Media Response to Disinformation and Elections in Europe, Asia, and Africa

Event

Media Response to Disinformation and Elections in Europe, Asia, and Africa

May 18, 2021

Free elections are the cornerstone of democracy, yet quite often candidates, political parties, and interest groups use disinformation strategies to sway the results one way or another. Misleading information and outright lies are common in election cycles across the globe. Voters in Europe, Asia, and Africa find it hard to get accurate information before they go to the election booth.

What is the role of media in countering disinformation and educating the public about the value of healthy information systems? How can journalists help their audiences bridge political divisions and seek facts beyond the glitter of emotional and misleading content?

During this online event, panelists will discuss the media’s response to disinformation and the detrimental trends that have emerged in electoral processes. The panelists are Todd Leventhal, senior counter disinformation adviser for the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. Department of State; Mwamoyo Hamza, chief of the Voice of America Swahili Service; Rohit Mahajan, vice president of communications and external relations at Radio Free Asia; and Michael Mirny, senior director of the Information and Media Practice at IREX. Inna Dubinsky, project manager at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, will moderate the discussion.

Event Information

May 18, 2021, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Online

Speakers

Todd Leventhal is a senior counter disinformation adviser at the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. Department of State. He has more than 20 years of experience in countering disinformation, conspiracy theories, and false stories, mainly for the U.S. Department of State. Leventhal worked at Voice of America for seven years—writing radio documentaries on Soviet affairs and international security issues from 1984 to 1987 and reporting on news relevant to Africa from 1996 to 2000. Leventhal has given interviews on disinformation to NBC, CNN, Good Morning America, ABC's 20/20, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Sunday Times of London, Le Point, and many other television, radio, and print outlets.
Rohit Mahajan is vice president of communications and external relations at Radio Free Asia, where he oversees media relations, congressional relations, branding, public affairs, and strategic communications. During his tenure, which began in 2009, Mahajan has showcased RFA’s groundbreaking coverage of the human rights crisis in China’s Far West, also known as Xinjiang, and has drawn widespread attention to RFA’s journalists under threat. Mahajan also served as an advisor for RFA’s internet freedom program, which became the Open Technology Fund. At RFA, Mahajan has also focused on journalist safety. On behalf of RFA, he facilitated the process of joining the ACOS Alliance and becoming a signatory of its guiding principles. Previously, Mahajan worked on Capitol Hill for five years. He held communications roles for members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives who were active on foreign policy, international human rights, and foreign aid issues, in addition to national security, immigration, civil rights, and antitrust policy. Prior to working on the Hill, Mahajan was a journalist for community newspapers in the Chicago area. Mahajan holds a BA in English from Beloit College in Wisconsin and a master’s degree in English literature from Northern Illinois University.
Mwamoyo Hamza is the chief of the Voice of America Swahili Service, primarily broadcasting to East Africa. He joined Voice of America in 1994 and served as the service’s senior editor for 12 years. Since joining the Voice of America, Hamza has covered or planned coverage of some of the most important news events in the Africa Division, including President Barack Obama’s participation in the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi in July 2015. In addition, he was among the first journalists to visit and report from Darfur, Sudan, in 2004, after which he traveled to southern Sudan, where he interviewed the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, John Garang. A native of Tanzania, Hamza began his career as a reporter for the Daily News and Sunday News newspapers based in Dar es Salaam, where he covered the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, among other assignments. Hamza attended the Tanzania School of Journalism. He also holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Howard University in Washington, DC.
Michael Mirny is senior director of the Information and Media Practice at IREX. He has more than 20 years of experience in international development. Mirny manages a portfolio of programs in Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, Europe and Eurasia, and Central America. Prior to joining IREX as chief of party of a USAID-funded media program, Mirny ran a number of media projects at private consulting corporations in Washington, DC. He started his career as a journalist at the BBC and Radio Free Europe. He is the recipient of the Golden Microphone Award for a program produced on the BBC about war reporting. He currently serves as a steering committee member of the Global Fund for Media Development. Mirny holds a master's degree from Georgetown University and an undergraduate degree from MSU's journalism program. He teaches a course on digital disruption and journalism safety at the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism
Inna Dubinsky is a business development and training project manager at the U.S. Agency for Global Media in Washington, DC. She oversees media development and journalism training projects. Her international portfolio includes launching dozens of partnership media programs with U.S. and international organizations, leading more than a hundred journalism training programs in 35 countries in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and East Asia. A former broadcaster in the Voice of America Russian Service, Dubinsky was the anchor of the popular daily radio call-in show Talk to America. She played a key role in the reorganization of the Russian Service as Voice of America transitioned from radio to a multimedia broadcaster. She served as a host of the television news program Window to America, a mobile journalist, and Russian Service multimedia senior editor. Previously, she developed a Russian studies program for U.S. military officers and supervised a team of Russian instructors at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. With a Ph.D. in foreign language communication from the USSR (Russia) Academy of Pedagogical Science, Dubinsky is the author and co-author of four books on foreign language training and learning styles.

United States Agency for Global Media

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Media Response to Disinformation and Elections in Europe, Asia, and Africa

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