The Listening Post

On The Listening Post this week: Brazil's President Bolsonaro and COVID-19 misinformation. Plus, how well has the WHO performed as a key information source during the pandemic? Brazil's Bolsonaro: Turning COVID-19 denial into media spectacle A president at odds with his advisers and scientists over COVID-19, who has said the virus is no worse than the flu, and whose supporters accuse the media of hyping up the story. Not Donald Trump, but Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro. Even as deaths in Brazil surpass China, President Bolsonaro continues to downplay the pandemic. After firing his health minister, he went on to attend a "protest" demanding military intervention to lift the lockdown. He also has the support of two of Brazil's biggest media players, Record TV and SBT. Whether Bolsonaro is in denial, or just playing politics, they are standing firmly by his side. Contributors: Andrew Fishman - Managing editor, The Intercept Brasil Gustavo Ribeiro - Founder, Brazilian Report Bob Fernandes - Journalist and commentator Leonardo Custodio, Postdoctoral researcher - Abo Akademi University On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Meenakshi Ravi about a media storm in Pakistan, where a religious leader turned a televised coronavirus fundraiser into an attack on the broadcasters. Who holds WHO accountable? COVID-19 is the biggest news story most of us have ever seen. Of all the institutions responsible for getting information out, the World Health Organization (WHO) may be the most vital. The WHO is a specialised agency of the United Nations borne out of the recognition that no single country can manage a global outbreak, and that an international health body is needed to rise above the politics of national interests. In this pandemic, however, the WHO has been accused of falling short of its mandate and was unable to act independently in accessing and assessing the outbreak. The WHO was only granted access to Wuhan in mid-February. And not only did it fail to verify the early information on COVID-19 coming out of China, but it amplified it by repeating Chinese misinformation. On January 14, the WHO tweeted that there was "no proof of human-to-human transmission" of the coronavirus. But at the time, media in Hong Kong and other countries, were already comparing the virus to SARS and saying it was most likely transmitting from people to people. The Listening Post's producer Nic Muirhead reports on the WHO, and how one of the most important news sources in the world may be compromised. 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/

Lockdown has changed everything - millions have been confined to their homes, 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. "During the first two weeks, no journalists were allowed in the area where I live so they couldn't show the world what was going on here," says Marzio Toniolo, a 35-year old teacher turned photographer. "That's when I saw an opportunity." Toniolo lives in San Fiorano, northern Italy, the epicentre of Europe's coronavirus outbreak and one of the worst affected regions in the world. His photographs document how his family, three generations under one roof, have adapted to a strict lockdown well into its third month. "I wanted to focus on the normality of it all - what was going on at home day in, day out… I think everyone can identify in some way with my family's situation." On the other end of the spectrum, the great urban spaces where millions once gathered, now lie empty and desolate. Phil Penman is a British photographer based in New York City, and in 25 years of chronicling life in the city, he's never seen anything like it. "It's very weird because you go out there and there are no photographers. So I wanted to try to capture the emptiness of the city." His work is achingly quiet. Landmarks such as Grand Central Terminal and the Statue of Liberty - once teeming with visitors - are shrouded in silence and stillness. "It's just totally bizarre," says Penman. "If I was the city, I would be asking what happened? You know, where is everybody? It's emotional being out there." In other parts of the world, solitude is a luxury that many cannot afford. "Daily wage earners and workers live in highly crowded dwellings with barely any space to stretch their legs," explains Ravi Choudhary. "If one of them catches coronavirus, it's inevitable others will get infected too because they cannot quarantine themselves." Choudhary is a Delhi-based photographer for the Press Trust of India. His photographs provide shocking witness to the mass upheaval of migrant workers caused by the lockdown. Forced into the streets and stranded hundreds of kilometres from their homes, they have no choice but to attempt the journey on foot. "I followed this little girl with a large bag on her head after spotting her in the crowd and I asked her where she was headed," recalls Choudhary. "Her village was about 400 kilometers away and I thought to myself, how is this little girl, with such a heavy burden, going to make it all the way back to her village… Sometimes all you need is one single photo to understand the whole story. " 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 Produced by: Flo Phillips and Ahmed Madi - 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: 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/

At The Listening Post, we have been tracking how governments are using technology - primarily phone data - to monitor the movements of citizens - and curb the spread of the coronavirus. Among the long term implications of that is the concern that even if and when the pandemic is brought under control, those governments might prove reluctant to give up their new surveillance powers. Israel is a case in point. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now has the legal right to surveil Israeli citizens in new ways - and he did that without even consulting the parliament. And Israel already has expertise in this area. It has spent decades honing its ability - and the technology required - to monitor the movements of Palestinians. "The difference with Israel is that it had in place a template," Yael Berda, a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, told The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi. "Possibly the most sophisticated population management system on the planet. It basically governs four million people that do not have rights. And, therefore, the issue of suspension of rights was, is not a question when we're talking about the occupied territories." Israelis serving in the elite units that conduct surveillance on Palestinians, often exit their mandatory military service through a revolving door into the private sector. They use their experience to turn a profit. That is the case with the founders of NSO - an Israeli tech company whose links to authoritarian regimes around the world have featured in many scandals - now trying to hawk its software as a panacea for coronavirus. "There are numerous stories of journalists and human rights defenders, and civil society activists, being killed, harassed, surveilled, using NSO Group spyware," Marwa Fatafta at Access Now told Nafi. "So companies like these are in no business to deal with people's sensitive health data." Looming over the massive system of surveillance being assembled by Israel is its embattled prime minister. Netanyahu has for years played up fears about his enemies - Palestinians, the media and more. Now, as he fights for his political survival, he's exploiting fear generated by the coronavirus to entrench his rule. Yossi Melman, a writer for Haaretz, made the point that Netanyahu "has been in power for 11 years but in the last years, he didn't win the last three elections. And still, he's manipulating the situation to concentrate even more power in his hands." "Fighting the pandemic is one thing," says Fatafta "but we should not sacrifice our privacy as a price for it, and we should not be put in a corner where we have to choose between our privacy or our health." Contributors: Yossi Melman - Writer, Haaretz Marwa Fatafta - Policy manager, Access Now Yael Berda - Assistant professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem - 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: From "herd immunity" to lack of testing, Britain's coronavirus response has needed more media scrutiny. Plus, Israeli surveillance under cover of COVID-19. COVID-19 in Britain: The death toll and the media deference As the coronavirus death toll in the UK continues to mount - there is a growing market for explanations. And it is not being met at 10 Downing Street. Government officials at the daily briefings are dodging difficult questions. Journalists are failing to get answers. This has meant politicians have been getting away with vague or incomplete answers on some serious failings - such as the lack of testing, personal protective equipment for healthcare workers and ventilators - in a relatively prosperous country. Then there are the questionable decisions that Prime Minister Boris Johnson took in the early stages. Johnson caught the virus - but has recovered. His personal story has received plenty of attention. But how we got here - and who is responsible - is a larger story, yet to be properly told. Contributors: Hardeep Matharu - Editor, Byline Times Karin Wahl-Jorgensen - Journalism professor, Cardiff University Helen Ward - Professor of Public Health, Imperial College London Carole Cadwalladr - Reporter, The Observer On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Nicholas Muirhead about the novel methods those under lockdown are using to get their stories about COVID-19 heard on the outside. Pandemic panopticon - Israeli surveillance under cover of COVID-19 Here at The Listening Post, we have been tracking how some governments are using technology to monitor the movements of their citizens and curb the spread of the coronavirus. We examined some of the long-term implications of that - the concern that even if this pandemic is brought under control, those governments might prove reluctant to give up their new surveillance powers. Israel would be a case in point. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now has the legal right to surveil Israeli citizens in new ways, and he acquired that right without even consulting the parliament. Israel already has expertise in this field. It has spent decades honing its ability - and the technology required - to monitor the movements of Palestinians. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi reports from home on the surveillance that Palestinians have been subjected to - and whether Israelis can see what's coming. Contributors: Yossi Melman - Writer, Haaretz Marwa Fatafta - Policy manager, Access Now Yael Berda - Assistant professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem - 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/

When it comes to the role the media can play - good and bad - during a global pandemic, look no further than Italy: The second country to be gripped by COVID-19 and the first in which news outlets are, in any meaningful sense, free from state control. The nationwide lockdown has been in effect for more than a month, but the government has made an exception for reporters, deeming their work an essential service. As might be expected in these extraordinary times, the task of serving the public interest - never more vital - has also been fraught with complexity for Italian journalists. One challenge has been gauging the boundaries of what constitutes ethical, or responsible journalism during a public health emergency of such unprecedented scale. An outlet judged to have exceeded those limits is Corriere della Sera, Italy's most widely-read newspaper. On March 8, the day before the northern region of Lombardy, Italy's COVID-19 epicentre, went into lockdown, the paper published an early draft of the government decree ordering the province's 16 million inhabitants to stay indoors. "That leak generated immediately a frenzy," Mattia Ferraresi, a reporter for the conservative-leaning daily Il Foglio, told The Listening Post's Daniel Turi. "According to a newspaper called Il Fatto Quotidiano, that pushed 41,000 people to move around the country in a moment when it was absolutely crucial that people would respect orders and not move around to avoid spreading the virus." Another battle has been the barrage of misinformation ricocheting around the internet - from WhatsApp forwards playing down the virus's potency to viral videos claiming it was cooked up in a laboratory by one great power or another. Giulia Bosetti is a reporter for Presa Diretta, an investigative publication on the publicly-owned TV channel Rai 3 which has been debunking COVID-19 myths: "For example, the same day our programme was broadcast, a Rai TV report from 2015 about a coronavirus created in a Chinese lab started circulating again. But it was about a completely different virus … Literally in the space of a few hours, Salvini - the leader of the Lega party and our former deputy prime minister - actually asked a question in parliament requesting it to be investigated … It only took us a few interviews with doctors and scientists to prove that it was totally fake news." The pandemic has paused what had been a lengthy period of decline for traditional media in Italy - especially for newspapers, whose sales have fallen more or less continuously since the 1990s. If the rise of the internet is the underlying factor in that trend, a powerful catalyst has been the breakdown of public trust in mainstream news sources over the same period. A report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism last year underlined the depth of the deficit: Just 40 percent of the Italians polled said they trusted the news media - a figure the report describes as "particularly low" - while just one-third thought the media scrutinised the powerful well. That, however, was pre-COVID-19. The confinement of 60 million people inside their homes - and in need of reliable information - has gifted Italy's news industry with something previously unthinkable: A, literally, captive audience. Carlo Verdelli, editor-in-chief at Italy's leading centre-left broadsheet, La Repubblica, explains the effect on the paper's circulation: "Before the coronavirus, we averaged approximately three million unique visitors a day. Now on our busiest days we reach 14-15 million visitors." Sales of physical copies have also increased, Verdelli says, despite the closure of thousands of newsstands. For Rai 3's Giulia Bosetti, it is a chance for Italy's legacy media to start winning back that lost faith: "This is the moment when television journalism, and print as well, can regain the trust of their listeners and readers by offering up different kinds of journalism - daily updates with the latest facts and figures, including the number of deaths - but also reporting that tries to understand the root of the problems we now face." Produced by: Daniel Turi Contributors: Mattia Ferraresi - reporter, Il Foglio Giulia Bosetti - investigative journalist, Rai 3 Carlo Verdelli - editor-in-chief, La Repubblica - 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: Infection rates, death rates - the news is full of statistics about the virus, but how accurate are they? Plus, Italian journalists reflect on reporting COVID-19. Do numbers lie? Data and statistics in the age of the coronavirus. COVID-19 is a news story driven by the numbers. The data helps journalists quantify the scale of the pandemic and allows news consumers to assess the risk. The numbers also inform governments on what measures should be taken. But statisticians say the way in which coronavirus data is collected, interpreted and reported, is inherently flawed. The issue is not misinformation, rather it is the limitations of science, in the early stages of understanding a new virus and a new pandemic. Contributors: Jon Allsop - Writer, CJR newsletter John Ioannidis - Professor, Stanford University Maggie Koerth - Senior science reporter, FiveThirtyEight John Allen Paulos - Mathematics professor, Temple University; author of A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about how WhatsApp is trying to stem the flow of misinformation about COVID-19 on its platform. Pandemic journalism: Italian media grapple with COVID-19 Countries still climbing the coronavirus curve have been looking at nations that are further along - to see what's coming. Journalists who want to do the same might want to take a long look at Italy. It was the second country to be gripped by COVID-19 and the first in which the media are largely free from government control. Italy's nationwide lockdown has been in effect for more than a month, but the government has made an exception for reporters, deeming their work to be an essential service. Those journalists have had their work cut out for them from the start. Trust in the Italian media had been at an all-time low. Nothing like a big news story for a chance to rebuild a reputation. Daniel Turi speaks with three Italian journalists. Contributors: Mattia Ferraresi - Reporter, Il Foglio Giulia Bosetti - Investigative journalist, Rai 3 Carlo Verdelli - Editor-in-chief, La Repubblica - 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: From China to the US, the COVID-19 battle is as much medical as it is media. Plus, lessons from the coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu. The geopolitical battle for the COVID-19 narrative As they have been isolating their populations to keep the coronavirus contained, some powerful governments are simultaneously waging a worldwide war of perceptions - laying out how the pandemic happened, where the responsibilities lie and which country should lead the fight against it. China is out to shift the narrative from its initially slow response - the way its censors kept a lid on the story - to the collective effort since then to bring down the infection rate. Beijing has also borrowed a page from Moscow's playbook - using mainstream and social media platforms to spread conspiracy theories and to muddle perceptions. In Washington, DC, a campaign to brand COVID-19 the "Chinese virus" is being led by President Donald Trump himself. This story has grown into a debate about competing ideologies - a global one, played out through the news media - of what the world will look like once the pandemic is over - and which political system, which superpower - will be best placed to lead. Contributors: Mark Galeotti - principal director, Mayak Intelligence and author of We Need to Talk about Putin Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian - China reporter, Axios Emerson Brooking - resident fellow, DFR Lab and author of The Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about the COVID-19 emergency laws that are threatening press freedom worldwide. 1918 to COVID-19: 100 years of covering pandemics How should authorities respond to COVID-19, and what role should the media play? From the beginning of the outbreak, historians have looked to the past for valuable lessons learned - most notably, to the so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. John Barry is an American historian and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. The Listening Post's Nic Muirhead interviews Barry on the role the media played in 1918; how news organisations, through self-censorship and misinformation, helped spread the virus, and how we are seeing some disturbing parallels in the coverage of COVID-19 today. Contributor: John M Barry - author of The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. - 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/

History has shown, time and again, that the role of the media during a pandemic can be crucial, not only to our understanding of the issues at stake but to our survival as well. John M Barry is an American historian and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. In an interview with The Listening Post's Nicholas Muirhead, he looks back on how the US media covered the outbreak of Spanish Flu in 1918, how news organisations, through self-censorship and misinformation, helped spread the virus, and how, more than, a century later we are seeing some disturbing parallels in the news coverage today. The Spanish Flu claimed anywhere from 50 to 100 million lives and was spread around the globe, in large part by soldiers returning home from World War I. It was not called the "Spanish Flu" because the first cases were detected in Spain but rather because of how the story was reported. In the countries that were at war, journalists were largely censored and therefore prohibited from covering the true scale of the outbreak. The fear was that news of a deadly disease would damage morale and signal weakness to the enemy. In Spain, which was neutral during the war, journalists were free to report the story, and when King Alfonso XIII caught the virus, it received an enormous amount of publicity. From then on, the pandemic was known as the Spanish Flu. Though the war was coming to an end by the time the disease arrived in the US, the media were still largely self-censoring. For instance, in Philadelphia, when the biggest parade in the city's history was planned to celebrate the end of the war, the medical community warned journalists it should be cancelled. Barry told Muirhead: "Reporters were writing stories, editors were killing the stories." The parade went ahead, attended by hundreds of thousands of people, and 48 hours later (the typical incubation period of influenza) people started falling ill. "The disease really exploded in the city," Barry said adding, "and that happened to be one of the hardest-hit cities in the country, if not the world." When news of the coronavirus outbreak first started circulating in the US, President Donald Trump largely downplayed the severity of the outbreak. He told Americans the disease would disappear and his administration had everything under control. Those talking points were largely mirrored in the coverage on Fox News, the most-watched TV channel in the country. Barry is reluctant to call the rhetoric coming out of either the White House or Fox News outright lies, as it was in 1918. However, with the benefit of hindsight, he now has one simple message to governments trying to contain the outbreak and journalists trying to cover it: "Telling the truth bluntly and transparently, letting people know what they can expect as truthfully as we know it, will only help us deal with it." Sometimes it helps to look back to know the best way forward. Produced by: Nicholas Muirhead Contributor: John M Barry - Author, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History - 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: From China to the US, the COVID-19 battle is as much medical as it is media. Plus, lessons from the coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu. The geopolitical battle for the COVID-19 narrative As they have been isolating their populations to keep the coronavirus contained, some powerful governments are simultaneously waging a worldwide war of perceptions - laying out how the pandemic happened, where the responsibilities lie and which country should lead the fight against it. China is out to shift the narrative from its initially slow response - the way its censors kept a lid on the story - to the collective effort since then to bring down the infection rate. Beijing has also borrowed a page from Moscow's playbook - using mainstream and social media platforms to spread conspiracy theories and to muddle perceptions. In Washington, DC, a campaign to brand COVID-19 the "Chinese virus" is being led by President Donald Trump himself. This story has grown into a debate about competing ideologies - a global one, played out through the news media - of what the world will look like once the pandemic is over - and which political system, which superpower - will be best placed to lead. Contributors: Mark Galeotti - principal director, Mayak Intelligence and author of We Need to Talk about Putin Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian - China reporter, Axios Emerson Brooking - resident fellow, DFR Lab and author of The Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about the COVID-19 emergency laws that are threatening press freedom worldwide. 1918 to COVID-19: 100 years of covering pandemics How should authorities respond to COVID-19, and what role should the media play? From the beginning of the outbreak, historians have looked to the past for valuable lessons learned - most notably, to the so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. John Barry is an American historian and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. The Listening Post's Nic Muirhead interviews Barry on the role the media played in 1918; how news organisations, through self-censorship and misinformation, helped spread the virus, and how we are seeing some disturbing parallels in the coverage of COVID-19 today. Contributor: John M Barry - author of The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. - 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/

A note for our viewers: The COVID-19 pandemic is a news story like no other, and as life as we know it grinds to a halt, The Listening Post team - like so many journalists across the globe - have put this week’s show together from home. We will get better at it! On The Listening Post this week: In the race to protect public health, are governments harming privacy rights? Plus, in the US, coronavirus misinformation comes from the top - President Trump. Coronavirus: Tracking the Outbreak, or Spying on People? In the worldwide battle against COVID-19 - more governments are looking at our phones to track the infected and to prevent the virus from spreading. China, South Korea, Israel, Italy and others are using phone location software, along with CCTV video and credit card records, among other tools, to do that. Governments are understandably eager to use every weapon at their disposal in this fight and phone tracking has already proven effective in some places - such as China. But these measures come with all kinds of questions on finding the right balance between the need for public safety and the individual's right to privacy. Another question worth asking: How long do the authorities intend to keep digging into our phones? Political leaders everywhere are likening the COVID-19 fight to a war and it would not be the first time that extraordinary security measures - imposed during a time of war - proved permanent and problematic. Contributors: Michael Birnhack - Professor of Law, University of Tel Aviv Albert Fox Cahn - Executive Director, STOP (Surveillance Technology Oversight Project) Alexandrine Pirlot de Corbion - Director of Strategy, Privacy International Jung Won Sonn - Associate Professor, UCL Deadly Disinformation: COVID-19 in Trump's America As this pandemic spreads, news consumers are searching far and wide for information that they can rely on. But what if two of your primary news sources - the government and the most-watched TV news channel - are setting aside medical science in favour of politically-driven fiction? That is what Americans have been dealing with. The stream of misinformation flowing from the White House has misled the public on the severity of the threat and put American lives at risk. And that is why one US radio network has already decided it will no longer broadcast President Trump's daily briefings live - television news networks are debating internally whether they should do the same. However, that is not even a question at Fox News - the channel that is ideologically aligned with the president. While it has gradually changed its tone on the coronavirus story - no longer describing it as some politically driven hoax - Fox still largely toes the line set by the White House. The stakes are high, but it is clear that President Trump and Fox News are in this together, come what may. Contributors: Charles Seife - Professor of Health Journalism, NYU Kayla Gogarty - Senior Researcher, Media Matters for America Caleb Ecarma - Writer, Vanity Fair Joanne Kenen - Executive Health Editor, Politico - 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/

From a nondescript residential block in downtown Beirut, Jean Kassir and his journalistic collective - Megaphone - are producing some of the most dynamic journalism of Lebanon's five-month uprising. In a media landscape dominated by partisan journalism, Megaphone has become a trusted source for its critical take on the news and slick content that has outmatched its more established rivals. "The majority of our team are volunteers. Many come to work with us after they have finished their day shift," Kassir told The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi. "The revolution was a major turning point. We used to produce two videos a month; during the first month of the revolution, we started producing two or three videos a day. Some on the team would work daily from noon until three or four in the morning. It is something I think we will never again experience in our lives." The uprising has brought together a cross-section of Lebanese society in a revolt against a political system defined by sectarian identity, which has failed to provide even the most basic services. It has also revealed much about the shortcomings of Lebanon's media outlets - too many of which are skewing their coverage - since they are split along the same lines as politicians. "Given that the media is, by and large, run by politicians, political parties or businessmen with political ambitions, they have of course played a very important role in helping the elite reshape themselves," journalist Kareem Chehayeb told us. "They've done so by trying to rebrand a lot of these politicians as reformists who have been obstructed by their political rivals." In Lebanon, just 12 families - most of them directly involved in politics - control close to 50 percent of the media. The remaining 50 percent of outlets are run by political parties or the state. With so many media outlets so compromised by their ownership, journalism that confronts Lebanon's ruling elite is more necessary than ever. "It is very difficult for one to think about political change, without a fundamental change to people's source of information," says Kassir. "When journalism confronts and challenges the various official narratives put forward by the sects or the parties or the factions, then we can actually change the rules of the game in this country. So it is not a detail – the media is a fundamental pillar in this process, whose role is to deconstruct a regime that has lasted too long and cost the country too much." Contributors: Jean Kassir - Managing Editor, Megaphone Jamal Saleh - Creative Director, Megaphone Kareem Chehayeb - Co-founder, The Public Source Jad Abou Jaoudeh - Head of News, OTV

On The Listening Post this week: What happens to Trump's disinformation when it comes up against the science of COVID-19? And, the media outlets that have chronicled Lebanon's uprisings. Deadly Disinformation: COVID-19 in Trump's America With the coronavirus grinding life to a halt around the world, people are searching for reliable information. But what if two primary sources of news - the government and the most-watched TV channel - are setting aside medical science in favour of politically-driven fiction? That is what Americans are dealing with. For three years, President Trump has had fact checkers working overtime. But the stream of disinformation on COVID-19 flowing from the White House has not only misled the public on the severity of the threat, it has put lives at risk. Then there is Fox News. Its initial attempt to frame the pandemic as a "hoax" designed to take down the president has also been exposed. As infection rates climb and the death toll mounts - Trump finds himself confronted with some facts - scientific ones - that not even he can deny. Contributors: Charles Seife - Professor of Health Journalism, NYU Kayla Gogarty - Senior Researcher, Media Matters for America Caleb Ecarma - Writer, Vanity Fair Joanne Kenen - Executive Health Editor, Politico On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Meenakshi Ravi about China's removal of yet more American journalists as the media war between Washington and Beijing heats up. Megaphone: Amplifying voices from Lebanon's uprising Like many countries around the globe, Lebanon has declared a coronavirus state of emergency. But the country is already five months into a series of anti-government demonstrations - the biggest since Lebanon won its independence in 1943. The protest movement bridges classes and sects - citizens revolting against a political system that is defined by sectarian identity and has failed to provide them with the economic basics. It is an ongoing story that has also revealed much about the failure of Lebanon's media outlets - too many of which are skewing their coverage - since they are split along the same lines that politicians are. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi looks at one news site that is out to change the media mix - and mess with the mainstream narratives. Megaphone is an online platform that produces punchy social videos and boundary-pushing opinion pieces - critical takes on the news - and the way it has been covered. Contributors: Jean Kassir - Managing Editor, Megaphone Jamal Saleh - Creative Director, Megaphone Kareem Chehayeb - Co-founder, The Public Source Jad Abou Jaoudeh - Head of News, OTV - 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: As COVID-19 goes global, China’s propaganda plan is to turn the tide of negative press in their favour. Plus, the B-scheme movie of apartheid South Africa. Controlling the coronavirus narrative: China’s propaganda push The coronavirus story took a turn last week when a government spokesman in Beijing told journalists to stop reporting that the COVID-19 virus originated in China. Ever since last year when the first case was reported in the city of Wuhan, the origin of this outbreak has not been a point of contention, not even in China’s state media – until now. Why the change of tack? It comes down to the numbers. More than a hundred countries are affected. The number of cases keeps climbing, so does the death toll. The cost to the global economy is already in the billions of dollars and it could reach trillions. Those are the kinds of figures no government wants to be associated with. Contributors: Liu Xin - Host and journalist, CGTN Yaqiu Wang – China researcher, Human Rights Watch Shelley Zhang - Writer, China Uncensored Professor Steve Tsang - Director, SOAS China Institute On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about the charges brought against the Slovak businessman on trial for the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak. The propaganda films of apartheid-era South Africa Like many governments, South Africa’s apartheid rulers offered subsidies to the film industry. The ‘B-scheme’ was one such subsidy. In order to qualify, filmmakers – who were mostly white back then – had to produce films with black casts, for black audiences in a black South African language such as Zulu, Xhosa or Tswana. From around 1973 to 1989, as many as 1500 of those films were produced. But in many cases there was a prevailing theme; one that would explain why the apartheid government would help bankroll movies that were made – ostensibly – for the entertainment of black South Africans. The Listening Post’s Nic Muirhead reports on the B-scheme subsidy and the effect it had on film making in apartheid-era South Africa. Contributors: Charles Mokatsane – Cinema owner Benjamin Cowley – CEO, Gravel Road Productions Gairoonisa Paleker – Senior Lecturer, University of Pretoria Tonie van der Merwe – Filmmaker - 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/

Pakistan has an image problem. For years, the country has been synonymous with drone attacks, religious extremism, and political instability; ever since the 9/11 attacks and the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, the international media have viewed Pakistan almost exclusively through the lens of terror and violence. The chairman of Pakistan's National Tourism Coordination Board, Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari, thinks it is unfair and that a reassessment of Pakistan's public image is long overdue. "We've gone leaps and bounds beyond it," says Bukhari. "The people of Pakistan have moved on, so it's about time the world also moves on with it." It is a problem that governments might once have tackled by spending billions on international public relations campaigns, glossy magazine advertisements, and prime-time television commercial spots. These days, however, the trick is to bring on the travel vloggers - young telegenic globe trotters with huge online audiences whose content is watched by millions, daily. "I think just looking at how quickly the image of Pakistan has changed in literally 18 months, that's huge," says Eva zu Beck, a Polish travel vlogger, and one of many who have made trips to Pakistan in the past few years. "I mean, the country was almost off limits to most travellers for, like, a decade. And then all of a sudden everything changed ... I think it shows the power of social media and travel vlogging in general." For some Pakistanis, however, the positive publicity brought by foreign social media influencers is cause for concern rather than celebration. This is because the influencers often appear to enjoy privileged access to certain parts of the country that are largely off limits even to Pakistanis, areas such as Balochistan, a hotspot for militarism and unrest tightly policed by authorities, but which has hosted a steady stream of travel vloggers over the past two years. Aneeqa Ali told The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi: "For normal Pakistani travellers, not just for journalists, it would not be easy for them to get access to these areas." As a Pakistani travel agent, Ali knows first-hand the difficulties of securing the kinds of clearances and access many of these influencers seemingly take for granted. "The problem comes when you actually show on the media that, you know, you can go there, you can travel there and it's the next destination and you're gonna have a wonderful time ... but actually, on ground, that's not the reality." The Pakistani government has had some success partnering with foreign social media influencers to improve perceptions abroad, but at home, the strategy is proving less popular. Some Pakistanis are frustrated that the image of the new Pakistan has been defined predominantly by white Western faces. "It's one thing promoting your tourist industry, and another thing feeding an Anglo-centric narrative," says Ahmer Naqvi, a Pakistani journalist and cultural critic based in Karachi. "How is it that when you're speaking from Pakistan, you have non-Pakistanis speaking for it, and people from Pakistan themselves are not allowed, or not available, to be part of this?" Produced by: Meenakshi Ravi & Ahmed Madi Contributors: Ahmer Naqvi - Karachi-based cultural critic Aneeqa Ali - Lahore-based travel agent Eva zu Beck - Travel vlogger Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari - Chairman, National Tourism Coordination Board - 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/