Former UNESCO Director for Freedom of Expression and Media Development Guy Berger has issued a call for transparency from tech companies, and for algorithms to give prominence to quality information – “instead of recommending whatever ‘slop’ happens to grab attention”.
In a strongly worded article published on the UNESCO website, Berger warned of the threats to information integrity and the urgent need to act.
“Behemoth companies have monopolised massive audiences and the lion’s share of advertising revenue, while demonstrating a declining regard for information integrity. Media ventures, for their part, are left with dwindling funds, while algorithms penalize the visibility of news content on social media. Simultaneously, AI companies take journalists’ work without credit or compensation. The result is a fast-looming crisis.”
“Making matters worse, governments and influential ‘broligarchs’ behind technology businesses are manipulating AI-generated information in the service of narrow ideologies. This informational darkness is nothing less than an existential challenge for humanity. It has the power to jeopardize individual decision-making in a global society where no one knows what’s really true.”
This fast-looming crisis is laid bare in the 2025 M20 Johannesburg Declaration, which affirmed that information integrity is essential to sustaining democracy. “Our call is an injunction to everyone to do more to protect press freedom, and support the role of journalism, and a human rights-based media ecosystem in its contribution to the public good … Failing to prioritise media freedom and viability as well as information integrity can lead to an erasure of information ecosystems, creating drastic threats to economic, safety and overall civil stability,” warned the Declaration.
Berger reminds audiences that while information integrity has become a buzzphrase, the concept had its roots in the 1991 Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press, later endorsed by the UNESCO General Conference. It was cemented further as a public good in the Windhoek+30 Declaration three decades later.
Berger calls for the information integrity campaign that began in 1991 to be urgently carried forward. “Let each of us resolve to do our part to help secure information as a public good as an urgent need today, and as a legacy for those who come after us.”
Read Berger’s full article here:
https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/quality-information-endangered-public-good
- Professor Guy Berger is a member of the M20 Advisory Group.
