Maria Ressa questions Reuters poll on the press – 06/28/2023 – Market

In a presentation on the first day of the Wan-Ifra (World Association of News Editors) congress, this Wednesday (28) in Taipei, Taiwan, the Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa once again questioned the Reuters Institute, for the annual survey it does on the level of trust of journalistic vehicles.

The website that Ressa founded and runs, Rappler, has been named the least trusted outlet in the Philippines for the past two years. The journalist, who shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize and until last year was on the institute’s board, argues that the trust survey should no longer be carried out.

“Understand that when you measure the public that has been bombarded with disinformation and information warfare, you are going to measure exactly what they want,” she told the congress, presenting reproductions of posts from people connected to the Philippine government, using the survey to question your site.

It also showed a text posted at the time by the director of the institute, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, in which he criticized attempts to distort the survey. “That was my friend Rasmus who made it,” she said. “But never mind, we still deal with it. So after years of that, I spoke up.”

Ressa, who had already left the institute last year, gave an interview to the British newspaper The Guardian last week, on the same day that the new annual report was released. He then stated that he “puts independent journalists and outlets at risk”.

He said he left the board “because of deep concerns about how the report is compiled”. He added: “I thought it was awful that they went ahead with [o relatório] and that it was used against us at a critical time. Government officials cited the Reuters Institute to attack us.”

At the congress, he said that you have to “be careful about trust, which is not one of those things you can do in a YouGov survey, they are coming after the researchers”.

To the Guardian, he had said that “the report, funded in part by Google, does not take into account the impact of disinformation campaigns, especially in countries where governments use their power to attack free media. And it does not reflect the prejudice on the platforms that have great control over the distribution of news”.

Nielsen, who also spoke at the Taipei congress, in a later panel, was questioned and replied only that he had made changes to the survey, which did not satisfy Ressa, and that he believes it is important to portray contemporary journalism.

Earlier, he told the Guardian: “We regret the abuse of Maria Ressa and the way in which our research has been misrepresented. We reacted against this publicly and will continue to do so. We believe that the methodology in our report, which covers nearly 50 countries, it’s robust”.