A UNITED PRESS IS A STRONGER PRESS

Versão em Português

Translated by Isa Mara Lando

At the second panel of the 10th piauí Journalism Festival, Celso Rocha de Barros (piauí) and journalist Natalia Viana (Agência Pública) moderated a conversation with British journalist Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian and currently a member of the Oversight Board, an independent supervisory committee for Meta’s social networks, analyzing and issuing recommendations on which content should be kept or removed from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

One of the topics raised by Rocha de Barros was the influence of big techs on the current foreign policy of the American government under Donald Trump. Arguing that the trade tariffs slapped on Brazil and other countries serve as a pressure instrument to deregulate the sector in favor of American technological giants, Rocha de Barros, the piauí journalist, asked Rusbridger what measures the Oversight Board has taken to prevent undue interference in the upcoming Brazilian elections.

“At the committee, we have been addressing the pressure exerted by governments and by the big techs, as well as the relationship between governments and big techs. Big techs must act under the scrutiny of local laws,” Rusbridger replied. Without specifying what concrete measures the committee has taken in this regard, the former Guardian editor emphasized the need for media outlets to be more collaborative with each other in a challenging moment. “Media companies must come together and present a united front. They must carry out aggressive coverage, and discuss the terms of these relationships.”

Journalist Natalia Viana also questioned Rusbridger about the tangible impacts of the board on Meta’s operations. Rusbridger admitted that the committee’s effects are limited but nevertheless he defended the need for institutions of this type. “It is undesirable for governments to regulate the content of what is allowed or not on social networks. Just as it is undesirable for Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk to be the arbiters on these issues. That is why the work of the Oversight Board is so important, bringing together editors, lawyers, judges, academics, professors, and human rights activists, helping Meta to formulate what kind of discourse is valid or not.”

Rusbridger’s focus on collaborative journalism goes back a long way. One of the major milestones of his tenure at The Guardian was the denunciations made by systems analyst Edward Snowden against the American government. Published on June 5, 2013 and corroborated by 1.7 million documents, the accusations revealed the extent and intensity of the data monitoring network and privacy invasion set up by the United States National Security Agency against ordinary American citizens. For Rusbridger, these revelations have an incalculable historical weight. They allowed us to better understand the real power of the American government’s global mass surveillance, carried out in partnership with major technology companies.

 “What we did at the time had never been done before. It was an unprecedented action for a media organization to work with millions of highly sensitive and confidential documents that required immense care. […] My greatest interest in that investigation was our partnerships with other outlets. Five different newspapers, acting in concert, would able to process that immense amount of information better than any one of them by itself. […] Today it’s normal to deal with so much data and technology in a newsroom, but back then it was something totally unprecedented.”

The publication of Snowden’s revelations put the newspaper in direct confrontation with the British government. “Technically, journalistically, morally, judicially it was a clash for which we were not prepared.” Comparing the Snowden case with that of Julian Assange – the activist and hacker responsible for the Wikileaks leaks, which revealed hundreds of thousands of American military documents and sensitive diplomatic cables – Rusbridger pointed out some differences:

“In the Assange case, the British State just kept mum. In the Snowden case, they said: You have to stop. And it’s not up to the State to tell an editor when to stop,” said Rusbridger. “On a certain week they said: ‘Now you have to stop, and if you don’t, we’ll make you stop.’ I just knew that moment would come.” Under pressure and supervision from British intelligence agents, Rusbridger authorized the destruction of the hard drives that stored copies of the documents in the newsroom (by then, the material had already been duplicated and part of the operation transferred to the United States and Brazil). The pieces of the computers, destroyed by an angle grinder, were exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2015.

The episode became one of the most well-known cases of clashes between the press and the State in the digital era, and lays bare one of Rusbridger’s most cherished themes: the relationship between journalism, power, and public trust. He is a champion of the so-called “open journalism,” according to which outlets should expose their evidence, engage in dialogue with their readers, and acknowledge their mistakes to the public. The idea was developed in his book News and How to Use It, published in 2020, at a time when part of the public’s trust in the press was seriously shaken. He acknowledged that journalism is going through a period of disbelief and distrust from the public and advocates strengthening journalism companies to confront powerful political forces.

“Companies need to defend reporters. When you have to face evil people loaded with dirty money, it’s important to have a large institution, such as a company, behind you, supporting you. The institutional force of a media company cannot be underestimated.”