Panel says technology has expanded both access and misinformation for war coverage
A panel discussion Feb.16 addressed journalists' challenges in conflict reporting when technology has led to proliferation of both information and misinformation.
The panel, organized by the International Correspondents' Committee, consisted of Laetitia Courtois, permanent representative to the UN as the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) New York delegation, Jody Ginsburg from the Committee to Protect Journalists and Wall Street Journal national security reporter Vivian Salama. Former Club President Jen Judson moderated the discussion.
Salama commented that she wouldn't have expected an all-woman panel on conflict reporting when she started covering the Iraq war 20 years ago. She noted that technology had changed war coverage.
"In the earliest days, where if you didn't have access to a certain area, it was basically a black hole for information. With Twitter, technology, and social media, citizen journalism has taken on a new life form. There are ways to get information, but verifying information still is a challenge," she said. War has become asymmetrical, with a proliferation of actors, making it unclear what the rules of the conflict are, Ginsburg noted. Although propaganda has always been a feature of war, the difference now is that "we have the volume, the scale, and the speed of disinformation as part and parcel of the physical warfare," which places journalists at greater risk while reporting from the frontline, she said. The nature of modern warfare also makes the work of organizations like the ICRC, which works in areas of conflict and armed violence as a neutral and impartial humanitarian actor, more challenging. Courtois said. It makes it more difficult to engage and build relationships with state and non-state actors to protect and assist people in conflict. The role of journalists in a conflict is to get the information out, hold leaders accountable, and tell the stories of people who don't have a voice, but it is much more challenging to do it in a war zone when facts become weaponized, she said.. Ginsburg cited the example of the AP report on Mariupol, where the Russians accused the people of being actors. "In my lifetime, I've never seen such brazen attempts to discredit what's to me really clearly true… But because we're in a space now where we've now been all taught to mistrust everything…the Russians were able to turn something which should have been uncontestable into something that then suddenly became doubtful," she said. The war in Ukraine is completely different from the past because the Ukrainians want to give you access so you can tell the world what is happening to them, said Salama. During wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, particularly in Iraq and Syria, where journalists were looked at with suspicion, hotspots were too risky.. Misinformation can really cost lives and disrupt the humanitarian response on the ground, Courtois said. Although misinformation has always existed, the level of sophistication of deep fakes, for example, makes an already challenging situation worse, said Salama.
The panel concluded with a spirited Q&A session. The panel thanked Dominique Maria Bonessi, Communications Officer/Podcast Producer at ICRC, for organizing this event from start to finish.