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The Public Relations Department's latest arrangement to have all mainstream TV stations cover a different minister during next week's mobile cabinet meeting will turn the broadcast media into the government's publicists. This may be a one-off "request" but it sets alarm bells ringing about the regime's directives on how the media should work and be regulated.

On Wednesday, the department's acting director-general, Sansern Kaewkamnerd, requested cooperation from the TV channels to provide sufficient publicity for all ministers during their field trips to several northeastern provinces next week. His request secured the commitment from 16 TV channels, each of which has been assigned to cover one minister. His department also makes a copy of ministerial "scoops" available for each outlet.

Lt Gen Sansern, also a government spokesperson, asked journalists and editors at a Wednesday meeting to immediately pick a different minister each. While he described it as "cooperation", working journalists see it as interfering in what and how the broadcast media should report.

From next week, the Thai TV audience will be forced to watch a series of "scoops" about the ministers on state-run NBT produced by different channels. One story per minister. No diversity. This arrangement is no different from asking them to cooperate in spreading government propaganda.

Lt Gen Sansern complained the media have focused exclusively on Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha during previous trips to the provinces, overlooking the work of ministers. But this rationale does not hold water: If officials do something of note, the media will cover it.

As the government's lead publicist, he should have offered the media tantalising details about what ministers plan to do during their upcoming trip, and let journalists decide how or whether they want to cover them. If certain ministers are known for their hard work and recognised for their leadership and vision, they will make headlines. The reason why they have not received sufficient coverage should speak for itself.

Lt Gen Sansern's vision of how the media should operate reflects the controlling nature of the military regime and Thai bureaucracy. This is more worrying as a bill on media regulation, proposed by the now-defunct National Reform Steering Assembly, is yet to be approved by the government. The bill has been criticised for paving the way for tightened state control of the press as it proposes a new national council to regulate the media.

If approved, high-ranking state officials will serve in the council during the five-year transitional period following next year's general election.

Lt Gen Sansern should be reminded that whatever "cooperation" these TV channels provide, this must not become the norm for how the media coverage of government affairs is governed.

By restricting the activities of politicians and activists, the regime has already gained leverage in influencing the public because the media can only cover what public figures are allowed to do. In fact, the National Council for Peace and Order's daily TV programmes, including Gen Prayut's weekly talk, which is aired on all TV channels, have given the government a tool to promote its policies.

The politically divided Thai society does not need one-sided information fed by such state-run programmes, which should have been scrapped long ago.

Respecting diversity in terms of content and news sources will keep the audience sufficiently informed and help forge understanding and tolerance in society.

Lt Gen Sansern's request for cooperation in this context need not be revisited. If it pops up again the public should prepare for a diet of state propaganda, not news, from the media.

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'Cooperation' as control - Bangkok Post

A large majority (70%) of the worlds biggest brands have changed media agency contracts this year to regain control of their spend, according to new research.

A report from theWorldFederationof Advertisers (WFA) has indicated that global multinational companies have been looking to respond to concerns that they have lost control of media activity.

This extends to 35 companies with a total annual marketing spend of more than $30 billion globally.

This research by the WFA found global brands making or having plans to make major and extensive changes to their media governance practices. This was across a wide range of areas.

According to the report, more active management of media issues now involves brand safety, viewability and ad fraud as well as the transparency issues raised by the ANAs reports from K2 and Ebiquity.

The survey was conducted in May this year and saw 73% % of respondents having global roles. The rest were in regional roles covering Europe, North America and APAC.

Overall, transparency remained top priority for 47% companies surveyed. Brand safety is also moving up in terms of priority, with 70% of companies adding that the issue has been escalated in the last 12 months.

On media transparency

On viewability

On brand safety

On ad fraud

The survey took place in May 2017 and 73% per cent of respondents had global roles, with the balance in regional roles covering Europe, North America and APAC.

WFA head of marketing services Robert Dreblow says: The WFA has long championed the need for clear and transparent relationships between brands and their agency partners. Last years ANA report was a catalyst for a new wave of action by brands not just in the US but around theworld, addressing many of the media issues that our members have highlighted including brand safety and ad fraud.

These actions, coupled with an increasing number of WFA members sharing that they have witnessed improved transparency, are positive signs that we can create an improved media landscape for brands, agency partners and media owners.

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World's biggest advertisers 'taking back control of their media spend from agencies' - Netimperative

Way to kick HBO while its down.

As if the Time Warner-owned cable network didnt have enough problems to worry about with cyberattacks, a notorious hacking group took over the companys Twitter and Facebook accounts Wednesday night.

Hi, OurMine are here, we are just testing your security ,HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security ourmine .org -> Contact, read a message on both social platforms at approximately 8 p.m. PT.

OurMine is well known for taking over Twitter accounts of a wide range of media accounts in recent years including Netflix, Marvel and Google. The damage doesnt seem to ever extend beyond just demonstrating the groups ability to take over the account.

In addition to taking over the main accounts at HBO, the Twitter account for Game of Thrones was also exploited. HBO managed to scrub the offending tweets shortly after they were posted.

Its unlikely the OurMine attack is coordinated with the anonymous hacker currently embroiled in a weeks-long standoff with the network that has resulted in the leakage of unaired HBO episodes, Game of Thrones script and some internal documents.

An HBO spokesman declined to comment.

OurMine wasnt the only problem HBO dealt with Wednesday. Episode six of Game of Thrones was leaked to internet piracy sites, four days ahead of Sundays premiere. It was inadvertently published by HBO Nordic and HBO Espaa services.

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HBO Social Media Accounts Hacked (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety

The Internet and social media did not create white supremacist movements in the United States, such as the hate groups that rallied in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend to deadly results. Nor did the Internet create Donald Trump, who defended the Nazi protesters as very fine people. Trump was a demagogue long before he became @realDonaldTrump on Twitter. And there was plenty of fake news before there was Facebook.

The rise of what we might call cheap speech has, however, fundamentally altered both how we communicate and the nature of our politics, endangering the health of our democracy. The path back to a more normal political scene will not be easy.

In the old days, just a handful of TV networks controlled the airwaves, and newspapers served as gatekeepers for news and opinion content. A big debate back in the 1980s and earlier was how to enable free expression for those who did not own or work for a media company and wanted to get a message out.

In 1995, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote a remarkably prescient Yale Law Journal article looking ahead to the coming Internet era. In Cheap Speech and What It Will Do, Volokh foresaw the rise of streaming music and video services such as Spotify and Netflix, the emergence of handheld tablets for reading books, the demise of classified advertising in the newspaper business, and more generally how technology would usher in radical new opportunities for readers, viewers and listeners to custom design what they read, saw and heard, while at the same time undermining the power of intermediaries including publishers and bookstore owners.

David Swanson / TNS

Alex Jones from infowars.com at Settlers Landing during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Monday, July 18, 2016. (David Swanson/Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS) ** OUTS - ELSENT, FPG, TCN - OUTS **

Alex Jones from infowars.com at Settlers Landing during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Monday, July 18, 2016. (David Swanson/Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS) ** OUTS - ELSENT, FPG, TCN - OUTS ** (David Swanson / TNS)

To Volokh, these changes were exciting and democratizing. But 22 years later, the picture of what the cheap-speech boom has wrought seems considerably darker. No doubt the Internet has dramatically lowered the costs of obtaining information and spurred the creation and consumption of content from radically diverse sources. Anyone with an idea can now get it out on Facebook, Twitter or any number of other sites accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. And cheap speech has been a boon to those fighting oppressive regimes around the world, as truthful messages and relevant information can spread despite government censorship efforts.

Less positively, cheap speech has undermined mediating and stabilizing institutions of American democracy, including newspapers and political parties, with negative social and political consequences.

The newspaper business has been decimated. In 2001, approximately 411,800 people were employed in the journalism industry. By 2016, that number had fallen below 174,000. Between 2000 and 2015, newspaper print advertising revenue declined from $60 billion to $20 billion a year. As a 2009 Columbia Journalism Review report concluded, What is under threat is independent reporting that provides information, investigation, analysis, and community knowledge, particularly in the coverage of local affairs.

In place of media scarcity, we now have a media fire hose. Because the barrier to entry is so low virtually nonexistent its easy for both domestic and foreign sources to spread falsehoods and propaganda for political or pecuniary purposes. People no longer rely on Walter Cronkite to tell them the way it is or for the Los Angeles Times to screen out the kooks. Instead, Macedonian kids make money and the Russian government makes trouble inventing news stories like Hillary Clinton is a murderer, or Trump was endorsed by the Pope.

Since fake news websites look just like legitimate sites when links are shared on Facebook, email or otherwise, even readers who want to distinguish truth from fiction may have a hard time. The problem is compounded by polarization: People share stories that reinforce what they are already inclined to believe. The echo chamber may make us less tolerant and less able to recognize falsehoods.

Fake news is far from the only problem associated with cheap speech. The demise of local newspapers sets the stage for an increase in corruption among state and local officials. Without newspapers watching, as the Los Angeles Times did in its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of corruption in Bell, chicanery can flourish.

Cheap speech is also hastening the irrelevancy of political parties by facilitating direct communication between politicians and voters. Social media, for instance, provided Trump a vehicle to get around the GOP in launching his unorthodox campaign. Now that hes president, social media allows him to circumvent not only the media but also his staff as he lies to the public.

Social media can help activists overcome collective action problems to identify fellow travelers and stage peaceful protests, or violent and hateful ones. It should have come as no surprise that the organizers of the Charlottesville rally promoted it heavily on social media and then used the fallout to look for more recruits.

What can be done?

As Trumps presidency should make obvious, we do not want the government to have the power to ban speech it dislikes what the White House considers fake news. 1st Amendment protections rightfully would prevent such legislation, anyway.

Still, in the era of cheap speech, some shifts in 1st Amendment doctrine seem desirable to assist citizens in ascertaining the truth. The courts should not stand in the way of possible future laws aimed at requiring social media sites to identify and police false political advertising, for instance.

Of course a new conservative Supreme Court is more likely to make things worse than better. It might hold, for example, that it violates the 1st Amendment to bar fake campaign news distributed over social media by foreign governments. Or it might strike down laws that help voters figure out who is paying for political activity (under the dubious argument that transparency measures violate a right to anonymity).

Ultimately, nongovernmental actors may be best suited to counter the problems created by cheap speech. Tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter can assist audiences in ferreting out the truth. Consumer pressure may be necessary to get there, but it is not clear if consumers or shareholders will have the power to move dominant market players who do not want to be moved.

Subsidies for (especially local) investigative reporting can also help the problems of corruption and boost the credibility of newspapers as well as other supports for civil society. But nothing is certain to work in these precarious times.

It seems cheap speech, despite its undeniable benefits, has come with a steep price for our democracy.

Richard L. Hasen is the Chancellors Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine. This is adapted from a forthcoming law review article, Cheap Speech and What It Has Done (to American Democracy).

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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Speech in America is fast, cheap and out of control - Los Angeles Times

Mosquito, Malaria agent

The National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) has urged the media to collaborate with it on malaria control, care and prevention in Nigeria.

According to the organization, collaboration with Health Writers Association of Nigeria (HEWAN) would help to achieve the programmes strategic plan of ensuring total elimination of malaria in Nigeria by 2020.

The National Coordinator of NMEP, Dr Audu Mohammed, made the call on Friday during a Media Chat on Malaria organised by HEWAN, Lagos Chapter, in collaboration with the body.

The theme of the media parley is Management of Malaria in Pregnancy.

Mohammed, represented by Dr Joel Akilah, Head of Integrated Vector Management in NMEP, said that the importance of the meeting could not be overemphasised because malaria was a major public health concern in Nigeria

This is especially when considered against the backdrop of the negative effects of malaria attacks on our social and economic development as a result of absenteeism from schools, offices and farms.

Over 90 per cent of Nigerians are at risk of malaria while children under-five and pregnant women are seen to be more vulnerable to this disease, hence the focus of this discussion.

He said: Although Nigeria has made giant strides in the fight against malaria, a lot of work still needs to be done to eliminate malaria in Nigeria.

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There has been reduction in the prevalence of malaria from 42 per cent (according to the Malaria Indicator Survey MIS 2010) to 27 per cent (MIS 2015).

Improvement in the uptake of Intermittent Preventive Treatment in Pregnancy (IPTp) from13 per cent (NMIS 2010) to 19 per cent (NMIS 2015) by pregnant women who received at least two doses of SP has been documented.

However, uptake of 19 per cent SP is relatively low if Nigeria must eliminate incidences of malaria in pregnancy and its adverse effects, he said.

According to the NMEP boss, malaria is a problem that requires a multi-pronged approach and the belief is that the media is central to solving this challenge.

It is for this reason we have invited you all as partners in the fight against malaria to interact together to build synergy to create the needed awareness.

There is also the need for sensitisation of the populace, especially pregnant women on the importance of early Ante-Natal Care (ANC) attendance and uptake of the quality intervention (IPT) to prevent malaria in pregnancy

As such, it is necessary for the media to be equipped with adequate information as well as be aware of current policies, community mobilisation and partners involvement in malaria elimination, he said.

Mrs Itohowo Uko, the Head of Advocacy, Communication and Social Mobilisation in NMEP, said that Malaria in Pregnancy had grave consequences, especially as it accounted for 11 per cent of maternal deaths.

Malaria in Pregnancy can occur with or without symptoms; it can cause anaemia, lead to miscarriages, still births, pre-term and low birth weight babies and in unfortunate situations, death.

Uko said: However, the NMEP has a Prevention of Malaria in Pregnancy (MIP) strategy.

This strategy advocates using Focused Antenatal Care (ANC), IPTp, regular and appropriate use of Long Lasting Insectide Nets (LLINs) in addition to early diagnosis and prompt treatment of malaria in pregnant women.

It is our belief, however, that the media need to be equipped with the right and correct information, particularly in health-related areas to be able to provide such information.

Also, Dr Tolu Arowolo of the WHO re-emphasied the importance of early Antenatal Care (ANC), saying that booking and administering of IPTp are critical in preventing malaria during pregnancy.

IPTp is based on the assumption that every pregnant woman living in an area of high malaria transmission has malaria in her blood stream or placenta, whether or not she has symptoms of malaria.

A pregnant woman is supposed to receive a minimum of three doses of SP before delivery.

They should also sleep under LLINs because it is also an intervention against malaria, she said.

Arowolo said that good nutrition was also critical during pregnancy as it helped to nourish the mother and foetus, as well as boost the immune system.

Dr Bartholomew Odio, a gynaecologist, urged people, especially pregnant women to always request for testing before the treatment of malaria fever.

Odio, who is the Malaria Technical Advisor with Jhpiego Nigeria, an affiliate organisation to John Hopkins University, U.S, advised them to always demand to know the drugs that were given to them.

Mr Timothy Obot, representing the Head, Monitoring and Evaluation in NMEP, said that there had been a lot of commendable strategies deployed to prevent, appropriately diagnosis and treat malaria.

He said that there were huge gaps in appropriate knowledge about the causes, diagnosis, treatment and prevention, thereby necessitating the need to bridge the information gap.

READ: Most Nigerians consume water from unwholesome sources Minister

He urged the media to take the lead in providing investigated and researched evidence of the efficacy of recommended malaria prevention strategies.

Responding, Mrs Chioma Obinna, President, HEWAN, commended the NMEP for its strategic policies and activities toward the elimination of malaria in the country.

It is important that NMEP is collaborating with the media in the fight to eliminate malaria because the media had the power to reach out to the masses.

People depend on the media to give them information about what is happening in the society and we are obliged to give them timely and accurate messages too.

With this collaboration, there will be smoother synergy in getting the right perspective and information on issues relating to malaria from the right sources for onward dissemination to Nigerians.

HEWAN members through their different platforms, will also effectively communicate to pregnant women and healthcare givers the need to prevent or effectively manage malaria, she said.

Also, Mr Sola Ogundipe, a seasoned health journalist applauded NMEP for the initiative.

He said that eliminating malaria in Nigeria, especially in pregnancy was achievable through commitment and collaboration with all stakeholders, as well as Nigerians themselves.

There are different areas to be addressed when it comes to malaria and its elimination in the country.

These challenges also have possible measures and solutions; given the right information the media will do their best to communicate these to the public.

Deaths from malaria as well as deaths as a result of Malaria in Pregnancy can be reduced to the barest minimum and HEWAN will join in this cause, Ogundipe said.

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Malaria control: NMEP urges media collaboration in care and prevention - P.M. News