A new controversy has ignited opposition parties following a report over the weekend that the government has paid €40,000 for a year’s contract to the services of ‘NewsWhip’, a system self-described as producing “real-time intelligence on anything that’s happening, anywhere.”
Concerns lie specifically with NewsWhips’ ability to “monitor and track the media in real time”. Criticisms are that the government (not seen as particularly ‘media friendly’) will be using Artificial Intelligence to ‘monitor journalists’.
Yesterday, tabloid Correio da Manhã stated: “NewsWhip, according to its site, can create a list of journalists whose coverage is having the greatest repercussions”, lining them up in a ranking according to the number of news items they produce, and the impact of these.
“The company based in Dublin talks specifically of “monitoring the right journalists”; identifying the most influential voices – and promises to warn when “any article is tipped to generate wide interest, so that reactions can be made beforehand.”
Coming as this story did at a point where the mayor of Coimbra, Ana Abrunhosa, was making headlines for barring a journalist who she feels was asking the wrong questions/ writing ‘incorrect information’ that the council objects to, has sent a chill up the spines of those who defend ‘a free press’.
Bloco de Esquerda’s Fabian Figueiredo, for example, has said “this puts Portugal in the worst rankings for press freedom. Fifty years after the April 25 revolution, the government wants to monitor journalists…”
But the government has rejected this interpretation, saying its contract is simply for a “modern form of press monitoring” that searches open sources and public content.
NewsWhip already offers its services to other governments, and private entities in various countries, as well as institutions like Amnesty International and the United Nations. Even news organisations use NewsWhip, says the government.
Answering concerns raised by Bloco de Esquera, the government’s response has been that NewsWhip “enables the simultaneous monitoring of multiple social media platforms and online media outlets, utilizes ‘predictive models and performance metrics’ and includes ‘automatic detection of relevant content with configurable alerts’, with the aim of tailoring the government’s communications and anticipating responses to controversies…”
The explanations have not really helped. “What are we talking about?” Fabian Figueiredo insists. “What is the objective of the government in having a tool powered by artificial intelligence that monitors news, the activity of journalists and ranks them? Why is it going to rank them? Based on their support for the government, the content of their news stories, or because they practise investigative journalism? What is the real purpose of this tool?”
PS Socialists are equally suspicious: MP André Moz Caldas suggesting the decision follows a pattern of an executive that “shows persistent difficulties in understanding the role of the press in a free and democratic society.”
Moz Caldas particularly referred here to the “systematic practice of avoiding events where journalists can ask questions freely, and in the preference for controlled appearances – orchestrated by the government’s Communications Unit – to be broadcast without any opposing views. And we have seen it in the attempts to impose new governance models on RTP and Lusa that undermine their editorial independence,” he warned.
Sources: LUSA/ TSF
