Truth vs. the World Press freedom fighter Dr. Courtney Radsch to talk fake news, media, and global threats to democracy
By Craig Manning Tell the truth. A journalist’s job can be summed up in those three small words. It sounds like the simplest thing in the world. Dr. Courtney Radsch knows better. She knows how, when government interests clash with the truth, it’s often the journalists who pay — sometimes with their lives. She knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the hateful online abuse that many journalists — especially women — deal with on a day-to-day basis, a side effect of doing their jobs. And she knows that, in an age of misinformation and anti-press rhetoric, it might just fall to journalists to save our democracies, protect our freedoms, and foster transformative change. So far, Radsch’s career in journalism has taken her from the Middle East to Paris to a stint with the New York Times. She was on the ground in Egypt in the early 2000s, working on her Ph.D. and monitoring the rise of cyberactivism and citizen journalism in the country — trends that eventually led to the Arab Spring. In 2008, she took a job in Dubai with Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned television channel, to oversee an expansion of the network’s English-language websites. She lost that job the following year, after publishing a report about safety issues with Emirates — an airline with ties to Dubai’s ruling family. “They wanted to introduce original reporting into the English language websites, [and] they brought me on to do that,” Radsch said of the Al Arabiya job. “And then they discovered that original reporting comes with uncomfortable subject matter. I got fired for an article I wrote and kicked out of the country.” Radsch will address northern Michigan locals at 7pm April 15 as part of the current Northwestern Michigan College International Affairs Forum series. The virtual event, titled “Protecting Press Freedom Globally and Locally,” will touch upon global threats to press freedom, the role of technology in modern journalism, and the steps people can take to support journalists in a fraught moment for the profession.
Northern Express caught up with Radsch to learn more about her current role as advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and about her views on the current state of media, journalism, and truth. Northern Express: What does CPJ do, and what does your role entail? Dr. Courtney Radsch: CPJ uses journalism to protect journalists, and defends the rights of journalists to report the news freely and without fear of reprisal. What that means is that we are essentially acting as a news service reporting daily on attacks against the press around the world, and then advocating on behalf of journalists who are under threat or imprisoned, or trying to get justice when they’re murdered. Because unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases of journalists killed or murdered, it’s almost always with impunity. I do a lot of advocacy in my role with tech platforms because they play such a critical role in enabling press freedom. And I do a lot of advocacy with governments, or multilateral organizations like the United Nations or the European Union. And then [the work involves] also leading public campaigns, so maybe that’s a petition or a solidarity letter-writing campaign to a journalist in prison, or their family. So, we use a whole range of tools to advocate and stand in solidarity with journalists. And then we also provide lifesaving safety information, and guidance and assistance, to journalists in distress. Express: Here in the United States, a lot of people might not fully grasp the scope and importance of citizen journalism in other parts of the world, or the threats that some journalists are under. What are a few recent events, globally or close to home, that people should consider as they try to wrap their minds around these ideas? Radsch: I think that there are a plethora of recent events to choose from. Just to pluck a couple of headlines: In Myanmar, what is happening with the
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military coup there, and what we’re seeing in terms of the violence against civilians — which has incorporated a massive crackdown on the press, including the jailing of journalists or the targeting of journalists. And then we see that this is actually a pattern that plays out around the world when there are political upheavals or protests. In Belarus; in Russia; in Nigeria, which had its own Black Lives Matter movement; in the United States, with the Black Lives Matter movement here, and then with the January 6 uprising [at the Capitol]. We’re really seeing that there is a lot of turbulence right now around the world, a lot of political turbulence, people in the streets. And if you look at political theory, a lot of people will say: ‘You go to the streets when you feel like there are no other avenues to bring about change.’ Even in democracies, there are limited avenues for change in people’s daily life. And then you wrap this all up in coronavirus, and the response to the pandemic — or the lack thereof, in some countries. In China, in the early months, there was a crackdown on the press. [The state] ‘disappeared’ several citizen journalists and informal journalists who were really important in documenting information from Wuhan and providing an early warning about what was going to come, what we might see around the world. We’ve seen this [narrative] play out around the world with the retaliation against journalists who are trying to provide an independent, accurate picture of what’s happening in various countries, and then they’re getting retaliated against by governments and authorities who don’t like the reality that is being portrayed, or who have different ‘official’ versions of their stories. And throughout this all, there’s the ongoing vilification of the media that was really amplified by the ‘fake news’ and ‘enemy of the people’ rhetoric under President Trump but was very quickly taken up and became a rallying cry for dictators and democrats alike, from Putin [in Russia] and Xi Jinping [in China], to Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Duterte in the Philippines, and everyone in between. It’s become a really challenging time to do journalism. And
it’s emphasized the importance of both professional and citizen journalism living in this ecosystem. Express: You mentioned President Trump and the whole ‘fake news’ movement. How have the past five years changed the view of journalism, journalists, and the media? And how do you expect some of those changes to linger into the future, even though we’ve obviously had a change in administration? Radsch: A change in administration is not going to undo much of the devastation that’s been caused by the proliferation of the anti-press rhetoric, from the White House and then around the world. Because what has happened is that [this rhetoric] has become a rallying cry by governments around the world who want to delegitimize independent reporting and inoculate themselves against criticism. It has undermined public confidence and trust in the media, which takes a long time to rebuild if — if that’s possible at all. Express: Social media and the internet can be powerful tools for citizen journalism and journalism in general, but they can also be weaponized for the spread of misinformation. How do we find a balance between those two things? Radsch: I think that in order to find a balance, you have to have some basic rights and protections for, we call them users and consumers, but really, it’s about citizenship and about humanity. You need to have strong privacy protections. You need to have strong rights to freedom of expression, and legislative frameworks that enable people to express themselves. You need to restrict the way that companies can target and weaponize data and information against people. You need to have strong laws that protect private companies from being forced to hand over information to authorities. You need to have strong encryption to dissuade surveillance. You need strong cybersecurity safeguards to reduce hacking and spyware. So there are a whole host of different things that can be done. But there seems to be
