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06/08/2022 07:37 AM EDT
Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State
Los Angeles, California Location
Herald Examiner Building
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you very much. Well, good evening, everyone, and it is wonderful to be in Los Angeles, and particularly wonderful to be here in this extraordinary building. And I want to start by saying thank you, thank you, thank you to Arizona State’s Cronkite School of Journalism, to USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism, to the Equis Institute, for partnering with us and putting this event together; and also, as important – more important, even – for their leadership in promoting independent journalism and civic participation, and for training rising generations of media professionals.
To the journalists and civil society leaders from across the hemisphere who made the journey to Los Angeles: welcome. We’re so grateful to have you here – and especially grateful for the crucial work that you do every single day.
Finally, to any of the J-school students in the audience, we are heartened by the path that you’re taking. Now, I say that with some degree of modest authority, as a one-time aspiring journalist myself. Now, I’m old enough that when I briefly practiced the profession, I did it on something called a typewriter. You can look it up. You’ll find it somewhere on the internet. But take it from someone who never fully realized that aspiration – it is a challenging path. I suspect you know that already. But I couldn’t be more inspired to see rising journalists here, and I’m really looking forward to reading your bylines and hearing you and seeing you in the media over the years ahead.
So starting tomorrow, the Ninth Summit of the Americas is going to bring together governments, civil society, youth, the private sector, and citizens from across our hemisphere to try to see how, together, we can tackle the fundamental problems that our societies face and do a better job at delivering for our people. That is the mission that we set for ourselves.
In every country in the hemisphere, for every goal that we want to achieve, for every problem affecting the lives of our people, a free, independent press is essential.
We see that in the reporting around the hemisphere and the world – including by some people who are here today – whether that’s digging into the toughest topics, like corruption or abuses by security services; or lifting up the stories of grassroots leaders who are finding solutions to complex problems, like the youth activists in small island states who are helping their communities adapt to rising seas and other changes that are brought on by climate change.
Reporting on issues like these shows how a free, independent press is quite literally a cornerstone of healthy democracies. And at its core is an idea, the idea that accurate information is a public good – one that helps people understand the events and forces shaping their lives; spotlights problems and solutions that they otherwise might not see; and, fundamentally, empowers citizens to engage meaningfully in their communities, their countries, and the world. In democracies, we often look to the media to provide this public good.
It’s also the reason it’s so important that governments like ours are open to scrutiny, to questions from the media – even when occasionally it’s not the most comfortable thing to do. And you can take that from me as well.
When I had the honor of becoming Secretary of State, one of the very first things I did was to reinstate the daily press briefing at the State Department. And our spokesperson, Ned Price, is here with us today. It’s why, wherever I travel around the world, I make a point of holding press conferences where I take questions from local media as well as with some of the media colleagues who travel with us around the world. It’s why I’ll take questions from you when I get done with these remarks.
Yet today, we see that the right to freedom of expression, including freedom of the press, faces profound challenges in our own hemisphere and around the world. Challenges that, if left unaddressed, could threaten the foundations of our democracies.
So what I’d like to do in this time that I have now is to highlight three of the challenges that we see, and what the United States is doing – together with journalists, media organizations, NGOs, multilateral organizations, philanthropies, the private sector, and other governments – what we’re all trying to do to tackle them.
The first challenge – this will not be news to anyone – is disinformation. Many speakers today have highlighted how governments and non-state actors are seizing on vulnerabilities in our media ecosystem to create, to disseminate, to amplify false or misleading information. We’ve seen how these falsehoods can polarize communities, poison the public square, undermine people’s trust in health systems, government institutions, in democracy itself.
Today, the United States is launching the first hub of the Digital Communication Network of the Americas. Since creating the DCN in 2015, we’ve actually helped build a network of more than 8,000 journalists, educators, communicators and new media professionals, public officials and others around the world, who are working to combat state-sponsored disinformation and propaganda.
The network does this by developing and sharing evidence-based tools to help local actors provide people with accurate information.
Take one example, the pandemic. We’ve seen governments and other actors intentionally spread false narratives about COVID-19’s origin, its transmission, and treatments in an effort to stoke fear, to sow doubt, including about safe and effective vaccines, to erode trust in democracy itself – including deliberately targeting Spanish-language social media in this region.
The spread, the reach of disinformation online is, quite simply, staggering. One study that measured social media traffic over a 90-day period of the pandemic found that the entire World Health Organization COVID-19 site received only 25,000 social media engagements, compared to 2.1 million hits – million hits – for a single false story claiming that the coronavirus is a bioweapon stolen from Canada. That’s wrong, by the way.
In response, DCN has connected investigative journalists, data scientists, public health officials to share effective strategies on disseminating accurate information about COVID-19 and debunking harmful myths on social media.
The strength of DCN is in the diversity and flatness of the network that’s been created. It doesn’t try to prescribe one single solution, but what it does is it makes it easier for participants to learn from one another’s responses – whether through webinars or trainings, online learning hubs or research exchanges, even games and apps. The new Americas chapter will complement DCN hubs in Africa and Europe, further broadening our network of partners and the ideas that they bring to the table.
Even as we take steps to counter disinformation, we have to always guard against measures that give governments overly broad powers to criminalize, to censor, or otherwise quash freedom of expression, as we’ve seen in the rash of so-called “fake news” laws passed by governments, some of which have been abused to harass or lock up journalists whose critical reporting the governments didn’t like.
This brings me to a second challenge: the ongoing threats, harassment, the violence faced by media workers across the region.
You all know this, because many of you are living it.
At least 17 journalists have been killed in this hemisphere in this year, according to the UNESCO observatory of killed journalists, including – most recently – Yesenia Mollinedo and Sheila Johana Garcia, the director and a reporter of the news website El Veraz, in Veracruz, Mexico, shot to death on May the 9th.
No region in the world is more dangerous for journalists.
Crimes like these persist in no small part because the people who order them and carry them out are so rarely held accountable. That sends a message that these attacks can continue with impunity.
Repressive officials are also using new technologies to monitor journalists, to surveil their private communications – a practice unearthed, fittingly enough, through very dogged reporting.
Governments are using sweeping legislation to quash free expression, as we saw in the recent slate of amendments adopted by El Salvador in March and in April of this year.
In Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the simple act of carrying out investigative journalism is a crime.
In Nicaragua, journalists and political opposition candidates Miguel Mora and Miguel Mendoza, newspaper publisher Juan Lorenzo Holmann are currently unjustly imprisoned, after being sentenced under abusive legislation in trials that lacked basic due process. Dozens of independent journalists have fled the country due to persecution and threats, including Anibal Toruno, Luis Chavarria Galeano, Jackson Orozco, who are with us this week at the summit.
In Cuba, independent journalists are subjected to systemic abuses, including house arrest for days, weeks at a time, beatings, forced exile.
When individual journalists are attacked, when they’re persecuted, when they’re imprisoned, when they’re targeted in any other way, the chilling effects reach far beyond the immediate victims. Sometimes this can lead to the shuttering of a publication. Other times, it can lead other reporters to self-censor or to leave the profession entirely.
So here’s some of the things that we’re trying to do about that.
The United States is working across the region to strengthen the rule of law, investing in training judges and prosecutors to investigate and prosecute such attacks, as well as those on human rights defenders and other civil society leaders.
We consistently speak up and speak out about attacks on journalists, in every country, in public and in private. We document governments’ efforts to curtail freedom of expression in our annual human rights report.
We’re deepening our engagement with multilateral bodies that advocate for freedom of expression and the safety of journalists around the world, using our seat at the table to try to make them even more effective. One of the reasons that it was so important for the United States to come back into these international organizations was to be able to assert some of this leadership at these tables. And we’re helping to stand up new bodies to address emerging threats.
We’re very proud to join the new OAS Group of Friends of Freedom of Expression and Journalism and we welcome the creation of the OAS’s new Center for Media Integrity. Luis, thank you for your leadership on this. It’s very, very important. And we’re deepening our engagement in the Media Freedom Coalition.
We’re also doing some very practical things that we hope will make a difference. For example, increasing support for journalists who are facing threats of harassment. USAID will provide up to $9 million to support a global Defamation Defense Fund for Journalists, which will offer liability coverage for journalists and news organizations targeted with unjust litigation. This is one of the tools that repressive governments use. They try to turn and distort the law against journalists by going after them with lawsuits that they can’t afford to defend. We will help make sure that they can defend themselves.
The State Department is investing up to $3.5 million to launch a Journalism Protection Platform that will provide at-risk media professionals with physical and digital security training, psychosocial care, and other assistance when they are in one way or another under attack.
Third, we’re working to make independent media more sustainable. Put simply: we will not have a vibrant, independent press if more and more outlets are shutting down because they can’t find a viable business model.
The United States is working with business groups, with the private sector, to help independent media become more financially sustainable. We’re providing direct financial assistance to at-risk outlets. We’ve committed $30 million to the International Fund for Public Interest Media, which will focus on assisting media in resource-poor and unstable settings, and $5 million to improve the financial viability of independent media outlets.
We’re also encouraging other countries to engage in similar means of support. We had, as some of you know, a Summit for Democracy that President Biden convened last year. One of the main areas of focus of the summit was finding ways collectively to provide support to independent media.
In my own judgment, it’s hard to think of a smarter investment in our democracies – given the incredibly brave and innovative work that journalists are doing throughout our region.
Journalists like Catherine Calderon, who many of you heard from, I think, earlier today. Back in 2015, she was an activist. She was helping to organize demonstrations against corruption in Honduras. She kept running into Jennifer Avila, a journalist who was covering the protests. The more they talked, the more they saw a similar gap: For all the ways Hondurans were hurt by corruption in their everyday lives, no media outlet was conducting independent, rigorous reporting on the problem.
That, of course, was no accident. For years, Honduran activists and reporters who have tried to document corruption – and in particular, women – have been silenced through harassment, through threats, through discrimination, through violence.
So Catherine and Jennifer decided to launch a media outlet that would close that gap, and it was called Contracorriente, or counter current. Since 2015, Counter Current has flourished. It’s unearthed corruption at the highest levels of government, the military, the police, and it’s led to high-profile resignations and even prosecutions. Reflecting on the founding of Counter Current, Catherine said, and I quote, “Now, more than ever, I feel it was necessary. We had to exist…to be a space where we have the possibility of doing journalism…without being silent.”
The same is true for free, independent press across the hemisphere: It has to exist, now more than ever, for the well-being of our people, for the well-being of our communities, for the well-being of our democracies.
The United States is committed to being a partner not only in protecting this space but expanding it. Thanks very much. (Applause.)
QUESTION: I want to know how you justify the invitation to Dr. Ariel Henry from Haiti when he is ruling with no mandate in contravention of the nation’s constitution, and then he’s been implicated in, I think you would admit, very serious crimes, including the murder of a Haitian journalist just this February by the Haitian police.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: So we’ll have plenty of opportunity, I think, in the days ahead to talk about the summit, the participation in the summit, who’s here, who’s not. In Haiti, we continue to work for a transition that leads to appropriate elections that are supported by all the Haitian people. We continue to work to deal with gang violence that is afflicting the country and is doing terrible damage to the Haitian people. We continue to work to try to find ways to support the Haitian people, who have borne more than their share of trouble in the last years, both human and naturally made.
So in all of these ways we’re working, including with partners in our hemisphere, to try to support the Haitian people. But we want to see them have a truly representative government, and that goes down the path of getting to new elections in the coming time.
QUESTION: But Prime Minister Henry is refusing to negotiate with civil society. Again, he is actually governing with no constitutional mandate. His government has been implicated in many different crimes, including potentially the murder of the past president. You yourself have said in your speech here today and in previous statements that countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, that you mentioned are being excluded from the Summit of the Americas because you deem them to not be democratic.
But how can you use that as your justification when you have the so-called prime minister of Haiti, who is ruling under no sort of democratic mandate here, despite the fact that this is well-known in terms of the repression of journalists, the repression of protesters, and his previous involvement in the coup against President Aristide that The New York Times has at least alleged the United States Government was supportive of?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Again, we, like many other countries, are determined to get into the facts of what happened in Haiti, including the assassination of the previous prime minister. We’re determined to find the facts wherever they lead and to whomever they lead.
QUESTION: What about (inaudible)?
MS THOMAS: Okay, and now – well, now we would like to get started on our conversation that we have planned here today.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: I —
MS THOMAS: Yes, I’m excited to get started on this, and I think everyone will enjoy it as well.
QUESTION: (Off-mike.)
MS BAIETTO: And we’ll have more time, of course, to answer these questions after the discussion that —
SECRETARY BLINKEN: We’ll be happy to follow up with these questions.
MS THOMAS: For sure.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you.
QUESTION: But Secretary Blinken, what about Shireen Abu Akleh —
MODERATOR: Thank you, all. We really want our panel (inaudible).
QUESTION: — who was murdered by Israeli forces, right? CNN just agreed to this. These are your two greatest allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Again —
QUESTION: They have murdered American journalists and there have been absolutely no repercussions, and you’re sitting up here talking about the freedom of press and democracy. The United States is denying sovereignty to tens of millions of people around the globe with draconian sanctions for electing leaders that you do not like. Why is there no accountability for Israel or Saudi Arabia for murdering journalists? It is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist in Palestine.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: I deplore the loss of Shireen. She was a remarkable journalist, an American citizen, as you well know. And there too we are determined to follow the facts and get to the truth of what happened to her.
QUESTION: The facts are established, Secretary Blinken.