Talking Points for UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming

Dear Friends, what an honor to be invited to address the Egypt Media Forum, which is playing an influential role as a space for dialogue, innovation, and integrity in the media landscape. I was inspired to learn about its founder, Noha El-Nahass, and her passionate young team, whose commitment to ethical communication and international collaboration brought us together here. 

It is great to be among the people who make the media industry thrive - executives, journalists, policymakers and influencers. from across the region and the world. Together, we can commit to uphold the highest standards of professionalism, creativity, and impact, where media serves truth, accountability, and humanity.

During these two days, we can explore the question, what can journalists offer at a time like this?

A time of plummeting attention spans. Of too much information and still somehow never enough. Of war on facts and science.

Our troubled world needs accurate information more than ever. Few are receiving it.

Record numbers - 40% globally - avoid all news. 

Huge numbers get all their news from social media. 

Relying on algorithms that boost sensationalism over facts. 

Wading through feeds flooded with AI slop. 

Some silly. Some entertaining. Some rage bait, cynically made to attract attention.

All of it challenging viewers to question what is real. All of it forcing facts to compete with lies for eyeballs.

At the United Nations we’ve long warned about the harm this toxic information environment is causing.

We see it mainstreaming hate, violence and discrimination. 

Undermining peace, climate action, and public health. 

And decimating trust - in the media, in institutions. 

In short, in facts themselves.

Enter generative AI. 

Three short years since ChatGPT launched, we are lightyears into a new world. 

These tools - still developing at breakneck speed – now reach into all aspects of our lives.

Transforming how we access information, how we think, the decisions we make.

Let me be very clear: These tools have been trained on the blood, sweat and tears of journalists.

They habitually scrape and summarise reporting without credit or compensation.

And, even then, cannot be trusted to deliver facts.

Studies show AI summaries often distort what has been painstakingly established by reporters with years of training and experience. 

Reporters who spend hours researching, interviewing, and verifying. 

Reporters risking their lives at the deadliest time on record to be a journalist. 

And yet we must face facts: Audiences are embracing these flawed tools. Even as more than half of those surveyed say they don’t trust them.

ChatGPT alone claims 700 million weekly active users - 10% of the world’s adult population. 

AI summaries now top results of all major search engines.

And large numbers of young people now rely on AI assistants for news.

Every one of those trends is destroying traffic to news sites, taking a blowtorch to already burned-out media finances.

It’s clear we cannot go on like this. Our collective future is on the line. 

We need facts for trust. We need trust for a shared reality. And we need a shared reality to tackle the existential challenges facing humanity.

We look to professional journalists to provide those facts.

At the UN, we’ve moved away from focusing only on harms – the disinformation, the misinformation, the hate speech.

Instead, we’ve created a blueprint for an information environment that is healthy.

We call it the UN Global Principles for Information Integrity.

A strong, economically viable public interest media stands at the heart of that vision.

Rigorous, professional journalists that act with integrity. That deliver the world the facts. 

This public service is the antidote to the poison flooding our information environment. 

It’s vital we ensure not only its survival, but its long term future.

There are signs of hope.

Signs audiences turn back to trusted sources - to your journalists - when they can’t trust their feeds.

Signs the news industry is coming together to demand AI actors compensate the sources that make their tools smart in the first place.

That’s why I urge you all: keep championing the value of professional journalism in an age like ours. 

Find ways to bolster your economic models in the age of AI. 

And unite in service of the facts.