States filing the exact same story on the world's largest retailer, Amazon and its handling of COVID-19 in the workplace - plus the major media players in Brazil who are boycotting Bolsonaro's briefings. Science journalism in the spotlight For months now, journalists around the world have been on a crash course in reporting on medical science. They had no experience in covering a pandemic and we have documented some of the shortcomings in their reporting. Now we are turning to journalists with some actual credentials in this field: Science and health reporters. In many cases, they were the first to recognise the dangers of the outbreak in Wuhan, leaving the rest of us to play catch up. Historically underappreciated, and usually underrepresented in newsrooms, science and health reporters now find their expertise is in demand. But their rise to prominence has been accompanied by a new level of scrutiny in the kind of work they do. And their critics are coming out of the woodwork. The Listening Post's Flo Phillips talks to three science journalists about the highs - and lows - of covering the COVID-19 pandemic. Contributors: Helen Branswell - senior infectious disease reporter, STAT News Kai Kupferschmidt - contributing correspondent, Science Magazine Vidya Krishnan - health and science journalist - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

March 16, 2020, was the day Peruvian parents, teachers, and students had been preparing for - the beginning of the new school year. But on March 15, the president appeared on national TV to declare a state of emergency and a strict nationwide lockdown. "One day I got a call from the chairman of the network," Fatima Saldonid, a journalist and newsreader on the public broadcaster, TV Peru, told The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi. "He told me schools were being shut, and the Education Ministry had asked us to produce an education-from-home programme. Then he said, 'you're going to be one of the presenters'. Well, I like a challenge, so I said, 'Let's do it!'" To call it a "challenge" would be an understatement; Aprendo en Casa (I Learn at Home) aims to put on air the core syllabus of Peru's primary and secondary school curricula, amounting to six hours of TV programming every weekday. While other countries have experimented with delivering classes to children online, authorities in Peru knew this was not an option for a country where more than 40 percent of the population does not have internet access. "Television is one of the most used mediums," explains Diana Marchena, planning coordinator at Peru's Ministry of Education. "The internet doesn't have the same reach here as television, so we were determined that a child's progress must not depend on whether they have access to the internet." To ensure Aprendo en Casa could reach as many children in the country as possible, the government coordinated closely not only with TV Peru, but with private channels and radio stations as well. "No one could have guessed this sort of thing could happen," says Ernesto Cortes, general manager of the RPP Group, a private network of TV channels and radio stations that are helping to broadcast Aprendo en Casa. "I can't recall a situation in which, for the shared goal of public education, both private and public media have united... I think it's the first time for something of this magnitude." The show has proven to be a hit, quickly becoming one of the most-watched TV programmes in Peru. It has provided schoolteachers across the country with a vital resource with which to maintain the progress of their students. "Watching the TV broadcasts, I am struck by how dynamic the presenters are!" says Victor Zapata, a schoolteacher in the capital, Lima. Every day, he tells his students to watch the show and assigns tasks based on the broadcast. "TV has lots of resources, and they are making the most of them. A teacher in a classroom does not have such resources. Of course, if I had them, I'd use them gladly!" But some have struggled to benefit. "The children I teach have nowhere near the same resources that children in cities have," says Marlith Norabuena, a teacher in rural Peru. "For example, when it rains or there are changes in the weather, the TV, radio and internet signals - which are already very weak - just stop working altogether." While the limitations of the government's strategy have highlighted deep structural inequality in the country, the success of Aprendo en Casa has demonstrated the power of the media, both public and private, to improve prospects for young people in Peru. "With Aprendo en Casa we're at the start of a new process," says Saldonid. "We have an opportunity to take a fresh look at education ... We have a great chance to create the kind of society we aspire to. But to get there, we need to work from the ground up. And society's foundations are its children." Produced by: Meenakshi Ravi, Luciano Gorriti and Ahmed Madi Contributors: Ernesto Cortes - General manager, RPP Group Diana Marchena - Planning coordinator, Ministry of Education, Peru Victor Zapata - Lima-based secondary school teacher Fatima Saldonid - Presenter, Aprendo en Casa and broadcaster, TV Peru Marlith Norabuena - Rural school teacher More: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/

On The Listening Post this week: How a conspiracy documentary hijacked US social media and fuelled misinformation on COVID-19. Plus: Peru and the art of digital homeschooling. COVID-19 misinformation in US So much about this pandemic remains unknown, which is why reporting on it is so challenging. A lack of scientific consensus, heavy-handed government policies, and lockdown-induced economic woes have resulted in a wave of fear, anxiety, and powerlessness - perfect conditions for misinformation and conspiracy theories to thrive. The US is ground zero for a lot of these theories, not least because the president and outlets like Fox News have long trafficked in them. There is a market for conspiracy theories; one that can turn a discredited scientist and an obscure filmmaker into an internet phenomenon. The Listening Post takes a look at 'Plandemic' - the viral sensation of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Contributors: Joe Uscinski - co-author, American Conspiracy Theories Joan Donovan - research director, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University Will Sommer - tech reporter, The Daily Beast Jared Yates Sexton - author & analyst On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Nic Muirhead about a recent buyout in Italy meaning that Fiat automobiles now controls one of Italy's biggest newspapers - La Repubblica - and with it, a shift in editorial tone. Listen, Watch, Learn: Peru's school system takes to airwaves In many countries, it is still far too early to send children back to school. Take Peru, for instance; with more than 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, it has the second most of any Latin American country, behind Brazil. One area where Peru seems to have fared better is education. Within three weeks of declaring a national lockdown, and with the collaboration of both public and private broadcasters, the Peruvian government brought to air Aprendo en Casa, or I Learn at Home - six hours of educational programming, every weekday. The goal is to make the entirety of both the primary and secondary school curricula available to all students, including the millions without TV and internet access. The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi takes a look at Aprendo en Casa - the TV and radio platform that is schooling Peruvian kids during lockdown. Contributors: Ernesto Cortes - general manager, RPP Group Diana Marchena - planning coordinator, Education Ministry of Peru Víctor Zapata - Lima-based secondary school teacher Fátima Saldonid - presenter, Aprendo en Casa & Broadcaster, TV Perú Marlith Norabuena - rural school teacher - - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On this episode of The Listening Post: India's lockdown has magnified two of the country's most serious social ills: inequality and Islamophobia. Plus, what is it like to photograph the coronavirus pandemic? India's lockdown: Narratives of inequality and Islamophobia India is now one month into the world's biggest lockdown. Just hours before it was announced, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with media owners and editors and asked them to "serve as a link between the government and people" - in other words, to produce positive news stories. Simple request or tacit warning? The pandemic has also exacerbated a chronic condition in Indian news media - Islamophobia. Some outlets have even accused Muslims of creating and spreading the virus, a hateful narrative that not only plays right into the hands of Modi's BJP government, but also leaves millions bereft of potentially lifesaving information. Contributors: Pragya Tiwari - Delhi-based writer Betwa Sharma - politics editor, HuffPost India Barkha Dutt - editor, Mojo Arfa Khanum Sherwani - senior editor, The Wire On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Meenakshi Ravi about contact tracing - the hi-tech means of tracking the COVID-19 outbreak - and why European countries are struggling to implement it. Portrait of a pandemic: Capturing the spaces we call home Lockdown has changed everything - millions have been confined to their homes and public spaces have been left deserted. While journalists, like everyone else, have struggled to adapt to new and unprecedented working conditions, photojournalists have found opportunity amid the adversity. The Listening Post's Flo Phillips talks to three photographers - each with a unique perspective on life under lockdown - and how it has changed the way we inhabit the spaces in which we live. Contributors: Marzio Toniolo - teacher and photographer Phil Penman - photographer Ravi Choudhary - photographer, Press Trust of India - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post: The Filipino government has forced local television network ABS-CBN off the air. Plus, COVID-19 is used as a cover to stifle voices of dissent in Hong Kong Amidst lockdown, Philippines's largest TV network goes off air The consensus of presidents and prime ministers just about everywhere has been that getting accurate news and information out is vital since it can save lives. So what have the authorities in the Philippines done? Duterte's government has ordered the country's biggest television broadcaster, ABS-CBN, off the airwaves. The government says the network's franchise had expired, and so had its right to broadcast. That is nowhere near the full story. President Rodrigo Duterte has persistently attacked ABS-CBN for its critical journalism, including its coverage of his so-called war on drugs. He had long threatened to take the network down. Now that he has got his wish, other media outlets in Duterte's crosshairs are wondering if and when he will be coming for them. Contributors: Manuel Mogato - editor-at-large, PressOnePH Inday Espina-Varona - former chair, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines Ging Reyes - head of news, ABS-CBN Paul Gutierrez - National Press Club of the Philippines On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about President Donald Trump's confrontations with journalists by day and tweetstorms by night. Under the cover of COVID: Cracking down on Hong Kong Before the pandemic hit, hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong took to the streets protesting the erosion of their freedoms, demanding independence from China. The months of demonstrations led to changes in Hong Kong's media ecosystem. Nascent, digital news outlets reporting on the front lines saw a huge jump in their numbers and support, a reflection of protesters' growing distrust in their mainstream media - and mainland China's growing influence. Things are gradually returning to a new normal but when COVID-19 first emptied Hong Kong's streets, depriving those outlets of editorial content, a question arose - what will become of them? In addition, both Beijing and Hong Kong authorities appear to have been using the virus as a cover to crack down on voices they do not like, including the city's only pro-democracy newspaper, the Apple Daily. The Listening Post's Johanna Hoes reports on Hong Kong's changing media landscape, COVID-19, and the use of a pandemic to silence dissent. Contributors: Mark Simon - executive, Apple Daily Yuen Chan - senior lecturer, City University Ronson Chan - deputy assignment editor, Stand News Tom Grundy - founder, Hong Kong Free Press - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

As Hong Kong moved from 2019 to COVID-19, streets once jammed with protesters suddenly lay empty. The pandemic could not have come at a better time for the Beijing and Hong Kong authorities. Following months of mass demonstrations - which saw hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers demand independence from China - critics say both governments have been using COVID as a cover to crack down on dissent and push through laws that would further curb the city's freedoms. "Beijing certainly wants to ensure that the protests, the likes of which we saw last year, cannot be allowed to happen again. So they may be pushing through some controversial legislation, including national security laws and we've also seen pro-democracy figures rounded up. To be having all of this happening with a backdrop of COVID-19 and the social distancing measures in place I think, is no coincidence", explains Tom Grundy, co-founder of the news outlet, Hong Kong Free Press. One of the 15 prominent pro-democracy figures rounded up last month was a businessman called Jimmy Lai. Lai is a billionaire who owns the Apple Daily, Hong Kong's second-largest newspaper and the city's only openly pro-democracy mainstream outlet. The Listening Post's Johanna Hoes spoke with Mark Simon, an executive at Next Digital, the media conglomerate that owns the Apple Daily, and he made the point that: "Beijing was not gonna let a crisis go to waste. Lai and Apple Daily have been a thorn in the side of the Beijing-appointed government for as long as, basically, we've been around, since 1997. Arresting these people, that was a major move that they knew they could get away with just because of the coronavirus." In a media landscape dominated by news outlets that are either under direct control of the Chinese Communist Party or in the hands of businesses with close ties to the mainland, Apple Daily's coverage of the protests was hugely popular among those on the streets. But it was not the only outlet demonstrators turned to for news. For many nascent, digital media organisations, the democracy movement presented a news story - and even a financial opportunity - like no other. "People really saw that the independent, newer outfits were the ones that were showing what was really happening on the front lines and they didn't feel that they were compromised in the same way that they perceived the mainstream media to be. So there was real support for these outlets", explains Yuen Chan, senior lecturer at City University in London. One of the protesters' go-to new media outlets was Stand News. Its deputy assignment editor, Ronson Chan, explains his organisation's new-found popularity resulted in a huge financial boost. But as soon as the pandemic hit, those resources started to dry up. "For Stand News, the entire movement presented such a change - we had a significant increase in donations and our team grew from 10 to 30. But the pandemic has affected the economy. A lot of our readers who previously sponsored us are newly unemployed. Plus, we have seen fewer demonstrations so we have fewer live broadcasts and people have less interest in our platform." New protests this past week - albeit on a smaller scale - may be a sign that Hong Kongers are ready to return to the streets, despite the pandemic. The question is whether it is too late for outlets like Stand News. Produced by: Johanna Hoes Contributors: Mark Simon - Executive, Apple Daily Yuen Chan - Senior Lecturer, City University of London Ronson Chan - Deputy Assignment Editor, Stand News Tom Grundy - Co-founder, Hong Kong Free Press - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: The Filipino government has forced local television network ABS-CBN off the air. Plus, COVID-19 is used as a cover to stifle voices of dissent in Hong Kong Amidst lockdown, Philippines's largest TV network goes off air The consensus of presidents and prime ministers just about everywhere has been that getting accurate news and information out is vital since it can save lives. So what have the authorities in the Philippines done? Duterte's government has ordered the country's biggest television broadcaster, ABS-CBN, off the airwaves. The government says the network's franchise had expired, and so had its right to broadcast. That is nowhere near the full story. President Rodrigo Duterte has persistently attacked ABS-CBN for its critical journalism, including its coverage of his so-called war on drugs. He had long threatened to take the network down. Now that he has got his wish, other media outlets in Duterte's crosshairs are wondering if and when he will be coming for them. Contributors: Manuel Mogato - editor-at-large, PressOnePH Inday Espina-Varona - former chair, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines Ging Reyes - head of news, ABS-CBN Paul Gutierrez - National Press Club of the Philippines On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about President Donald Trump's confrontations with journalists by day and tweetstorms by night. Under the cover of COVID: Cracking down on Hong Kong Before the pandemic hit, hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong took to the streets protesting the erosion of their freedoms, demanding independence from China. The months of demonstrations led to changes in Hong Kong's media ecosystem. Nascent, digital news outlets reporting on the front lines saw a huge jump in their numbers and support, a reflection of protesters' growing distrust in their mainstream media - and mainland China's growing influence. Things are gradually returning to a new normal but when COVID-19 first emptied Hong Kong's streets, depriving those outlets of editorial content, a question arose - what will become of them? In addition, both Beijing and Hong Kong authorities appear to have been using the virus as a cover to crack down on voices they do not like, including the city's only pro-democracy newspaper, the Apple Daily. The Listening Post's Johanna Hoes reports on Hong Kong's changing media landscape, COVID-19, and the use of a pandemic to silence dissent. Contributors: Mark Simon - executive, Apple Daily Yuen Chan - senior lecturer, City University Ronson Chan - deputy assignment editor, Stand News Tom Grundy - founder, Hong Kong Free Press - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

In our non-stop coverage of the media side of the coronavirus pandemic over the past few months, we have trained our lens on its more troubling aspects: From misinformation being spread by citizens, journalists and governments alike to the war of narratives being waged by great powers. But COVID-19 has also brought out the best in the fourth estate: People who are producing vital coverage, sometimes designed and delivered in new ways to help us understand a story laden with complexities. In this special edition of The Listening Post, we track four path-breaking media projects from four different parts of the world, each of them using a different medium. From the United States and Brazil - countries whose presidents have repeatedly misinformed their electorates - Flo Phillips and Johanna Hoes hear from two medical experts-turned-broadcasters respectively; one through his podcast, the other over YouTube. Later in the episode Daniel Turi takes us to Europe - virtually, of course - and a media aggregator that bypasses Silicon Valley's advertising-driven algorithms and onto smart COVID-19 analysis you might otherwise miss. But Meenakshi Ravi starts the programme where the coronavirus story began, in China, where a Beijing-based magazine is proving that, even with the authorities ready to pounce, it can produce valuable journalism on the biggest news story of our time. Contributors: Zhan Zhang - research fellow, China Media Observatory Abdul El-Sayed - creator and host, America Dissected and author, Healing Politics: A Doctor's Journey Into the Heart of our Political Epidemic Atila Iamarino - science communicator and co-host, Nerdologia Evgeny Morozov - creator, The Syllabus Produced by: Meenakshi Ravi, Flo Phillips, Daniel Turi and Ryan Kohls - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Much of the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic treats the World Health Organization (WHO) as an authoritative, impartial source of information. But should it? From the advent of COVID-19, the WHO's press conferences have been a fixture in global news coverage. They serve as a touchstone for journalists and, given that the WHO has 194 member states, the pressers have become a primary source of information for global context. "The WHO does shape information globally quite significantly," says Lawrence Gostin, a professor in global health law at Georgetown University who has worked closely with the WHO in the past, "because it is a trusted and objective science adviser to the world". However, the organisation's objectivity has been called into question. It started in early January when China media analysts started observing a similarity between what the WHO was saying and official statements coming out of China. For example, on January 14, the WHO tweeted: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus". That same day, the Wuhan Health Commission's public bulletin declared, "We have not found proof for human-to-human transmission." The question is, why would the WHO repeat - almost verbatim - the claims made by China when news outlets, in Hong Kong and elsewhere, were already comparing the novel coronavirus to SARS and saying that it could very well be transferred from person to person? The answer comes down to access. China only granted the WHO access to Wuhan in February 2020, nearly three months after the first case was detected. "WHO's reporting, by virtue of its governance, is highly dependent on every member country's ability, honesty and willingness to share data and issue notifications of epidemics," says Osman Dar, director of the Global Health Programme at Chatham House. "Its verification systems can only be as good as the access their member states provide." Which is the crux of the issue. Member states are not beholden to the WHO but rather the WHO is beholden to them. Not only is the organisation's access, in large part, determined by its member states, but they also make up most of the WHO's funding. On April 15, US President Donald Trump threatened to halt his country's funding to the WHO, accusing the organisation of being China-centric. The president's critics say the threat was an attempt to deflect criticism of Trump's own mishandling of this crisis; however, his actions highlight a key vulnerability in the WHO. The US is, by far, the organisation's biggest funder and if Washington follows through with Trump's threat, then that would severely hinder its operational capacity. Which begs the question - how can the WHO speak truth to power when those powers largely control its access and its funding? "It's not totally neutral. If you're seeing something coming from the WHO, it's something that its member states wanted to be released, it is something that a member state consented to be released," says Stephen Buranyi, a journalist at The Guardian newspaper, "to see the full picture, you have to go beyond what states are telling it." Produced by: Nicholas Muirhead Contributors: Lawrence Gostin - Director, O'Neill Institute, Georgetown University Osman Dar - Global Health Programme, Chatham House Stephen Buranyi - Journalist, The Guardian Rana Mitter - Director, China Centre, Oxford University - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/