Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2022
Theme: “Nurturing trust: A Media and Information Literacy Imperative“.
Message from Ms Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO (24-31 October 2022)
The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Ressa, explained the importance of having reliable information recently in the following terms: “a world without facts means a world without truth and trust [a]nd if you don’t have any of those things, you certainly can’t conquer coronavirus, you can’t conquer climate change”.
However, facts these days are, as we know, being undermined by the ever-growing spread of rumour, disinformation and hate speech.
To reverse that trend, we need to build the public’s capacity for critical thinking and restore trust in information and the journalistic work of filtering, checking and analysing the facts. We also need to ensure that the Internet makes full use of its capacity to inform without allowing fear and fantasy to resonate among its users.
