30 Sep 2019 How the 5G wireless dividend can help connect those left behind
Private, public, and civil society actors should work together to encourage more sustainable financing of universal access efforts Access to communication and information tools and platforms, including digital platforms, is essential to enable us all to exercise our human rights. In today’s world, fully exercising basic...
19 Sep 2019 Youth Peace Project a Sign of Hope in Conflict-Ridden Mindanao
The start of 2017 was marked by optimism for people living in Mindanao, the southernmost region of the Philippines. At the time, the national government was engaged in peace talks with the two major armed movements operating in the region, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front...
16 Sep 2019 When fact-checking isn’t about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’
The rise of “fake news” charges and deliberate disinformation have led to an important counter effort: fact-checking. News agencies, civil society organisations, and concerned individuals have taken on the fight for “truth” – assessing political claims and struggling to prevent misinformation guiding our decisions and...
09 Sep 2019 Children’s communication rights need better protection
Google should have known better! An Associated Press piece in The Guardian newspaper (“YouTube fined $170m for collecting children’s personal data”, 4 September 2019) notes a serious violation of children’s right to privacy: “Google’s video site YouTube has been fined $170m to settle allegations it collected children’s personal data...
02 Sep 2019 Climate change literacy and community media
Not everyone is familiar with climate change. A new survey released by Afrobarometer paints a bleak picture of how agriculture conditions are worsening due to higher temperatures, delayed rainfall, and crop failure. Crucially, among some people, it also identifies little or no knowledge about climate change itself.
26 Aug 2019 Privacy on the frontier of lawlessness
Privacy was something that used to be taken for granted. Ordinarily, the private life of an individual was not open to scrutiny, while public life was the concern of law and order and decency. In communication terms, privacy meant that only the addressee could open letters...
19 Aug 2019 Ban books, ban people
“For the past twenty years, the main issue restricting ublic debate in terms of Turkish laws has been the prosecution and imprisonment of journalists, writers and intellectuals on the grounds that they contribute to violence and terrorism.” This quote comes from a report by English PEN,...
11 Aug 2019 MD 2019-3 Editorial
By Philip Lee Seán MacBride was a keynote speaker at a consultation sponsored by WACC held in London in October 1982 titled “A new Babel: The communication revolution”. Photo: Contributed In 1976, UNESCO’s General Conference instructed its then Director General, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, to undertake “a review of all the...
11 Aug 2019 On the screen (MD2019/3)
Of his film When Persimmons Grew (still above), director Hilal Baydarov says: “When the primroses were turning red, and the white cherries were in bloom” — that is when my grandmother says the war ended. She talks about time the way people did in olden...