Media professionals say they want to see wide-ranging media literacy education efforts for the public to prevent the spread of messages and videos that contain fake news and false information and to help the average person be able to distinguish objective news content from information that is heavily shaped by a political or ideological agenda.

The Ministry of Information’s fake news monitoring commission reported that in 2021, a total of 1,938 sources were identified as spreading false information including video content and commentary that was insulting to the nation’s leaders, a slight increase compared to 2020.

Pen Bona, president of the Club of Cambodian Journalists, said that one of the keys to solving the problems posed by fake news and false information was to teach media literacy skills to young people and the general public so that they know the basics of how to verify information using some of the methods that journalists employ.

An intern at the Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association (CamboJA) named Chea Sokny who took the organisation’s training course on fact checking said that the course was an excellent resource for both online and print journalists and that it drove home the importance of verifying the accuracy of all information prior to it being shared or published.

“After completing this training the journalists taking the course are better able to produce news content with accurate information that won’t cause confusion or pollute discussions of current events by the public with falsehoods, which is really important for the development of Cambodia’s local media,” she said.

Course instructor Kann Vicheika told The Post that imparting a functional knowledge of how journalism is supposed to work to all young people has become increasingly important in the context of the “information age” we live in.

He said that today’s young people – especially those in provinces – do not know how to parse the information they are consuming on social media like Facebook correctly in order to sort what is true from false or the rumours from verified facts and as a result they read and then share fake news frequently and even tend to believe fake news over real information.

“We’ve seen that some of this false information has landed people in court to face defamation or fraud charges – with some of them facing time in prison – because they shared false information that violated Cambodia’s laws or caused real damage to someone else’s reputation or business,” she said.

Vicheika said if young people are not trained to think critically and question what they encounter on social media they will face all sorts of problems throughout their lives and that’s why teaching media literacy to everyone, but especially young people, is so important.

Nop Vy, executive director of CamboJA, said that too often today criticism of those in power ends up being reduced to a “he-said, she-said” proposition where any strong criticisms are countered with vigorous denials regardless of the evidence being presented and this is inevitably followed by personal attacks against the journalists, who can sometimes even face legal consequences for their reporting.

Vy said the media must remain independent and objective in order to retain the public’s trust and help ensure transparency and promote true information so that when disputes about the facts take place they can act as referees by presenting the public with evidence showing which claims are true and which are just partisan political attacks.

“We must be careful when determining which information is true or false and whether it is legitimate criticism or driven by an agenda. At the same time, those in power being open to hearing criticism when it is legitimate is fundamental to their being able to effectively respond to social problems,” Vy said.

According to Vy, CamboJA collaborates with DW Akademie to hold its training course on fact checking for their Cambodian staff and other members to improve the capabilities and skills of the Kingdom’s journalists and students aspiring to the profession.

“Overall, when we train them on how to verify information and characterise information, our main hope is that they can reliably verify what is true and what is false in the future,” he said.

Ministry of Information spokesman Meas Sophoan refuted Vy’s claim that legitimate criticism is prosecuted by the courts in Cambodia.

Sophoan said that freedom of the press is protected by the Cambodian Constitution and that Articles II and III of the press laws state that journalists have the right to maintain the confidentiality of their sources.

He noted that Cambodian law further states that to maintain the independence of the press, pre-publication censorship was prohibited, a legal principle known as “prior restraint” that is only found in countries with very liberal standards of free speech.

“I do not agree with his suggestion that whenever there is negative criticism of Cambodia’s leaders and government officials that [the criticisms] are always attacked as false and the critics persecuted for it,” he said, adding that real professional journalists who write accurate news are never taken to court over it.

Seav Kuoy Yi