Laws and tech to silence women's voices
particularly women journalists
Hey Checklisters!
We hope you’re staying safe and healthy.
This week in The Checklist, we take a look at the Iranian regime's intention to systematically silence women's voices. Reporters Without Borders highlights the following:
Since the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 and the protests that followed, 5 times more female journalists have been detained
44% of journalists currently detained in Iran are women
Nilufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, the first journalists who drew public attention to Mahsa Amini's death, have been charged with accusations that could result in the death penalty.
As a group that supports the freedom of press and initiatives that encourage women’s participation in journalism, we are deeply concerned about the fate of women, particularly those in journalism, in Iran. In this issue of the newsletter we also take a look at the threat posed by the use of technology by the Iranian authorities “to identify inappropriate and unusual movements,” including “failure to observe hijab laws.” Women deemed violators of the law can lose access to banks, public transportation, and other essential government services. Repeat offenders can spend years in jail or in forced morality schooling. Iranian women are protesting discriminatory rules and calling for change to achieve their fundamental rights and freedoms. The Iranian authorities – and the world – should listen.
Also, take a look at the Townsquare section where we share opportunities and events.
If there are updates you would like us to share from your country or region, please reach out to us at checklist@meedan.com.
The Check Global Report
By Meedan’s Check Global team in Beirut, Belo Horizonte, Kochi, Bhimtal, and Nairobi
Iran Says Face Recognition Will ID Women Breaking Hijab Laws (Wired)
Mahsa Alimardani, who researches freedom of expression in Iran at the University of Oxford, has recently heard reports of women in Iran receiving citations in the mail for hijab law violations despite not having had an interaction with a law enforcement officer. Iran’s government has spent years building a digital surveillance apparatus, Alimardani says. The country’s national identity database, built in 2015, includes biometric data like face scans and is used for national ID cards and to identify people considered dissidents by authorities.
"If government claims about the use of face recognition are true, it’s the first instance she knows of a government using the technology to enforce gender-related dress law." — Cathryn Grothe, a research analyst at Freedom House, a US government–backed nonprofit
The most dangerous place to be a journalist is not an active war zone but Latin America (Reuters Institute)
Violence against journalists is often difficult to categorize due to the limitations in assessing whether it is a direct retaliation for the victims’ journalistic activity. However, the numbers of journalists killed in 2022 in the region are staggering, with estimates ranging from thirty to forty-two. This makes 2022 the deadliest year on record for Latin America, and Latin America the deadliest region for journalists worldwide.
“Without effective protection mechanisms, without political will and resources to effectively protect journalists, without a change in rhetoric about how governments both democratic and authoritarian in the region refer to journalists,” says Martínez de la Serna. “There is no reason for us to be optimistic because there is no change we are seeing.” — Carlos Martínez de la Serna, is program director at the Committee to Protect Journalists
Women's voices are missing in the media – including them could generate billions in income (The Conversation)
A recent report on gender parity in news leadership, production and coverage focusing on South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, India, the UK and the US has found that women in remain severely underrepresented in editorial leadership and in news coverage. As a result, women's voices are excluded from public discourse around media and content production.
“Socio-economic and patriarchal structures have long determined and usually hampered women’s entry and ascendance in society and the workplace. But the news media provide a very particular case of gender discrimination. This is especially through the hurdles and threats the contemporary media sphere presents to women journalists" — Ylva Rodny-Gumede
Israel’s Cognyte won Myanmar spyware tender before coup (Al Jazeera)
Meta said that its investigation identified Cognyte customers in a range of countries such as Kenya, Mexico and Indonesia, and that their targets included journalists and politicians. It did not identify the customers or the targets.
“Cognyte, which had $474m in annual revenue for its last financial year, was also banned from Facebook in 2021. Facebook owner Meta Platforms said in a report that Cognyte enables managing fake accounts across social media platforms”
News marked false by PIB to be taken down: draft rule (The Hindu)
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India proposed a draft rule that would require social media platforms to take down content that has been “fact-checked” by the Press Information Bureau’s fact check unit as false.
"The Rules state that platforms shall make reasonable efforts to cause the user of its computer resource not to post content that has been identified as fake or false by the fact check unit at the Press Information Bureau of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting or other agency authorised by the Central Government for fact checking”.
Product updates
Five trends we found on WhatsApp during the 2022 Brazil elections
A Meedan analysis of anonymized audience data from our collaborative reporting project, Confirma 2022, shines a light on the information voters were exposed to, and the questions audiences had, in the lead up to the 2022 Brazilian presidential and runoff elections.
Through this program we used machine learning to uncover big picture trends about the questions people asked and claims they encountered online. The data provides a snapshot of the information landscape within WhatsApp audiences ahead of the elections.
Townsquare
MARCH 1
New MOOC by Chicas Poderosas: Our partner Chicas Poderosas invites journalists and communication professionals to take their third online, massive, free and open course to learn about journalism, financial sustainability, fundraising, project management, collaborative leadership and anti-colonial narratives. You can find out more about the program here.
JANUARY 12- FEBRUARY 23
IJ4EU fund opens new calls for cross-border investigative journalism: Grants of up to €50,000 available for cross-border projects in the European Union and EU candidate countries. Deadline: February 23, 2023. You can find more information here.
JANUARY 15 - JANUARY 31
New training opportunity for Syrian women journalists: The Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ) is accepting applications for its online investigative journalism training. Syrian women journalists inside and outside Syria can apply to attend the online training. Deadline: January 31, 2023.
What else we’re reading
Getty Images is suing the creators of AI art tool Stable Diffusion for scraping its content (The Verge)
The Knight Center’s LatAm Journalism Review curated a list of Impactful investigative journalism stories in Latin America in 2022 (LatAm Journalism Review)
In this Q&A, Ajit Niranjan, a climate journalist, discusses with the Columbia Journalism Review solutions and tools to improve climate journalism and audience engagement. (Columbia Journalism Review)
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